poisoned by the fumes of dish-water; the dormitory of the little ones,
famous for its horrors, the linen room, and the infirmary, full of
gentle sisters, nuns in black gowns who looked so sweet beneath their
white coifs. What a to-do there had been when Sister Angela, she whose
Madonna-like face had turned the heads of all the big fellows,
disappeared one morning with Hermeline, a stalwart first-form lad,
who, from sheer love, purposely cut his hands with his penknife so as
to get an opportunity of seeing and speaking to her while she dressed
his self-inflicted injuries with gold-beater's skin.

Then they passed the whole college staff in review; a pitiful,
grotesque, and terrible procession it was, with such heads as
are seen on meerschaum pipes, and profiles instinct with hatred
and suffering. There was the head master, who ruined himself in
giving parties, in order to marry his daughters--two tall, elegant
girls, the butt of constant and abominable insults, written and
sketched on every wall; there was the comptroller Pifard, whose
wonderful nose betrayed his presence behind every door, when he went
eavesdropping; and there were all the teachers, each befouled with
some insulting nickname: the severe 'Rhadamantus,' who had never been
seen to smile; 'Filth,' who by the constant rubbing of his head had
left his mark on the wall behind every professional seat he occupied;
'Thou-hast-deceived-me-Adele,' the professor of physics, at whom ten
generations of schoolboys had tauntingly flung the name of his
unfaithful wife. There were others still: Spontini, the ferocious
usher, with his Corsican knife, rusty with the blood of three cousins;
little Chantecaille, who was so good-natured that he allowed the
pupils to smoke when out walking; and also a scullion and a scullery
maid, two ugly creatures who had been nicknamed Paraboulomenos and
Paralleluca, and who were accused of kissing one another over the