where pain can touch the soul or the flesh. Stuck on a form,
restricted to the acreage of his desk, a victim of the strap and to a
sickly frame, tortured in every sense, environed by distress
--everything compelled him to give his body up to the myriad tyrannies
of school life; and, like the martyrs who smiled in the midst of
suffering, he took refuge in heaven, which lay open to his mind.
Perhaps this life of purely inward emotions helped him to see
something of the mysteries he so entirely believed in!

Our independence, our illicit amusements, our apparent waste of time,
our persistent indifference, our frequent punishments and aversion for
our exercises and impositions, earned us a reputation, which no one
cared to controvert, for being an idle and incorrigible pair. Our
masters treated us with contempt, and we fell into utter disgrace with
our companions, from whom we concealed our secret studies for fear of
being laughed at. This hard judgment, which was injustice in the
masters, was but natural in our schoolfellows. We could neither play
ball, nor run races, nor walk on stilts. On exceptional holidays, when
amnesty was proclaimed and we got a few hours of freedom, we shared in
none of the popular diversions of the school. Aliens from the
pleasures enjoyed by the others, we were outcasts, sitting forlorn
under a tree in the playing-ground. The Poet-and-Pythagoras formed an
exception and led a life apart from the life of the rest.

The penetrating instinct and unerring conceit of schoolboys made them
feel that we were of a nature either far above or far beneath their
own; hence some simply hated our aristocratic reserve, others merely
scorned our ineptitude. These feelings were equally shared by us
without our knowing it; perhaps I have but now divined them. We lived
exactly like two rats, huddled into the corner of the room where our