In the shade of this sycamore, planted under an unlucky star, the greater
part of Amedee's infancy was passed.

M. Violette was an employe of the Ministry, and was obliged to work seven
hours a day, one or two hours of which were devoted to going wearily
through a bundle of probably superfluous papers and documents. The rest
of the time was given to other occupations as varied as they were
intellectual; such as yawning, filing his nails, talking about his
chiefs, groaning over the slowness of promotion, cooking a potato or a
sausage in the stove for his luncheon, reading the newspaper down to the
editor's signature, and advertisements in which some country cure
expresses his artless gratitude at being cured at last of an obstinate
disease. In recompense for this daily captivity, M. Violette received,
at the end of the month, a sum exactly sufficient to secure his household
soup and beef, with a few vegetables.

In order that his son might attain such a distinguished position,
M. Violette's father, a watch-maker in Chartres, had sacrificed
everything, and died penniless. The Silvio Pellico official, during
these exasperating and tiresome hours, sometimes regretted not having
simply succeeded his father. He could see himself, in imagination, in
the light little shop near the cathedral, with a magnifying-glass fixed
in his eye, ready to inspect some farmer's old "turnip," and suspended
over his bench thirty silver and gold watches left by farmers the week
before, who would profit by the next market-day to come and get them, all
going together with a merry tick. It may be questioned whether a trade
as low as this would have been fitting for a young man of education, a
Bachelor of Arts, crammed with Greek roots and quotations, able to prove
the existence of God, and to recite without hesitation the dates of the