the student’s chair and to shake the same.

“I wish you were asleep!” exclaimed his victim, lifting a mildly exasperated face. “What in Heaven’s name do you want?”

you

“The time, dear friend.”

Lucien du Boisfossé pulled the watch from his fob. “A quarter—no, seventeen minutes past nine.”

“What are you reading?” demanded Artamène.

“The Æneid of Virgil,” replied Lucien, his eyes on the page again.

Æneid

The questioner gave an exclamation, almost of horror. “Ye gods! He is reading Latin—for amusement!” 

“A quarter past nine,” remarked Roland reflectively. “This time yesterday I was——”

“Don’t chatter so, Roland le preux! You disturb our Latinist . . . and also,” added Artamène in a lower tone, “run the risk of breaking into M. de Brencourt’s meditations. Look at him!”

The bandaged piquet-player, who still sat by the table, seemed indeed sunk in a profound abstraction, letting the idle cards fall one by one from his fingers. It was plain that he did not know what he was doing.

“I wager he is thinking of a woman,” whispered Artamène, bringing himself nearer to his friend. “It seems a quieting occupation; suppose we think of one too! But on whom shall I fix my thoughts . . . and you, Roland?”

A slight flush, invisible in the poor light, dyed young de Céligny’s cheek as he answered, with a suspicion of embarrassment, “I will think of that poor old lady next door. Will the Abbé exorcise her, do you think, from the spell of . . . what was it—Mirabel? And, by the way, what is Mirabel?”

“The name of a kind of plum, ignoramus,” replied Lucien du Boisfossé unexpectedly. He yawned as he spoke.

“Plainly our Lucien has been studying the Georgics also,” commented Artamène.

“An 

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