To our right the unequal massive towers of St. Mary’s Church soared aloft into the ethereal radiance of the air, very black on their shaded sides, glowing with a soft phosphorescent sheen on the others.  In the distance the Florian Gate, thick and squat under its pointed roof, barred the street with the square shoulders of the old city wall.  In the narrow, brilliantly pale vista of bluish flagstones and silvery fronts of houses, its black archway stood out small and very distinct.

There was not a soul in sight, and not even the echo of a footstep for our ears.  Into this coldly illuminated and dumb emptiness there issued out of my aroused memory, a small boy of eleven, wending his way, not very fast, to a preparatory school for day-pupils on the second floor of the third house down from the Florian Gate.  It was in the winter months of 1868.  At eight o’clock of every morning that God made, sleet or shine, I walked up Florian Street.  But of that, my first school, I remember very little.  I believe that one of my co-sufferers there has become a much appreciated editor of historical documents.  But I didn’t suffer much from the various imperfections of my first school.  I was rather indifferent to school troubles.  I had a private gnawing worm of my own.  This was the time of my father’s last illness.  Every evening at seven, turning my back on the Florian Gate, I walked all the way to a big old house in a quiet narrow street a good distance beyond the Great Square.  There, in a large drawing-room, panelled and bare, with heavy cornices and a lofty ceiling, in a little oasis of light made by two candles in a desert of dusk, I sat at a little table to worry and ink myself all over till the task of my preparation was done.  The table of my toil faced a tall white door, which was kept closed; now and then it would come ajar and a nun in a white coif would squeeze herself through the crack, glide across the room, and disappear.  There were two of these noiseless nursing nuns.  Their voices were seldom heard.  For, indeed, what could they have had to say?  When they did speak to me it was with their lips hardly moving, in a claustral, clear whisper.  Our domestic matters were ordered by the elderly housekeeper of our neighbour on the second floor, a Canon of the Cathedral, lent for the emergency.  She, too, spoke but seldom.  She wore a black dress with a cross hanging by a chain on her ample bosom.  And though when she spoke she moved her lips more than the nuns, she never let her voice rise above a peacefully murmuring note.  The air around me was all piety, resignation, and silence.