Then came comical reminiscences; the sudden recollection of practical jokes, at which they shook with laughter after all those years.  Oh! the morning when they had burned the shoes of Mimi-la-Mort, alias the Skeleton Day Boarder, a lank lad, who smuggled snuff into the school for the whole of the form.  And then that winter evening when they had bagged some matches lying near the lamp in the chapel, in order to smoke dry chestnut leaves in reed pipes.  Sandoz, who had been the ringleader on that occasion, now frankly avowed his terror; the cold perspiration that had come upon him when he had scrambled out of the choir, wrapt in darkness.  And again there was the day when Claude had hit upon the sublime idea of roasting some cockchafers in his desk to see whether they were good to eat, as people said they were.  So terrible had been the stench, so dense the smoke that poured from the desk, that the usher had rushed to the water pitcher, under the impression that the place was on fire.  And then their marauding expeditions; the pillaging of onion beds while they were out walking; the stones thrown at windows, the correct thing being to make the breakage resemble a well-known geographical map.  Also the Greek exercises, written beforehand in large characters on the blackboard, so that every dunce might easily read them though the master remained unaware of it; the wooden seats of the courtyard sawn off and carried round the basin like so many corpses, the boys marching in procession and singing funeral dirges.  Yes! that had been a capital prank.  Dubuche, who played the priest, had tumbled into the basin while trying to scoop some water into his cap, which was to serve as a holy water pot.  But the most comical and amusing of all the pranks had perhaps been that devised by Pouillaud, who one night had fastened all the unmentionable crockery of the dormitory to one long string passed under the beds.  At dawn—­it was the very morning when the long vacation began—­he had pulled the string and skedaddled down the three flights of stairs with this frightful tail of crockery bounding and smashing to pieces behind him.

At the recollection of this last incident, Claude remained grinning from ear to ear, his brush suspended in mid-air.  ’That brute of a Pouillaud!’ he laughed.  ’And so he has written to you.  What is he doing now?’

‘Why, nothing at all, old man,’ answered Sandoz, seating himself more comfortably on the cushions.  ’His letter is idiotic.  He is just finishing his law studies, and he will inherit his father’s practice as a solicitor.  You ought to see the style he has already assumed—­all the idiotic austerity of a philistine, who has turned over a new leaf.’

They were silent once more until Sandoz added, ’You see, old boy, we have been protected against that sort of thing.’