Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/140

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as dangerous, and the college principals are responsible for all accidents that happen in their schools. Not long ago a proviseur was heavily fined because one of the students, in flinging a stone, had accidentally broken a window and hurt another boy's eye. It is easy enough, under such extraordinary circumstances, to understand the proviseur's persistent discouragement of rough games. Skating is not allowed, for this, too, is dangerous; and, for the same reason, gymnastics are permitted only once a week, each student going in turn to the gymnasium and staying there for about three minutes. And so in French colleges these blustering years of boyhood know no other variety of pleasure than the treadmill of the courtyard. Backwards and forwards they walk in recreation hours, talking together; and need it be supposed that the words of wisdom are ever on their lips? As I have said, the, day-students do not need much pity. They can make the lycée merely a daily accessory of life—a place they go to generally with the intention of wasting their time. Should they have the good-fortune to light upon a first-rate teacher, which is rare, they will get some profit from the hours spent at the lycée. But the indoor student is wretched. He is a dejected being, with none of the distractions of his age—unboyish, unjoyous, watched and watching, prematurely demoralised by his fellow unfort-