At nine o'clock he would go out and breakfast at a neighboring creamery; after which he would go to his office.

There, his tiresome papers once written, he had two or three hours of leisure, which he employed in reading and taking notes from the volumes borrowed by him every morning at a reading-room on the Rue Rorer-Collard; for he had already learned that one leaves college almost ignorant, having, at best, only learned how to study.

He left the office at nightfall and reached his room through the Boulevard des Invalides, and Montparnasse, which at this time was still planted with venerable elms; sometimes the lamplighter would be ahead of him, making the large gas-jets shoot out under the leafless old trees.

This walk, that Amedee imposed upon himself for health's sake, would bring him, about six o'clock, a workman's appetite for his dinner,--in the little creamery situated in front of Val-de-Grace, where he had formed the habit of going.

Then he would return to his garret, and relight his stove and lamp, and work until midnight.