I opened the letter in the class-room and sat down at my desk, sick with horror.

The awful wholesale destruction of my relatives paralysed me.

My form must have seen by my ghastly face that something had happened, for, contrary to their usual practice, they sat, thirty of them, in stony silence, waiting for me to begin the lesson.

As far as I remember anything, they waited the whole hour.

The lesson over, I passed along the cloister on my way to my rooms.