Our
professor, the good Abbe Duchesne, was particularly attentive in his
lessons to me and to my close friend and fellow-student Guyomar,
who displayed a great aptitude for this branch of study. We always
returned together from the college. Our shortest cut was by the
square, and we were too conscientious to deviate from the most direct
route; but when we had had to work out some problem more intricate
than usual our discussion of it lasted far beyond class-time, and on
those occasions we made our way home by the hospital. This road took
us past several large doors which were always shut, and upon which we
worked out our calculations and drew our figures in chalk. Traces
of them are perhaps visible there still, for these were the doors of
large monasteries, where nothing ever changes.
The hospital-general, so called because it was the trysting-place
alike of disease, old age, and poverty, was a very large structure,
standing, like all old buildings, upon a good deal of ground, and
having very little accommodation. Just in front of the entrance
there was a small screen, where the inmates who were either well or
recovering from illness used to meet when the weather was fine, for
the hospital contained not only the sick, but the paupers, and even
persons who paid a small sum for board and lodging. At the first
glimpse of sunshine they all came to sit out beneath the shade of the
screen upon old cane chairs, and it was the most animated place in the
town.
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