Opposite to us was a boys' school--"Maison d'Education, Dirigee par M.
Jules Saindou, Bachelier et Maitre es Lettres et es Sciences," and
author of a treatise on geology, with such hauntingly terrific pictures
of antediluvian reptiles battling in the primeval slime that I have
never been able to forget them. My father, who was fond of science, made
me a present of it on my sixth birthday. It cost me many a nightmare.
From our windows we could see and hear the boys at play--at a proper
distance French boys sound just like English ones, though they do not
look so, on account of their blue blouses and dusky, cropped heads--and
we could see the gymnastic fixtures in the play-ground, M. Saindou's
pride. "Le portique! la poutre! le cheval! et les barres paralleles!"
Thus they were described in M. Saindou's prospectus.
On either side of the street (which was called "the Street of the
Pump"), as far as eye could reach looking west, were dwelling-houses
just like our own, only agreeably different; and garden walls overtopped
with the foliage of horse-chestnut, sycamore, acacia, and lime; and here
and there huge portals and iron gates defended by posts of stone gave
ingress to mysterious abodes of brick and plaster and granite,
many-shuttered, and embosomed in sun-shot greenery.
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