I try to recall his face⁠—as I recollect him, I see that I was conscious of his existence after all, and took notice of him. I can see him going to school, alone or with some of the other big boys. I see him walking among them like a stranger, lonely and still like a celestial body, enveloped in a different atmosphere and subject to his own laws. No one liked him, he was intimate with no one, except his mother, and his relations with her did not seem like those of a child, but those of a grown-up person. The masters left him as much as possible in peace. He was a good pupil, but he did not go out of his way to please them. From time to time we heard, in gossip, of a word, a comment or a retort he had made to a master, and which left nothing to be desired in the way of blunt challenge or irony.