His professors had predicted that at the annual exhibition he would
obtain six great prizes; he obtained not even a premium.
As a punishment, he was required to remain within the college grounds
during the vacation. But its gates were not strong enough, nor its
walls high enough to detain him.
Condemned, for the crime of desertion, to a classic imprisonment, he
was shut up in a cellar; he escaped through the window; in a garret;
he descended by the roof.
Then, pronounced incorrigible, he was expelled from the university.
He left it joyous and happy, escaped from the tutor commissioned to
conduct him to his father, and at last wholly free, his own master, he
took lodgings in a cabin, not far from the Royal Salmon, and thought
himself monarch of the universe.
As soon as the doors of the inn were opened, he penetrated there with
the earliest fogs of morning, with the first beams of day; in the
evening he was the last to cross the threshold, after the extinction
of the lights.
All day long, seated at a little table opposite the bar, between a
pipe and a pewter pot, he watched the movements of Kitty, and followed
her with admiring eyes.
Catherine was not slow to perceive this new passion; but she was
accustomed to admiring eyes, and therefore paid but little heed to
them.
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