In order to help form my taste in literature, he had assembled a little anthology for me in an exercise book covered with shiny black imitation leather: Un Évangile, by Coppée, Le Pantin de la petite Jeanne by Banville, Hélas! si j’avais su! by Hégésippe Moreau, and several other poems. He taught me to read them aloud, ‘putting in the expression’. He read the classics aloud to me: Ruy-Blas, Hernani, the plays of Rostand, Lanson’s Histoire de la littérature française, and Labiche’s comedies.
A gospel
