Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/490

 454 Readings in European History 192. Life of the students at Paris. (From The History of the West, by Jacques de Vitry ; d. 1240.) precarious tax on the mob, would strew the floor of the lec- ture hall with hay or straw, according to the season, bring the master's text-book, with the notes of the lecture between lines or on the margin, to the solitary desk, and then retire to secure silence in the adjoining street. Sitting on their haunches in the hay, the right knee raised to serve as a desk for the waxed tablets, the scholars would take notes during the long hours of lecture (about six or seven), then hurry home if they were industrious to commit them to parch- ment while the light lasted. The lecture over, the stream would flow back over the Little Bridge, filling the taverns and hospices, and pouring out over the great playing meadow, that stretched from the island to the present Champ de Mars. All the games of Europe were exhibited on that international play-ground : running, jumping, wrestling, hurling, fishing and swimming in the Seine, tossing and thumping the inflated ball a game on which some minor poet of the day has left us an enthusiastic lyric and especially the great game of war, in its earlier and less civilized form. The nations were not yet systematically grouped, and long and frequent were the dangerous conflicts. That the students had a bad reputation among the serious-minded may be inferred from the following. Almost all the students at Paris, foreigners and natives, did absolutely nothing except learn or hear something new. Some studied merely to acquire knowledge, which is curi- osity ; others to acquire fame, which is vanity ; still others for the sake of gain, which is cupidity and the vice of simony. Very few studied for their own edification or that of others. They wrangled and disputed not merely about the various factions and subjects of discussions; but the differences between the countries also caused dissensions, hatreds and virulent animosities among them, and they impudently uttered all kinds of affronts and insults against one another.