During the past year, my principal amusement had been my meetings and my conversations with my friends; but now, apart from Zaza, they all bored me stiff. I went three or four times to the study-circle they attended under the supervision of the Abbé Trécourt, but the dreary inanity of the discussions drove me away. My old schoolmates hadn’t changed all that much; I hadn’t either; but before, we had been bound by a common endeavour: our studies; while now our lives were going separate ways; I was pushing forward and developing all the time, whereas they, in order to adapt themselves to their role of marriageable young girls, were beginning to grow dull and stupid. From the outset, I was being separated from them by the diverse paths our future was taking.