Hiraux, the choir-boy, was the only one who kept his post. And it was that very attitude, the calmness of one who stands steadfast while the heavens are falling round him, that ruined Hiraux. Proserpina found an Æsculapius who declared that he had seen her eat seven pomegranate seeds. Hiraux had his Æsculapius who declared that he had seen him stealing at nightfall on tiptoe from the dispensary.
The monastery organist was his accuser.
The denunciation was credited, and when the evidence was put together everybody held Hiraux to be the true culprit. One is not brought up in a monastery, moreover, without learning to lie on occasion. Hiraux denied, protested, swore; but this only made things worse, whereas an honest confession might perhaps have smoothed matters.
Hiraux was therefore given over by the prior to the cook, that is to say, religious justice handed him over to the secular arm.
The cook condemned him to twenty-four hours' solitary confinement, accompanied by bread and water, and, to make sure that the punishment should not be mitigated by any friend of the criminal, he shut him up in the monastery cellar.
But the cook had forgotten that the cellar was well filled with wines, cider, oil, vinegar, brandy, rum, etc., etc.
All these liquids were arranged symmetrically in barrels, as becometh honest barrels, in a well-regulated cellar belonging to a Premonstratensian Monastery.
Hiraux went to all the casks and turned on all the taps, one after the other, saying at each turn of the keys: That's the wine running out, that's the cider running out, that's the oil running out, that's the vinegar running out, that's the brandy running out, that's the rum running out, etc., etc.
The operation took some time, and as Hiraux pronounced his remarks in a loud voice those in the kitchens heard sounds like distant chanting, but could catch no words. But, as the murmur continued, the cook became uneasy and went to listen at the door. He heard Hiraux's litany; he fearfully comprehended what it meant. In a second he had lit a lamp, the cellar door was opened, and the anticipated spectacle was revealed in all its heinousness.
Every cask had its tap at full cock, and was emptying itself of its contents; the mixture of all the liquids had already created a flood six inches deep, which was increasing fast.
Hiraux was seated astride a big barrel, as composed as an Indian Bacchus, philosophically waiting till the lake reached him.
The crime was so patent this time that, instead of the culprit denying it, he boasted of it so impudently that the cook did not stop to refer the matter to the prior, but decided to take the law into his own hands.
But the first and most urgent thing to do was to shut off the taps.
Then they seized upon Hiraux, who made no attempt to escape. Next they called a court of justice, comprised of the cook and his scullions.
It was decided unanimously that Hiraux should be birched.
The sentence admitted of no appeal, and it was instantly put into execution. Furthermore, it was carried out vigorously, lasting for ten minutes, in spite of the victim's cries. At the conclusion, the brother cook took a handful of pepper and rubbed it on the injured part to soothe his pains and to efface the bleeding traces the infliction had left.
Hiraux nearly lost the sight of his eyes in consequence.
This may seem odd at first, and it may be thought I have used the wrong phrase: but not at all.
Hiraux wept, Hiraux bled; his eyes and his flanks were almost equally sore. He alternately rubbed his eyes and his flanks, carrying, by this double exercise, the pepper from behind to his eyes. Consequently inflammation gained rapidly, and the more Hiraux rubbed, the worse it became, until his eyes had swollen to the size of eggs, when a sympathetic person advised him to go and allay his pain in the lavatory of the monastery. He comprehended the sense of that advice, immediately rushed off there, and, thanks to a prolonged bath, the burning sensations which tortured him were in a measure allayed.
But he could not extinguish a burning fever which kept him to his bed for a week.
When the prior heard of his illness he inquired into its causes, and punished the cook and his scullions.
Hiraux was revenged upon them, but the real culprit, in the sufferer's eyes, had escaped the prior's sentence of justice; the true culprit was the organist who had given him away—thus betraying the sacred brotherhood of musicians; for Hiraux, in his capacity of organ-blower, looked upon himself as already a musician.
He therefore made up his mind to pay the organist out.
Hiraux could be as deep and unfathomable as the corridors of his cloisters; he locked up his revengeful determination in his breast and decided to wait until Easter Day should come.
Easter Day is a high festival throughout all Christendom. All the peasantry from the outlying districts came to hear Mass at the monastery of Bourg-Fontaine on that day. It was a day of rejoicing for everybody—from the prior, who said Mass, the monks who chanted it, the choir-boys who served it, to the organist who accompanied it, and even to Hiraux who blew the organ.
The day before Easter, Hiraux ascended to the organ-loft, feather-broom in hand, and spent the day cleaning the organ with the most praiseworthy carefulness.
But next morning, contrary to all expectation, and in spite of the efforts of the blower, in spite of the dexterity of theplayer, the organ would produce nothing but muffled and doleful sounds, which confused the choir instead of aiding their chants. No matter how hard the organist tried or pulled out the various stops, the oboe was mute, the trumpet was hoarse and the vox humana had lost its voice.
Whilst the unlucky musician, wondering what to be at, was groaning and swearing and striking the keyboard, with fingers, fists, and elbows, Hiraux went on blowing as solemn as Oculi.
Oculi, of course, was the son of St. Éloi, and blew the bellows whilst St. Éloi forged. There is a song about it somewhere.
Mass was not over before Hiraux was suspected of being the cause of this novel entertainment, in spite of the pains he had taken and in spite of his grave demeanour.
So whilst he was applying himself with greater vigour than ever to the bellows handle, now quite useless, the organist left his place, and going to the door of the organ-loft, he dosed it, double-locked it and put the key in his pocket.
Hiraux instantly perceived what was going to happen, and exclaimed: "I didn't do it, sir!" leaving hold of his handle for the first time; "it wasn't me!"
"We shall see about that," replied the enraged organist, as he began to take the organ to pieces. "Ho, ho!" the said, "the vox humana has something wrong with its throat to-day!"
The organist did not need to go further afield, for he had discovered the mystery of the crime. Hiraux, out of revenge, had disabled the three vox humana, the trumpet and hautbois, and there is good reason to believe that if he had only directed his energies towards those three pipes, it was because he had not been able to do worse damage.
Hiraux had counted upon flying from the monastery directly after Mass, only he had not reckoned on being found out so soon. Now, the discovery was made, and as he could not escape because the door was locked, he flung himself on his knees and begged for mercy.
The organist could dissimulate as well as Hiraux. He made a pretence of forgiving him on condition that Hiraux should put things to rights as he had found them, as they say in leases.
Hiraux was only too glad to get off so easily, and he accepted the terms.
When Mass was finished, the organist left, promising Hiraux not to tell the prior of his latest prank. Hiraux knew that this one surpassed all his others, and bordered on sacrilege; so when left to himself, he did his very best to fulfil the task allotted to him; a task that Fourier, in his distribution of the passions, reserved for children who, in his opinion, should do their work ardently.
We shall see whether Fourier is right or wrong when Considérant has erected his phalanstery.
Whether Hiraux did his task heartily or indifferently, it was done when the organist returned—he might really have been on the watch for that moment—followed by the brother cook and his scullions.
He had been to fetch his own allies,—Hiraux's born foes.
Hostilities began immediately the door of the organ-loft was shut. Hiraux expected he would be flogged again as before. But they could not repeat that punishment for want of rods. Still, a presentiment warned him to be more alarmed on account of the absence of rods than he would have been by their presence.
For as a matter of fact they did not intend to birch him, but to inflate him, and the operation was accomplished with the aid of the organ bellows.
This time Hiraux was not-blinded, but they very nearly killed him. They let him go when the operation was over, and he fled as far as he could from the accursed monastery, feeling more like an inflated balloon than a human being, till finally he fell, or rather he rolled, down at the foot of a tree.
It was more than a fortnight before he was completely disinflated.
In consequence of this little episode Hiraux became a grocer's lad; but no one can avoid his fate.
Hiraux was heart and soul a musician. He got hold of an old violin, and perseveringly scraped away in his odd moments.
The grocer's wife was young, and she was unappreciated byher husband—in all times there have been unappreciated wives;—she played the spinet, and at night she and Hiraux gave concerts which so enchanted the grocer that Hiraux, exalted by his domestic achievements, determined to abandon the grocery trade, and to devote himself entirely to instrumental music.
His talents were genuine enough, and almost entirely self-taught; he attained to such skill on the spinet and on the violin that the town of Villers-Cotterets appointed him organist at a salary of 800 livres per annum.
Hiraux made a little more by giving violin and pianoforte lessons. But all his pupils did not pay him in money; he received some of his fees in kind. The timber merchant would pay him in wood and shavings; the grocer in sugar, in prunes and in jam; the tailor in coats, in trousers and in waistcoats. So, what with his 1600 francs in money, and his income in goods, Hiraux had not only enough to live on but sufficient to enjoy a certain independence, which enabled him to send away pupils who did not satisfy him or who had no taste for music.
My mother, therefore, asked Hiraux to undertake my musical education—and he accepted the office with alacrity, while I, on my side, viewed the arrangement not wholly with repugnance. Hiraux was at that time already sixty years old, but so gay and jolly, so witty, so full of funny stories, possessing such an inexhaustible flow of spirits that he was beloved both by young and old alike. I had known Hiraux as long as I could remember anyone; he had been my sister's first music teacher, before she went to Paris, and he remained her private teacher during her vacations.
During the latter days of my father's illness, who, as I have said, suffered a great deal, and knew he was dying in the heyday of his life, Hiraux used to be invited to come and see us at the château des Fossés; and, as Villers-Cotterets was only a league from Fossés, Hiraux would come and return on foot, sleeping at Villers-Cotterets.
That is to say, to make ourselves quite understood, Hiraux,being always a coward, began by sleeping at Fossés: but it was decreed that persecution should follow this poor man all his life long. The stories of his youth were known by everybody: I have only related a twentieth part of these anecdotes in order to enable everyone else to add another fresh story about his most eventful life.
Now, to our house came secretaries and aides-de-camp,—people as lively and as ingenious at practical jokes as any monks of forty or fifty years back.
The invariable result was that, on going to his room at night, a pot of water placed above the door would fall on Hiraux, or he would find a needle in his bed, or a cock in his wardrobe, until at last he gave up sleeping at Fossés, and would return to Villers-Cotterets no matter what the hour or the weather.
This resolution taken, Hiraux usually came to our house armed with a long sword-stick, enclosed in a leather sheath, to give him courage during his nocturnal walk back.
In spite of this stick—or rather because of it—two young men, who had been dining at the house with Hiraux, invented a fresh trick for him. It needed some imagination to do this, for poor Hiraux, ever since the year of grace 1750, had been the victim of so many different pleasantries, that he believed himself proof, not against any prank, but at any rate against any fresh prank.
They took the sword-blade out of the scabbard, relieving Hiraux of that which constituted his protection, and fastened a long peacock's-feather in the handle in its place.
That night Hiraux, ever cautious, wished to leave early; but the young men held him back and would not let him go, promising to accompany him home. This promise put Hiraux's mind at rest. Sure of an escort home, he gave free vent to his merry wit, made more talkative perhaps than usual that evening by generous libations of champagne.
When ten o'clock struck, he began to say it was time they made a move for the town; but the young men protested that they were too comfortable to leave the castle, and that as thegeneral had kindly offered to put them up for the night they would accept, suggesting that Hiraux should do the same.
But he took care not to accept; he suspected the visitors of being capable of any amount of tricks.
He declared that his intention of beating a retreat was immovable, and, taking up his stick and his hat, he said his adieus and departed.
The young men impatiently awaited his departure, and the great door of the château was scarcely shut behind the nocturnal traveller when they left the house by the smaller door, outran him by means of a cross-cut, and hid themselves in a corner of the forest.
The moon was shining brilliantly. Hiraux sang as people do who are frightened; but, to reassure anyone who heard him of his peaceful habits, he sang Gregorian chants, instead of singing a merry song or a lusty battle-hymn.
Suddenly, two masked men rushed out of the wood, sprang on him and demanded his money or his life.
They say no one is more dangerous than a terrified coward; Hiraux, it seemed, had something in his purse and valued his life, for he replied merely by stepping back and drawing his sword.
The sword, as we have said, had been transformed into a peacock's feather.
There was that in the scabbard which would have baffled Roland and the eleven peers of Charlemagne. Hiraux found therein what certainly neither the one nor the other of those valiant chevaliers did.
"You can see for yourselves, my friends," he said, as he showed the peacock's feather to his assailants, "you can see for yourselves I do not want to harm you."
No one could have resisted such artlessness. Threats gave way to shouts of laughter, masks fell off, and, when they had given Hiraux's legs time to recover their stability, all three returned amicably to the town.
Hiraux added one more adventure to his record.
Hiraux made me laugh so much in my childhood, and Iloved him so dearly, that my sympathy for the musician overcame my antipathy to music and I agreed to take violin lessons.
But I insisted that they should buy me a violin in Paris, and not one of those for sale in the old curiosity shops of Villers-Cotterets, which did not satisfy my pride as good enough.
My mother always let me go my own way; so it was decided that Hiraux should buy me a violin the next time he went to Paris, and that my musical education should begin on his return.
Only, when would that journey be likely to take place? It looked at first as though I had counted on a postponement to the Greek Kalends. But such was not to be: chance, or rather a new joke, of which Hiraux was the victim, decreed otherwise.
The journey to Paris was arranged at the close of a dinner, at which Hiraux and some friends of his were present—among others were his two intimate friends, Mussart and Duez, whose names we mention now as we shall hear of them again presently.
It was settled under the drollest of conditions.
They were dining at the house of a man named Hutin, where all the diligences stop on their way between Laon and Paris. They made Hiraux so tipsy that he neither knew what he was doing, nor what was done to him. They undressed him and, with only his drawers and shirt on, they bundled him under the box of the diligence, among the trunks, portmanteaus and hat-boxes.
Of course they did not leave a single farthing on him—where would the fun have been if Hiraux had had money?
Hiraux came to his senses in Paris. The conductor was completely ignorant of the joke, and was therefore quite as astonished to find Hiraux there as Hiraux was himself. Hiraux was greatly embarrassed at first at finding himself dressed only in his shirt and pants, in the courtyard among all the diligences; but, being a man of resource, he bethought him of a nephew, named Camusat,—a good, excellent fellow, who has since been and still is my friend. He called a cab, got in, and cried out through the top:—
"To M. Camusat at the Rapée!" Hiraux remembered his nephew's address, so he was able to drive straight there: I am sure I should have been too much embarrassed to have remembered it, in like circumstances.
Camusat was long and thin like his uncle; he provided him with coat, trousers and waistcoat; then he lent him twenty francs to buy me a violin and fifteen francs for the return journey.
With the fifteen francs Hiraux brought me back a violin rather worn at the neck, but quite sound in all its essential organs.
I could make a book out of Hiraux's adventures, if I liked, and quite as entertaining as many books I know. But I will restrict myself to one last instance, the saddest of them all.
At the end of three years' lessons under Hiraux, I could not even tune my violin!
He was obliged to recognise my phenomenal dislike to music, and to tell my poor disappointed mother that it was simply stealing her money to attempt any longer to make a musician of me.
So I gave up the violin.
Poor Hiraux! After his stirring life he now sleeps the peaceful sleep of death in the pretty cemetery of Villers-Cotterets, surrounded by green weeping willows and flowers in full bloom; and, in thinking of that excellent man, gay, sharp-witted, quaint, I am inevitably reminded of Shakespeare's lines wherein Hamlet apostrophises the skull of his father's former fool:—
"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning; quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that."
The dog lantern-bearer—Demoustier's epitaph—My first fencing-master—"The king drinks"—The fourth tenor of my life—The tub of honey.
The dog lantern-bearer—Demoustier's epitaph—My first fencing-master—"The king drinks"—The fourth tenor of my life—The tub of honey.
While all these things that we have related were happening, my mother experienced two fresh sorrows, quite as great as her first: she lost both her father and her mother.
I can scarcely recall my grandmother Labouret; neither do I remember any particulars relative to her life or her death. She was a worthy soul, who lived and died blamelessly.
But I remember my grandfather quite distinctly, with a pipe in his mouth and his solemn walk, which he had acquired when he wasmaître d'hôtel.He died of a liver complaint, in 1808.
He was a great domino-player, and was renowned for his very great skill at that game. Every evening he went to play in a café where a good portion of my infancy was spent. This café was kept, I remember, by two people of opposite sex, who were both devoted to me; one was Mademoiselle Wafflart and the other M. Camberlin.
As my grandfather spent all his evenings there I often joined him. I used to watch billiards being played, a game I was passionately attracted to, and one for which I possessed the greatest possible aptitude. Unluckily, billiards, no matter whether played by day or by night, was quite beyond my means; so I was compelled to look on at the play of others and to count the points;—but nothing further.
Every night at ten o'clock a scratch was heard at the door; it was my grandfather's dog come to fetch him home,—herjaws empty on moonlit nights, but filled by a stick bearing a lantern at each end when there was no moon. Her name wasCharmante, and she was indeed charmingly intelligent. For eight or ten years, until her death, she performed this trick, and she was never known to have scratched at the door either ten minutes too soon or ten minutes too late, or to have taken the longest way instead of the shortest, or to have broken a single lantern.
One day my grandfather complained of violent pains in his side, took to his room and then to his bed. Finally, one evening, they sent me away from the house as they had done when my father died. They took me to the house of one of our neighbours, named Lepage, who was a glazier. There I spent the night, and on the morrow my grandfather died.
My mother inherited the famous thirty acres of land I have already spoken of, and the house for which we paid the life-annuity. But it was the obligation to pay the annuity, that she inherited really, and not the house.
Had my mother only given up all hope of obtaining a pension, and of being paid the arrears of 28,500 francs due to my father, she would have sold the thirty acres of ground for the 30,000 or 35,000 francs which it was worth, she would have waived her rights to M. Harlay's house for 5000 or 6000 francs, and, with these 40,000 francs she would have had 2000 livres income, on which with care we could have lived perfectly well.
On the contrary, however, she began borrowing on the land by mortgaging it, ever hoping to repay herself by the unlucky arrears.
It was quite out of the question to live out of the revenue from the land; it scarcely paid two per cent.
I do not know whether we had moved before or after my grandfather's death: I think, however, it must have been before.
We lived then in the rue de Lormet, quite close to the house where I was born.
Shortly after this time we lost in this house the cousin whom I used to call Mamma Zine.
So death had fallen heavily on our family circle; in four years four relatives had gone to eternity, one after the other, and were laid in the little cemetery of which I have already spoken.
But, with the exception of my father's, none of the other deaths made any lasting impression on my mind. They only meant a daily walk to the cemetery, and one more mound added to the rest, which my mother called her garden; a fresh cypress was planted near the old cypresses; new roses blossomed by the old rose; my mother shed more tears; and that was all.
Our graves were near that of Demoustier; and his epitaph was the first memorial inscription I had deciphered; it had been composed by Legouvé, and ran thus:—
"Beneath this stone rests, in the sleep of the just,"CHARLES-ALBERT DEMOUSTIER,"Associated Member of the National Institute, who was born at Villers-Cotterets, March 31st 1760, and whose peaceful spirit entered upon its immortal rest, on the 11th Ventôse, year IX of the Republic.(2 March 1801)
"Beneath this stone rests, in the sleep of the just,
"CHARLES-ALBERT DEMOUSTIER,
"Associated Member of the National Institute, who was born at Villers-Cotterets, March 31st 1760, and whose peaceful spirit entered upon its immortal rest, on the 11th Ventôse, year IX of the Republic.
(2 March 1801)
"En ces mots l'amitié consacra son histoire;Il montra les talents, aux vertus réunis;Son esprit lui donna la gloire.Et sa belle âme des amis."Rest in peace, beloved one!"
And indeed if any soul should rest in peace it ought indeed to be that of the good and religious-minded Demoustier, whose memory was venerated by all Villers-Cotterets. My mother often used to tell me that a gentler, more sympathetic, more delightful man never breathed. He died at the same age as my father—forty-one—and faced his end with the gentle and pious resignation of all good souls. The day before his death, my mother sat beside his bedside and, though hopeless herself, she tried to instil hope into him. He smiled sweetlyat her, and looked out upon a gleam of beautiful spring sunshine, the sunshine that comes more like nature's first smile than the sun of summer.
Demoustier laid his hand on hers and, looking at her, he said:—
"Dear Madame Dumas, we must not delude ourselves: I can no longer take broth or milk or water, so I must die."
And he died next day with a smile upon his lips.
Alas! it was my mother's ambition to erect just such a stone as was put over Demoustier's resting-place; but she could not afford to consecrate the dead at the cost of the living.
I fancy I must have acquired my partiality for cemeteries, that is to say village cemeteries, from my frequent walks with my mother to the Villers-Cotterets cemetery: nothing impresses me so much even now—their churches, their tall weeping willows, their broken-off columns, and their crosses painted black, with a simple white inscription stating the name and the age of the deceased.
Alas! if I were now to return to our cemetery how many graves of friends I should find there, besides my mother's! Nearly all whom I knew in my childhood lie there, and, with Christ in the early days of Christian Rome, I could exclaim: "I have more friends under the earth than on it."
Let those who take the trouble of studying small details study the different localties where my childhood was passed: les Fossés, Antilly, the confined room at the hôtel del'Epée, the ruined castle of Villers-Cotterets, the house and the town garden of M. Deviolaine, the cloister at Saint-Remy, the château of Villers-Hellon, the grand park of François I., of Henri II. and of Henri IV., and the little cemetery of Pieux,—the name of the place where the Villers-Cotterets cemetery was situated,—and they may find the origins of many qualities in my books, of many traits in my character.
To all these my early impressions I owe my deep respect for all holy things, my deep faith in Providence and my great love of God. Never, throughout my long life, have I had one moment of despair, one minute of doubt, not even in thedarkest hours of life; I dare not say I am certain of the immortality of my soul, but I can go as far as to say I hope in it. I believe that death is a forgetting of the past without being a renunciation of the future. If science succeeds in endowing spirits with memory it will have solved the great mystery, of which God has hitherto kept the key; souls will then remember, and immortality be laid bare to us.
But to conclude. In the midst of these walks and games and early schooling, I was growing up, I could play theMarche des Samnitesand the Overture toLodoïska, upon my violin, and Hiraux, with his black cap pulled down over his ears, was confessing to my mother that he was too honest to steal from her any longer the ten francs per month which she gave him to make a musician of me.
I was very ready to give up these lessons, and I should have done so long before, had my attraction for Hiraux not surmounted my dislike of the solfeggio. I renounced them, too, the more eagerly as I had now begun taking lessons far more seductive to my mind—namely, lessons in fencing.
The Republic had turned the fine castle and ancient pleasure-house of the dukes of Orléans into barracks, and the Empire into a workhouse. Here I had discovered an old fencing master. He had been injured once when giving a lesson without a mask: the foil of one of his pupils had pierced his mouth and destroyed his uvula. This accident, by making him almost dumb, or rather by reducing him to an almost unintelligible gibberer, had made teaching almost an impossibility—this accident, I say, together with a great love for the bottle, had brought our old St. Georges to the royal dwelling-place of François I., then an auxiliary to the Workhouse of the Seine.
This man was called old Mounier, and, though I must ask pardon of my later master Grisier, I beg to state I received my first lessons in fencing from Mounier when I was ten years old.
For I was about ten years old when I began to show such disinclination towards music and such intense enthusiasm for physical exercises.
While all this was going on, and while I was dreaming of nothing but swords and sabres, pistols and guns, I remained very cowardly on one single point. Like nature, I abhorred a vacuum. So soon as I felt myself suspended a certain distance above the earth, like Antæus, my head began to whirl, and I lost all my wits. I dared not even go down steps if they were somewhat steep, and I had never ventured to climb trees after birds' nests with my young playfellows.
This cowardliness brought all kinds of tricks down upon me from my cousins Deviolaine, their brother Félix and my oldest sister. They delighted to lead me up into hay-lofts, under the pretext of playing hide-and-seek, or some other game: then, when the door was shut, the only way to descend was by a ladder. I used to beg and implore the other children, to their great amusement, to open the door for me; then, when they took no notice of my entreaties, I would at last make up my mind to come down by the ladder, and my descent was most clumsily performed before the eyes of my jeering play-fellows.
I was very nearly killed one day by stopping below while the other children had gone aloft. They had all climbed up a rick of straw at the foot of which I was sitting. My cousin Cécile was a real tomboy in her ways, and seemed to think, with the Princess Palatine, that she could change her sex if she went on leaping and jumping. She had reached the top first, and was bending over to look down at and tease me, when her foot slipped, and she rolled down the steep side of the rick alighting astride on my shoulders, nearly breaking my neck.
I displayed one proof of coolness in great danger which reinstated me in my young friends' good opinion. It was Twelfth-Day, and we had been dining with M. Deviolaine. The Twelfth-Day Bean, constituting me King of the Day, had fallen to my share, so after dinner I hastened to transfer the seat of my empire to the garden. While thrusting a paper-boat out into the pond in the middle of the lawn, I apparently leant a little too far over; I lost my balance, and head foremost I went into the icy cold water, which was four feet deep, with a tremendousplunge, to the great alarm of the spectators, who threw up their arms and began shouting at the top of their voices, "Help, help, Dumas is drowning!" ... Luckily, I did not lose my head, I caught hold of the plants which hung over the edge of the pool, and, thanks to that support, I reappeared on the surface of the water, streaming like the river Scamander. Then it only needed Victor's hand to haul me back to my own element on mother-earth.
This done, I turned towards the terrified company with a judicial and serious air, and I said to them:—
"Idiots, you should not have said, 'Dumas is drowning,' you should have said, 'The king drinks!'"
This charmed everybody; and, as I was then only seven years of age, and it was my first clever saying, I crave the indulgence of the public for mentioning it.
It did not, however, prevent my cousin Cécile from declaring, when she was performing some of her common tomboy tricks, that I neither was nor ever would be fit to be anything but a Seminarist.
We shall soon see how very nearly her prediction came to being fulfilled.
I believe I had five great frights in my life, and, happily, all came in my early childhood. I have mentioned the first three; the Amiens snake, the two adders at Saint Remy and Madame de Genlis.
We will now proceed to the fourth.
I was playing at marbles at the door of a grocer called Lebègue, who was scraping and spreading out chocolate on a marble slab with a long, flexible knife that I believe they call a spatula. I began a dispute with my companion, and we fell to pummelling one another. Please take note that when it was a question of fists I was never a coward. He was stronger than I, he pushed me roughly back and I fell over backwards into a tub of honey.
I at once saw the consequences of my accident, I uttered a cry which made the grocer look up, and he soon saw what had happened, namely, that, as I have said, I was seated in a tub ofhoney. I sprang up as though springs were attached to my legs, in spite of the resistance of the substance to which I was glued: and I fled incontinently.
My prudent and rapid flight was due to a view of the grocer dashing out knife in hand at the same time.
I naturally ran in the direction of my home, but it was in the centre of the rue de Lormet, and a good way off the scene of the accident. I ran with all my might, but the grocer's legs were double the length of mine; I was driven by terror, but he was moved by greed. I turned to look behind me as I ran, and saw that awful tradesman, with fiery eyes and open lips and frowning brow, knife in hand, gaining upon me every minute. At last, weltering with heat, panting, speechless, and on the point of a collapse, I flung myself on the pavement ten paces from our door, convinced that it was all over with me, and that Lebègue was pursuing me for no other purpose than to cut my throat.
Nothing of the kind happened. After a struggle, in which I resisted him tooth and nail, he laid me face down on his knees, and scraped the seat of my trousers with his spatula, set me on my feet, and returned perfectly content to his shop.
But in spite of this forbearance on the part of M. Lebègue it was more than a year before I ventured to pass by on the same side of the street as his grocer's shop.
My horror of great heights—The Abbé Conseil—My opening at the Seminary—My mother, much pressed, decides to enter me there—The horn inkstand—Cécile at the grocer's—My flight.
My horror of great heights—The Abbé Conseil—My opening at the Seminary—My mother, much pressed, decides to enter me there—The horn inkstand—Cécile at the grocer's—My flight.
But I was now ten years old, and it was time to take my mental education seriously in hand. My physical training was proceeding fast enough. I could throw stones like David, I could draw a bow like a Balearic archer, I could ride like a Numidian; but I could not climb trees or steeples.
I have travelled much, and, whether in the Alps or in Sicily, in Calabria, or in Spain or in Africa, I have gone over difficult enough places; but I only crossed them because I was obliged to; and no one but myself will ever now know what I endured in the process. My terror is purely nervous, and therefore incurable; it is so great that, if I were given the choice, I would rather fight a duel than climb to the top of the column in the place Vendôme.
I went up to the top of the towers of Nôtre Dame once with Hugo, and I do not like to think what it cost me in perspirations and cold shivers.
But we must return to the question of my mental training, for it was high time it was begun in earnest. They had tried to get me entered free at all the colleges endowed for the education of sons of superior officers. But, in spite of the most urgent representations, they could neither obtain for me admission to the Prytanée nor a bursary in any Imperial lycée.
Had I been of sufficient age to be of any importance at that time I should have flattered myself that Bonaparte's hatred for my father was being continued towards me.
None of the applications on my behalf, then, had beensuccessful, when one of my cousins died, of whom I have already spoken,—the Abbé Conseil.
He had been tutor to the royal pages, he had received all sorts of benefices from Louis XV. and Louis XVI., and he was accordingly wealthy. He owned a charming house in the village of Largny, within a league of Villers-Cotterets, and a most picturesque garden, both in the centre of a valley; I have not referred to all this before because our cousin Conseil showed us but scant hospitality.
He also had a house at Villers-Cotterets—number 3 or 5, I think, in the rue de Lormet, just opposite the house where Demoustier died.
I paid two visits a year to this cousin Conseil, one on New Year's Day, the other on his birthday. He would give me a kiss on one cheek and a slap on the other, and there ended his generosity.
Once he gave me half a crown. But my mother and I never went again, and he died the same year. He left an income of something like 12,000 livres behind him, to a certain Miss Ryan, before mentioned.
My mother received a legacy of 1500 francs, and to one of his relatives he bequeathed a bursary at the Seminary of Soissons.
My destiny was clear, and Cécile's prophecy was to be realised: I was to be the future Seminarist.
But the question remained how to get me there,—not an easy matter. I had an unreasoning aversion to priests, and Cécile's prediction had sown in my heart the seeds of revolt against its coming true.
My mother's mind was not made up. She, poor woman, was incapable of insisting on anything that she saw was the least distasteful to me; but she desired to give me as good an education as possible. The thought of making a priest of me had, however, never entered her head. I believe, indeed, if she had thought such a thing were likely to come of it she would have been the first to oppose the plan, which she now put before me in the most glowing colours.
Two or three months passed, I resisting and my mother begging and praying me to go.
Finally, one fine day when she had used every inducement she could think of to make me go, promising solemnly, on her word of honour, that I should always be free to come home if I did not like the rules of the Seminary, I let fall the fatalyes, and I consented to all her wishes.
There was a week granted me to make my preparations for departure. It was a great separation, and it cost my mother as much as it did me; but she tried to hide her tears, till I unjustly imagined she was quite pleased to get rid of me.
The day before that on which I was to travel in the coach which plied twice a week between Villers-Cotterets and Soissons, as I was collecting all my little wants for my school life, I discovered I hadn't an inkstand. I told my mother of this, and she, recognising the justice of my request, asked me what sort I would like.
I had luxurious ideas concerning that inkstand. I wished a horn inkstand with a place for pens. But, as my mother did not clearly understand my explanations, she gave me twelve sous, and told me to go and buy the inkstand myself.
Please pay great attention to this little matter; for, puerile though it may seem, it changed the whole course of my life.
I hurried off to a grocer named Devaux. I took good care not to go to Lebègue's: the reader knows why.
The grocer had not the kind of inkpot I wanted; but he promised to get me one by evening.
When evening came, I returned, and he had the inkpot ready for me; but as luck would have it I found my cousin Cécile in the shop.
She was very glad to see me, she took the opportunity to wish me all possible success in the career I had chosen and she promised that, as soon as I was ordained, she would ask me to become her spiritual director.
I cannot say whether it was that her sarcasm galled me past bearing, or whether the responsibility of the suggested office seemed too heavy, but I flung the inkpot in the grocer's face.I pocketed my twelve sous, and I rushed out of the shop crying—"Very well; I don't care. I will not go to the Seminary!"
Like Cæsar I had crossed my Rubicon: but the next step was to try and escape my mother's urgent entreaties, which I might not perhaps have been able to withstand.
I ventured on my first wilful act. I bought a loaf and a sausage with my twelve sous, food to last me two or three days, in fact, and then I went to find Boudoux.
I must explain who he was.
Boudoux was a character. Had not the disease termedbulimiaalready received its name at that epoch it would certainly have been christened after him.
I have never seen such a voracious eater as was Boudoux.
One day he came to our house, and a calf had just been killed; he gazed at it with longing eyes, and my father said to him—
"Do you want to eat the whole of it? You can have it."
"Oh! general, you are joking!" was Boudoux's reply.
"Upon my word I am not."
"Indeed I should love it, general."
They put the whole calf in the oven, and when it was cooked Boudoux ate it all.
When he had picked the last bone, my father complimented him on his performance.
"I hope your hunger is satisfied now, Boudoux?" he said.
"Put the mother on the spit, general," replied Boudoux, "and you will see."
My father drew back, for he was fond of his cow, and Boudoux was likely to leave nothing of her but her horns.
I could cite other instances than this; but they would pale before the one I have just given.
One day at the opening of the hunting season M. Danré, of Vouty, had two dozen chickens on the spit. Boudoux looked at them as he had looked at my father's veal; and M. Danré was unwise enough to make a proposal to him similar to the one which had been made at our house.
Boudoux made twenty-four mouthfuls of the twenty-four chickens.
Later (I must not stop much longer over Boudoux's appetite), after the Restoration, when the prince de Condé came to hunt at Villers-Cotterets, he brought a pack of a hundred and twenty hounds.
Boudoux obtained the post of kennelman to the huntsmen, and it was therefore his business to distribute food to the princely Roquadors and Barbaros.
It was soon discovered that although the purchase of bread and meat was the same as always, the poor beasts grew thin and languid and unsteady on their legs.
Suspicions were aroused, and Boudoux was watched.
It was found out that he himself had eaten the portions of forty dogs—one-third, that was, of the whole food supply.
The prince ordered that Boudoux's portion of food should be served separately to him each day, and that this portion should be as much as for forty dogs.
So much, then, for Boudoux's appetite. We will next speak of his physical attainments, and lastly of his moral qualities.
Physically, Boudoux seemed as though he were of the refuse of creation; Quasimodo would have appeared almost beautiful beside him. Boudoux's face was not merely pitted, it was scarred, furrowed and almost eaten away by smallpox; his eyes, drawn out of their sockets by the hollowness of his eyelids, seemed to hang over his cheeks, watery and bloodshot; his nose was depressed instead of being raised, and flattened down on his upper lip; from his lips flowed a constant trickle of saliva blackened by the quids of tobacco he chewed; the upper lip curved like a serpent's, almost round to his ears, and gave his mouth the appearance of being able to accommodate a whole leg of mutton at once; the picture was completed by hair that Polyphemus himself might have envied; his beard was scanty, red and coarse, and only grew out of the rare spaces not covered with pox marks.
His head was supported by a body five feet nine inches in height, but that height was never realised on account of a defect in one leg, which doubled and yielded under him to such an extent; with every step he took, that the lower part ofhis leg and the top of his thigh looked like the two pointers of a compass opened triangle-fashion.
For all that, Boudoux had almost superhuman strength. During a house-move he was worth his weight in gold: he would carry trunks, sideboards, bedsteads, tables, on his head, and, as his limping stride measured over a yard and a half at each step he took, he could move the entire furniture of one house to another in a trice.
Furthermore, Boudoux, who could have taken up a horse by its hind hoofs and torn off its shoes like Alcidamas; or, like Samson, have taken the gates of Gaza from their hinges and carried them on his back; or like Milo of Crotona, have gone round the circus with an ox on his shoulders, and then felled it and eaten it; Boudoux, I say, with the strength of an elephant, was as gentle as a lamb.
And now as to his character.
Although ugly, repulsive, hideous to look at, everybody liked Boudoux. He lodged with his aunt, Mademoiselle Chapuis, the postmistress, but he had his meals everywhere. Three times a day he went the round of the town and, like the begging Friars of the ancient monasteries, he collected enough to feed a convent; only, as he had no monks to feed, he ate the whole supply himself.
It was not enough to satisfy him, but it just kept him going.
Boudoux had a calling, or rather two callings, for he workedà la maretteandà la pipée.
We must explain to Parisians; who will probably not know what are the two trades we have referred to under the names ofmaretteandpipée.We will takemarettefirst.
There are very few forests, woods, or covers that do not contain some pools of water, commonly calledmares; for instance, themared'Auteuil, which has been noted as long as I can remember. At these pools in the woods, forests, and covers, birds are accustomed to drink at certain times of day. Here the bird-catcher drives small birch twigs coated with bird-lime into the soft, muddy soil along the edges of thepools, and when the birds come to drink they are caught on these limed twigs.
This is called snaring amare, and in the clever setting of these traps consists the whole success and art of the hunter.
And as, to explain everything fully, there are more smallmaresthan large ones, and as the smallermaresare better than the large, because they need less bird-lime, and consequently are less expensive, these smallmaresare called "marelles," and in the language of the snarers of small birds, the phrase to workà la maretteindicates the nature of their calling.
La pipéeis worked in the same way, but with differences of detail. A tree high enough to out-top the rest of the coppice is chosen; it is stripped of its smaller branches, and these are replaced by lime-twigs fitted into notches made by a bill-hook; the bird-catchers then take their place inside a hut made of foliage constructed round the trunk of the tree, and they attract all the birds in the district by three methods.
The first is to attach an owl to the centre of the tree.
The owl, with his buff plumage and great round eyes, plays in the forest the part that Jean Jacques Rousseau played in the streets of Paris when he went forth dressed as an Armenian.
All the street arabs ran after the Genevan philosopher.
All the birds chase the owl.
But a fate awaits these poor creatures that did not overtake the hooligans: when they fly against the tree, in attacking the owl which is fastened to the tree, each bird that settles on a lime-twig is lost; he falls from bough to bough, and passes from freedom to a cage, lucky if he does not go from his cage to the spit.
The second method of attraction is to take a jay.
Out of a hare one can only make jugged hare, but in the case of a jay something else can be constructed.
It must, however, be a living jay, that is a conditionsine quâ non.
The jay has a shocking reputation in the bird world.
It is accused by la Fontaine of stealing peacock's feathers; and, like all reputations made by man, this one, perhaps, is least deserved; another accusation brought against it—and a far more serious charge in the eyes of the birds—is that it eats the eggs of its smaller and weaker brethren. So the hatred in which birds hold this glutton is in proportion to the number of eggs they lay; the titmouse, for instance, which sometimes lays as many as twenty to twenty-five tiny eggs, is the most relentless against this robber; next comefourgons, which lay fifteen; chaffinches, which lay five or six; and last, redbreasts and warblers, which lay three or four. So they take a live jay, stretch out his wings and pull the feathers from it.
It is not a very humane process, but it is very efficacious.
The cry of the jay is a frightful noise: as each feather is pulled out, the jay utters that cry, and at each cry flocks of chaffinches, titmice,fourgons, warblers, and robins come flying down to enjoy their enemy's discomfort; for they are not deceived, they recognise his cry as one of pain.
But this time they are punished for their want of forgiveness towards their enemy, and the lime-twigs execute justice on their hard hearts.
The success of the third means depends entirely on the degree of skill with which the bird-catcher has been naturally endowed, in producing sounds to imitate the songs of birds, by the aid of blades of couch-grass or a piece of glossy silk. The musician who can imitate birds' notes requires no jay or owl to help him; he retires into his hut, counterfeits cries of distress of the different birds he wants to catch, and all the birds of the same species that are in the district flock to the call.
I must say, however, that I have met fewpipurs(and I have known a great number) who have reached such a pitch of perfection.
But Boudoux, who spoke no dead language, and could only talk his own among living ones, and that very imperfectly, took, in the matter of birds, the first rank as a philologist,and not merely in the forest of Villers-Cotterets, but, I dare venture to assert, in any forest of the world.
There was not an ornithological language or jargon or patois that he could not talk, from the language of the crow to that of the wren.
He held those of his confrères in contempt who made use of grass and silk, for he could imitate the cry of an owl so perfectly that I have seen one come and perch on his hat as on the helmet of Minerva.
I went to find Boudoux. I unburdened my heart to him, and I asked him to hide me for two or three days in one of his huts.
Of course he granted my request.
His only condition was that, as it was autumn, I ought to take a blanket with me, as the nights were not so warm as they had been.
I returned home, slipped into my room, took a blanket off my bed, and wrote on a bit of paper:—
"Do not be anxious about me, mother dear; I have run away, because I do not want to be a priest."
Then I rejoined Boudoux, who had collected his evening food and was waiting for me at the entrance to the park.
Boudoux had two snaring pools, one on the road to Vivières, and the other on the road to Compiègne. Near the pool on the road to Compiègne he had a hut, and it was in this hut that I asked shelter from the Seminary of Soissons.
I spent three days and three nights in the forest. At night, I rolled myself in my blanket, and I must own that I slept without any feeling of remorse; by day I wandered from onemareto another, collecting the snared birds. We took an incalculable number of birds during those three days; by the third day, the twomareswere completelyruineduntil the next breeding season. I emphasise the wordruined, because that is the technical term for it.
Those three days increased my antipathy towards the Seminary, but at the same time it gave me a keen taste forla marette.
At the end of these three days I returned, but I did not dare to go straight to the house. I went to find my good friend Madame Darcourt, and I begged her to announce to my mother the return of her prodigal son, and to smooth the way for my re-entry under the maternal roof.
Alas! the more prodigal the children, the warmer their reception! When the original prodigal son returned home to his father after three years' absence, they killed a calf; if he had not returned until after an absence of six years, they would have killed an ox.
My mother hugged me to her and called me a bad boy. She promised me that there should be no more talk between us of my going to the Seminary, delighted to think that I should not leave her. She reserved all her wrath for Boudoux, and, the first time she saw him, poor as we were, she gave him five francs.
Just think what a trivial circumstance decided the course of my life. If the grocer had had the inkstand I wanted that morning, I should not have returned to his shop in the evening; I should not have met Cécile there; she would not have made that joke which exasperated me; I should not have placed myself under Boudoux's care; and the next day I should have gone to Soissons and entered the Seminary. When at the Seminary my latent inclinations for a religious life would have developed, and I might have become a great preacher instead of what I am—namely, a poor poet. I wonder whether that would have been better or worse?
What God does is well done. This was not the only danger I escaped; we shall see later how I nearly became something much worse than a Seminarist or a priest.
We shall see that I just missed being a tax-gatherer!
The Abbé Grégoire's College—The reception I got there—The fountains play to celebrate my arrival—The conspiracy against me—Bligny challenges me to single combat—I win.
The Abbé Grégoire's College—The reception I got there—The fountains play to celebrate my arrival—The conspiracy against me—Bligny challenges me to single combat—I win.
It was arranged that I should go to the Abbé Grégoire's college in Villers-Cotterets instead of to the Seminary. They styled the Abbé Grégoire's school aCollege, just as in England the illegitimate sons of noblemen are called "lords."
It is a matter of courtesy.
However that may be, it was decided that I should go to the Abbé Grégoire's college.
Oh! if I begin to talk of the Abbé Grégoire, I shall go on indefinitely,—for he was an upright, worthy, and saintly man.
He was not a genius, he was something better than that—he was a thoroughly good man; during the years he governed the school two hundred scholars passed through his hands, and I do not know of a single one who has turned out badly.
During the forty years he served the church at Villers-Cotterets, not a single petty scandal which could make the irreligious or the libertine smile had ever been brought against him. Mothers who had confessed to him in their girlhood and during his youth took their daughters to him in full confidence, for they knew that then, as in their own time, only good and fatherly advice would be given through the confessional grating.
He never had a servant or a housekeeper; he lived with his sister, a little wizened old lady, rather hunch-backed, rather inclined to be shrewish, who adored—nay, who worshipped her brother.
Poor dear abbé, what a life we led him! How we enraged him, how he scolded us, and how much he loved us!
It was the same with him as with Hiraux; I loved him sowarmly before there was any thought of being his pupil, that I submitted to the great change in my life without the least dread. Besides, what was it, compared with the Seminary?
His classes began at half-past eight in the morning, directly after mass, and closed at noon. We all went home to our dinner for an hour, then returned at one o'clock; at five minutes past one, school began again, and went on until four.
Add to this Sundays, saints'-days, greater feasts and lesser feasts, and you can see my life was not a very hard one.
As a whole, I was not very much liked by the other children of the town at that age; I was vain and impudent and overbearing, and filled with self-confidence and admiration for my small person; yet, notwithstanding all this, I was capable of good feeling, when heart, rather than intellect or self-love, was called into play.
As far as physical qualities went, I was quite a pretty child: I had long, fair, curly hair, which fell on my shoulders, and which did not turn crisp until my fifteenth year; large blue eyes, which even until now have retained somewhat of their early freshness; a straight nose, small and well shaped; thick red sensitive lips; white but uneven teeth. In addition to this, my complexion was dazzlingly white, due, so my mother believed, to the brandy my father had made her drink during her pregnancy; it turned darker when my hair became crisp.
I was in figure as long and thin as a lath.
The school accommodation was not large: twenty-five or thirty pupils were enough to fill it, and it was quite an event when a fresh pupil arrived in the midst of the small circle.
It was a great event on my side too. I was dressed in a suit the whole of which was made out of a coat that had been my grandfather's. It was the colour ofcafé au lait, deepened in tone, spotted all over with black points. I felt very proud of it, and I thought it would create quite a sensation among my comrades.
At eight o'clock one Monday morning, in the autumn, I took my way to the source whence I was to drink deep of the water of knowledge. I walked solemnly along, with my noseheld proudly up, carrying my library of grammars, theEpitome historiæ sacræ, dictionaries and other aids under my arm, all of them as new as my clothes, and I enjoyed in anticipation the effect my appearance would produce upon the communion of martyrs.
The entrance to the courtyard at the Abbé Grégoire's was through a great door, which seemed like the entrance to a deep vault, and opened on the rue de Soissons. This door was wide open, and I looked through into the courtyard: it was empty.
I guessed at first that I was late and everyone was already in school. I quickly stepped across the threshold; as soon as the door closed behind me I heard loud shouts of glee, and a dewiness, which strongly resembled a shower, descended upon me from the top of a double amphitheatre of barrels.
I raised my eyes, and beheld each pupil perched on a barrel, in the same attitude and performing the same action, as theManneken-Pisfountain of Brussels. The fountains were playing in honour of my arrival.
Such a manner of reception displeased me greatly. I took to my heels, in order to protect myself from this novel kind of shower-bath; but I had stood for a moment in hesitation and astonishment; then, when my mind was made up, I had had five or six paces to go before I was free; so, when I came out of the vault-like passage, I was streaming all over.
I was by nature very tearful. Often, as a child, I would sit down in a corner and cry without any reason. Then, as I always spoke of myself, like Cæsar, in the third person, and as they had adopted this manner of addressing me, for the fun of it, my mother would come to me and ask:
"Why is Dumas crying?"
"Dumas cries," I would reply, "because Dumas has tears."
This answer relieved her of all uneasiness, and nearly always satisfied my mother, who would go away laughing, leaving me to cry on at my leisure.
If I cried without any motive, the reader will readilyunderstand that, when there was a strong incentive, there was all the more reason why I should give way to torrents of tears.
What more justifiable excuse could I have had than the humiliation to which I had just been subjected and the injury it had just done my new suit?
Therefore, when the Abbé Grégoire came by to say mass, he found me on the steps, in floods of water, like the Biblis of M. Dupaty.
The abbé had scarcely come in view when my schoolfellows came up to me, surrounded me in rings on the staircase, and, with every appearance of deep interest, asked each other why I was crying. The Abbé Grégoire broke through the hypocritical circle, ascended two or three steps, and, putting up his eyeglass, for he was as blind as a mole, looked at me and asked me what was the matter.
I was about to reply when I saw twenty shut fists behind the abbé, and twenty threatening faces making significant gestures at me. I uttered a howl, at which the abbé turned round: immediately all the faces smiled, all the hands were returned to their pockets.
"But what is the matter with him?" asked the abbé.
"We don't know," replied the hypocrites; "he has been going on like that ever since he came."
"What! he has cried ever since he came?"
"Yes, indeed he has. Hasn't he? hasn't he? hasn't he?"
"Yes! yes! yes!" all the voices responded. "Dumas is crying."
"Come, what are you crying for, Dumas?"
"Oh!" replied one of them who knew the tradition, "Dumas is probably crying because 'Dumas has tears'—"
This mocking remark infuriated me.
"No!" I cried, "no, I am not crying because I have tears; I am crying because—because—because they have made water on my head, there!"
The crime was so unusual, the idea so whimsical, that the abbé made me repeat the accusation twice over; then, turning to his pupils, he said:
"Go upstairs, gentlemen; we will go into this matter there."
"Ah! you brat! ah! you tell-tale! ah! you traitor!" a dozen lads whispered to me; "you wait a bit,—we'll see when school is over—!"
The abbé turned round.
All were silent, and they entered the classroom.
Each boy took his place, but I, who had not one, remained standing.
"Come here, my young friend," said the abbé.
"Here I am, M. l'abbé," I said, whimpering.
He felt me.
"The child is soaked through—!"
My lamentations broke forth afresh.
"Of course he is wet," said a big boy; "think of the time he has been crying."
"What!" cried the abbé, "you dare to suggest that his own tears have soaked him like this?"
"Certainly!"
"But, M. l'abbé," I exclaimed, "I could not cry down my back, and I am as wet behind as in front."
The abbé verified my statement.
"You are right," he said. "No recreation at midday; bring me the cane at once; and you boys must do three hundred lines by to-morrow morning."
Then arose a chorus of complaints and groans equal to those Dante heard in the first circle of the Inferno.
With these groans and complaints fierce threats were mingled which made my flesh creep.
Nevertheless, they had to submit: the abbé kept up the ancient scholastic traditions; he had a deaf ear and a vigorous hand; and a thrashing all round with the cane increased the groans, the complaints, and the threats.
I realised that I was collecting a storm over my head which would result later in a hail of fisticuffs.
The caning had this much good, that it did away with work during all that class; not a line was written from nine o'clockto midday, under pretext that the abbé had hit so hard that their hands were numbed.
The abbé accepted the excuse.
At noon, each boy tried to find some excuse to escape retention. It was incredible the things they had to do and what importance their going out was that day.
I remember three of the excuses given: Saunier had to take his clarionet lesson; Ronet had to take a dose of oil; Leloir ought to be drawing for conscription!
These three pretexts were handed in by the three scholars named Saunier, Ronet and Leloir.
Needless to relate, the clarionet lesson, castor oil, and drawing for conscription had to wait till the next day, and at midday I went out of college absolutely alone.