The Martian: A Novel. Du Maurier George
window was ajar, and outside I saw du Tertre‐Jouan, Jolivet, and Berquin, listening and peeping through. Suddenly the window bursts wide open, and du Tertre‐Jouan vaults the sill, gets between Boulot and his victim, and says:
"Le troisième coup fait feu, vous savez! touchez‐y encore, à ce moutard, et j'vous assomme sur place!" (Touch him again, that kid, and I'll break your head where you stand!).
There was an awful row, of course – and du Tertre‐Jouan had to make a public apology to M. Boulot, who disappeared from the school the very same day; and Tertre‐Jouan would have been canonized by us all, but that he was so deplorably dull and narrow‐minded, and suspected of being a royalist in disguise. He was an orphan and very rich, and didn't fash himself about examinations. He left school that year without taking any degree – and I don't know what became of him.
This year also Barty conceived a tender passion for Mlle. Marceline.
It was after the mumps, which we both had together in a double‐bedded infirmerie next to the lingerie – a place where it was a pleasure to be ill; for she was in and out all day, and told us all that was going on, and gave us nice drinks and tisanes of her own making – and laughed at all Barty's jokes, and some of mine! and wore the most coquettish caps ever seen.
Besides, she was an uncommonly good‐looking woman – a tall blonde with beautiful teeth, and wonderfully genial, good‐humored, and lively – an ideal nurse, but a terrible postponer of cures! Lord Archibald quite fell in love with her.
"C'est moi qui voudrais bien avoir les oreillons ici!" he said to her. "Je retarderais ma convalescence autant que possible!"
"Comme il sait bien le français, votre oncle – et comme il est poli!" said Marceline to the convalescent Barty, who was in no hurry to get well either!
When we did get well again, Barty would spend much of his play‐time fetching and carrying for Mlle. Marceline – even getting Dumollard's socks for her to darn – and talking to her by the hour as he sat by her pleasant window, out of which one could see the Arch of Triumph, which so triumphantly dominated Paris and its suburbs, and does so still – no Eiffel Tower can kill that arch!
I, being less precocious, did not begin my passion for Mlle. Marceline till next year, just as Bonneville and Jolivet trois were getting over theirs. Nous avons tous passé par là!
What a fresh and kind and jolly woman she was, to be sure! I wonder none of the masters married her. Perhaps they did! Let us hope it wasn't M. Dumollard!
It is such a pleasure to recall every incident of this epoch of my life and Barty's that I should like to go through our joint lives day by day, hour by hour, microscopically – to describe every book we read, every game we played, every pensum (i. e., imposition) we performed; every lark we were punished for – every meal we ate. But space forbids this self‐indulgence, and other considerations make it unadvisable – so I will resist the temptation.
La pension Brossard! How often have we both talked of it, Barty and I, as middle‐aged men; in the billiard‐room of the Marathoneum, let us say, sitting together on a comfortable couch, with tea and cigarettes – and always in French whispers! we could only talk of Brossard's in French.
"Te rappelles‐tu l'habit neuf de Berquin, et son chapeau haute‐forme?"
"Te souviens‐tu de la vieille chatte angora du père Jaurion?" etc., etc., etc.
Idiotic reminiscences! as charming to revive as any old song with words of little meaning that meant so much when one was four – five – six years old! before one knew even how to spell them!
"Paille à Dine – paille à Chine —
Paille à Suzette et Martine —
Bon lit à la Dumaine!"
Céline, my nurse, used to sing this – and I never knew what it meant; nor do I now! But it was charming indeed.
Even now I dream that I go back to school, to get coached by Dumollard in a little more algebra. I wander about the playground; but all the boys are new, and don't even know my name; and silent, sad, and ugly, every one! Again Dumollard persecutes me. And in the middle of it I reflect that, after all, he is a person of no importance whatever, and that I am a member of the British Parliament – a baronet – a millionaire – and one of her Majesty's Privy Councillors! and that M. Dumollard must be singularly "out of it," even for a Frenchman, not to be aware of this.
"If he only knew!" says I to myself, says I – in my dream.
Besides, can't the man see with his own eyes that I'm grown up, and big enough to tuck him under my left arm, and spank him just as if he were a little naughty boy – confound the brute!
Then, suddenly:
"Maurice, au piquet pour une heure!"
"Moi, m'sieur?"
"Oui, vous!"
"Pourquoi, m'sieur!"
"Parce que ça me plaît!"
And I wake – and could almost weep to find how old I am!
And Barty Josselin is no more – oh! my God!.. and his dear wife survived him just twenty‐four hours!
Behold us both "en Philosophie!"
And Barty the head boy of the school, though not the oldest – and the brilliant show‐boy of the class.
Just before Easter (1851) he and I and Rapaud and Laferté and Jolivet trois (who was nineteen) and Palaiseau and Bussy‐Rabutin went up for our "bachot" at the Sorbonne.
We sat in a kind of big musty school‐room with about thirty other boys from other schools and colleges. There we sat side by side from ten till twelve at long desks, and had a long piece of Latin dictated to us, with the punctuation in French: "un point – point et virgule – deux points – point d'exclamation – guillemets – ouvrez la parenthèse," etc., etc. – monotonous details that enervate one at such a moment!
Then we set to work with our dictionaries and wrote out a translation according to our lights – a pion walking about and watching us narrowly for cribs, in case we should happen to have one for this particular extract, which was most unlikely.
Barty's nose bled, I remember – and this made him nervous.
Then we went and lunched at the Café de l'Odéon, on the best omelet we had ever tasted.
"Te rappelles‐tu cette omelette?" said poor Barty to me only last Christmas as ever was!
Then we went back with our hearts in our mouths to find if we had qualified ourselves by our "version écrite" for the oral examination that comes after, and which is so easy to pass – the examiners having lunched themselves into good‐nature.
There we stood panting, some fifty boys and masters, in a small, whitewashed room like a prison. An official comes in and puts the list of candidates in a frame on the wall, and we crane our necks over each other's shoulders.
And, lo! Barty is plucked —collé! and I have passed, and actually Rapaud – and no one else from Brossard's!
An old man – a parent or grandparent probably of some unsuccessful candidate – bursts into tears and exclaims,
"Oh! qué malheur – qué malheur!"
A shabby, tall, pallid youth, in the uniform of the Collège Ste.‐Barbe, rushes down the stone stair's shrieking,
"Ça pue l'injustice, ici!"
One hears him all over the place: terrible heartburns and tragic disappointments in the beginning of life resulted from failure in this first step – a failure which disqualified one for all the little government appointments so dear to the heart of the frugal French parent. "Mille francs par an! c'est le Pactole!"
Barty took his defeat pretty easily – he put it all down to his nose bleeding – and seemed so pleased at my success, and my dear mother's delight in it, that he was soon quite consoled; he was always like that.
To M. Mérovée,