The Martian: A Novel. Du Maurier George
I was stronger still – as a cart‐horse is stronger than a racer.
For his own personal appearance, of which he always took the greatest care, he had a naîve admiration that he did not disguise. His candor in this respect was comical; yet, strange to say, he was really without vanity.
When he was in the Guards he would tell you quite frankly he was "the handsomest chap in all the Household Brigade, bar three" – just as he would tell you he was twenty last birthday. And the fun of it was that the three exceptions he was good enough to make, splendid fellows as they were, seemed as satyrs to Hyperion when compared with Barty Josselin. One (F. Pepys) was three or four inches taller, it is true, being six foot seven or eight – a giant. The two others had immense whiskers, which Barty openly envied, but could not emulate – and the mustache with which he would have been quite decently endowed in time was not permitted in an infantry regiment.
To return to the Pension Brossard, and Barty the school‐boy:
He adored Monsieur Mérovée because he was big and strong and handsome – not because he was one of the best fellows that ever lived. He disliked Monsieur Durosier, whom we were all so fond of, because he had a slight squint and a receding chin.
As for the Anglophobe, Monsieur Dumollard, who made no secret of his hatred and contempt for perfidious Albion…
"Dis donc, Josselin!" says Maurice, in English or French, as the case might be, "why don't you like Monsieur Dumollard? Eh? He always favors you more than any other chap in the school. I suppose you dislike him because he hates the English so, and always runs them down before you and me – and says they're all traitors and sneaks and hypocrites and bullies and cowards and liars and snobs; and we can't answer him, because he's the mathematical master!"
"Ma foi, non!" says Josselin – "c'est pas pour ça!"
"Pourquoi, alors?" says Maurice (that's me).
"C'est parce qu'il a le pied bourgeois et la jambe canaille!" says Barty. (It's because he's got common legs and vulgar feet.)
And that's about the lowest and meanest thing I ever heard him say in his life.
Also, he was not always very sympathetic, as a boy, when one was sick or sorry or out of sorts, for he had never been ill in his life, never known an ache or a pain – except once the mumps, which he seemed to thoroughly enjoy – and couldn't realize suffering of any kind, except such suffering as most school‐boys all over the world are often fond of inflicting on dumb animals: this drove him frantic, and led to many a licking by bigger boys. I remember several such scenes – one especially.
One frosty morning in January, '48, just after breakfast, Jolivet trois (tertius) put a sparrow into his squirrel's cage, and the squirrel caught it in its claws, and cracked its skull like a nut and sucked its brain, while the poor bird still made a desperate struggle for life, and there was much laughter.
There was also, in consequence, a quick fight between Jolivet and Josselin; in which Barty got the worst, as usual – his foe was two years older, and quite an inch taller.
Afterwards, as the licked one sat on the edge of a small stone tank full of water and dabbed his swollen eye with a wet pocket‐handkerchief, M. Dumollard, the mathematical master, made cheap fun of Britannic sentimentality about animals, and told us how the English noblesse were privileged to beat their wives with sticks no thicker than their ankles, and sell them "au rabais" in the horse‐market of Smissfeld; and that they paid men to box each other to death on the stage of Drury Lane, and all that – deplorable things that we all know and are sorry for and ashamed, but cannot put a stop to.
The boys laughed, of course; they always did when Dumollard tried to be funny, "and many a joke had he," although his wit never degenerated into mere humor.
But they were so fond of Barty that they forgave him his insular affectation; some even helped him to dab his sore eye; among them Jolivet trois himself, who was a very good‐natured chap, and very good‐looking into the bargain; and he had received from Barty a sore eye too —gallicè, "un pochon" —scholasticè, "un œil au beurre noir!"
By‐the‐way, I fought with Jolivet once – about Æsop's fables! He said that Æsop was a lame poet of Lacedæmon – I, that Æsop was a little hunchback Armenian Jew; and I stuck to it. It was a Sunday afternoon, on the terrace by the lingerie.
He kicked as hard as he could, so I had to kick too. Mlle. Marceline ran out with Constance and Félicité and tried to separate us, and got kicked by both (unintentionally, of course). Then up came Père Jaurion and kicked me! And they all took Jolivet's part, and said I was in the wrong, because I was English! What did they know about Æsop! So we made it up, and went in Jaurion's loge and stood each other a blomboudingue on tick – and called Jaurion bad names.
"Comme c'est bête, de s'battre, hein?" said Jolivet, and I agreed with him. I don't know which of us really got the worst of it, for we hadn't disfigured each other in the least – and that's the best of kicking. Anyhow he was two years older than I, and three or four inches taller; so I'm glad, on the whole, that that small battle was interrupted.
It is really not for brag that I have lugged in this story – at least, I hope not. One never quite knows.
To go back to Barty: he was the most generous boy in the school. If I may paraphrase an old saying, he really didn't seem to know the difference betwixt tuum et meum. Everything he had, books, clothes, pocket‐money – even agate marbles, those priceless possessions to a French school‐boy – seemed to be also everybody else's who chose. I came across a very characteristic letter of his the other day, written from the Pension Brossard to his favorite aunt, Lady Caroline Grey (one of the Rohans), who adored him. It begins:
"My Dear Aunt Caroline, – Thank you so much for the magnifying‐glass, which is not only magnifying, but magnifique. Don't trouble to send any more gingerbread‐nuts, as the boys are getting rather tired of them, especially Laferté and Bussy‐Rabutin. I think we should all like some Scotch marmalade," etc., etc.
And though fond of romancing a little now and then, and embellishing a good story, he was absolutely truthful in important matters, and to be relied upon implicitly.
He seemed also to be quite without the sense of physical fear – a kind of callousness.
Such, roughly, was the boy who lived to write the Motes in a Moonbeam and La quatriéme Dimension before he was thirty; and such, roughly, he remained through life, except for one thing: he grew to be the very soul of passionate and compassionate sympathy, as who doesn't feel who has ever read a page of his work, or even had speech with him for half an hour?
Whatever weaknesses he yielded to when he grew to man's estate are such as the world only too readily condones in many a famous man less tempted than Josselin was inevitably bound to be through life. Men of the Josselin type (there are not many – he stands pretty much alone) can scarcely be expected to journey from adolescence to middle age with that impeccable decorum which I – and no doubt many of my masculine readers – have found it so easy to achieve, and find it now so pleasant to remember and get credit for. Let us think of The Footprints of Aurora, or Étoiles mortes, or Déjanire et Dalila, or even Les Trépassées de François Villon!
Then let us look at Rajon's etching of Watts's portrait of him (the original is my own to look at whenever I like, and that is pretty often). And then let us not throw too many big stones, or too hard, at Barty Josselin.
Well, the summer term of 1847 wore smoothly to its close – a happy "trimestre" during which the Institution F. Brossard reached the high‐water mark of its prosperity.
There were sixty boys to be taught, and six house‐masters to teach them, besides a few highly paid outsiders for special classes – such as the lively M. Durosier for French literature, and M. le Professeur Martineau for the higher mathematics, and so forth; and crammers and coachers for St.‐Cyr, the Polytechnic School, the École des Ponts et Chaussées.
Also fencing‐masters, gymnastic masters, a Dutch master who taught us German and Italian – an Irish master with a lovely brogue who taught us English. Shall I ever forget the blessed