Jack. Alphonse Daudet
embroidered with silver, that bore his mother to balls where children could not go. As the last sound of the silver bells died away, he turned towards the salon, disturbed and anxious for the first time by the solitude in which he ordinarily passed his evenings.
When Madame de Barancy dined out, Master Jack was confided to the tender mercies of Constant. “She will dine with you,” said Ida.
Two places were laid in the dining-room that seemed so huge on such days. But very often Constant, finding her dinner anything but cheerful, took the child and joined her companions below, where they feasted gayly. The table-cloth was soiled, and the conversation was not of the purest; and very often the conduct of the mistress of the house was commented upon, in words to be sure that were slightly veiled, so as not to frighten the child. This evening there was a grand discussion as to the refusal of the Fathers to receive the boy. The coachman declared that it was all for the best—that the priests would have made of the child “a hypocrite and a Jesuit.”
Constant protested against these words. She was not a professor of religion, she said, but she would not hear it spoken ill of. Then the discussion changed to the great disappointment of Jack, who listened with all his little ears, hoping to hear why this priest, who appeared so good, was not willing to receive him.
But for the moment Jack was of little consequence; each was absorbed in narrating his or her religious convictions.
The coachman, who had been drinking, said that his God was the sun; in fact, he, like the elephants, adored the sun! Suddenly some one asked how he knew that elephants adored the sun.
“I saw it once in a photograph,” said he, sternly. Upon which Mademoiselle Constant vehemently accused him of impiety and atheism; while the cook, a stout Picardian with true peasant shrewdness, told them to be quiet.
“Hush!” she said; “you should never quarrel over your religions.”
And Jack—what was he doing all this time?
At the end of the table, stupefied by the heat and the interminable discussions of these brutes, he slept, with his head on his arms, and his fair curls spread over his velvet sleeves. In his unrestful slumber he heard the hum of the servants’ voices, and at last he fancied that they were talking of him; but the voices seemed to reach from afar off—through a fog, as it were.
“Who is he, then?” asked the cook.
“I don’t know,” answered Constant; “but one thing is certain, he can’t remain here, and she wishes me to find a school for him.”
Between a yawn and a hiccough, the coachman spoke—
“I know a capital school, and one that will, just answer your purpose. It is called the Moronval College—no, not college—but the Moronval Academy. But what of that? it is a college all the same. I put my child there once, when I was ordered off with the Egyptian army. The grocer gave me the prospectus, and I think I have it still.”
He looked in his portfolio, and from among the tumbled and soiled papers he extracted one, dirtier even than the others.
“Here it is!” he cried, with an air of triumph.
He unfolded the prospectus and began to read, or rather to spell with difficulty:
“Gymnase Moronval—in the—in the—”
“Give it to me,” said Mademoiselle Constant; and taking it from him, she read it at one glance.
“Moronval Academy—situated in the finest quarter of Paris—a family school—large garden—the number of pupils limited—course of instruction—particular attention paid to the correction of the accent of foreigners—”
Mademoiselle Constant interrupted herself here to breathe, and to exclaim, “This seems all right enough!”
“I think so,” said the cook.
The reading of the prospectus was resumed, but Jack was soundly asleep, and heard no more.
He was dreaming. Yes, while his future was thus under discussion around this kitchen-table, while his mother was dancing as Folly in her rose-colored skirts and silver bells, he was dreaming of the kind priest, and of the tender voice that had murmured—“Poor child!”
CHAPTER II.~~THE SCHOOL IN THE AVENUE MONTAIGNE.
“23 Avenue Montaigne, in the best quarter of Paris,” said the prospectus. And no one can deny that the Avenue Montaigne is well situated in the Champs Elysées, but it has an incongruous unfinished aspect, as of a road merely sketched and not completed.
By the side of the fine hotels with their plate-glass windows hung with silken draperies, stand the houses of workmen, whence issue the noise of hammers and grating of saws. One part of the Faubourg seems also to be relinquished to gardens after the style of Mabille.
At the time of which I speak, and possibly now? from the avenue ran two or three narrow lanes whose sordid aspect offered a strange contrast to the superb buildings near them. One of these lanes opened at the number 23, and announced on a gilded sign swinging in the passage, that the Moronval Academy was there situated. This sign, however, once passed, it seemed to you that you were taken back forty years, and to the other end of Paris. The black mud, the stream in the centre of the lane, the reverberations from the high walls, the drinking-shops built from old planks, all seemed to belong to the past. From every nook and cranny, from stairs and balconies, whence fluttered linen hung to dry, streamed forth a crowd of children escorted by an army of lean and hungry cats. It was amazing to see that so small a spot could accommodate such a number of persons. English grooms in shabby liveries, worn-out jockeys, and dilapidated body-servants, seemed there to congregate. To these must be added the horde of workpeople who returned at sunset; those who let chairs, or tiny carriages drawn by goats; dog-fanciers, beggars of all sorts, dwarfs from the hippodrome and their microscopic ponies. Picture all these to yourself, and you will have some idea of this singular spot—so near to the Champs Elysées that the tops of the green trees were to be seen, and the roar of carriages was but faintly subdued.
It was in this place that the Moronval Academy was situated. Two or three times during the day a tall, thin mulatto made his appearance in the street. He wore on his head a broad-brimmed Quaker hat placed so far back that it resembled a halo; long hair swept over his shoulders, and he crossed the street with a timid, terrified air, followed by a troop of boys of every shade of complexion varying from a coffee tint to bright copper, and thence to profound black. These lads wore the coarse uniform of the school, and had an unfed and uncared-for aspect.
The principal of the Moronval Academy himself took his pupils—his children of the sun, as he called them—out for their daily walks; and the comings and goings of this singular party gave the finishing touch of oddity to the appearance of the Passage des Douze Maisons.
Most assuredly, had Madame de Barancy herself brought her child to the Academy, the sight of the place would have terrified her, and she would never have consented to leave her darling there. But her visit to the Jesuits had been so unfortunate, her reception so different from that which she had anticipated, that the poor creature, timid at heart and easily disconcerted, feared some new humiliation, and delegated to Madame Constant, her maid, the task of placing Jack at the school chosen for him by her servants.
It was one cold, gray morning that Ida’s carriage drew up in front of the gilt sign of the Moronval Academy. The lane was deserted, but the walls and the signs all had a damp and greenish look, as if a recent inundation had there left its traces. Constant stepped forward bravely, leading the child by one hand, and carrying an umbrella in the other. At the twelfth house she halted. It was at the end of the lane just where it closes, save for a narrow passage into La Rue Marbouf, between two high walls on which grated the dry branches of old shrubbery and ancient trees. A certain cleanliness