The Martian: A Novel. Du Maurier George

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      "I wonder why he let off Josselin and Maurice so easily?" said Jolivet, at breakfast.

      "Parce qu'il aime les Anglais, ma foi!" said M. Dumollard – "affaire de goût!"

      "Ma foi, il n'a pas tort!" said M. Bonzig.

      Dumollard looked askance at Bonzig (between whom and himself not much love was lost) and walked off, jauntily twirling his mustache, and whistling a few bars of a very ungainly melody, to which the words ran:

      "Non! jamais en France,

      Jamais Anglais ne règnera!"

      As if we wanted to, good heavens!

      (By‐the‐way, I suddenly remember that both Berquin and d'Orthez were let off as easily as Josselin and I. But they were eighteen or nineteen, and "en Philosophie," the highest class in the school – and very first‐rate boys indeed. It's only fair that I should add this.)

      By‐the‐way, also, M. Dumollard took it into his head to persecute me because once I refused to fetch and carry for him and be his "moricaud," or black slave (as du Tertre‐Jouan called it): a mean and petty persecution which lasted two years, and somewhat embitters my memory of those happy days. It was always "Maurice au piquet pour une heure!"… "Maurice à la retenue!"… "Maurice privé de bain!"… "Maurice consigné dimanche prochain!" … for the slightest possible offence. But I forgive him freely.

      First, because he is probably dead, and "de mortibus nil desperandum!" as Rapaud once said – and for saying which he received a "twisted pinch" from Mérovée Brossard himself.

      Secondly, because he made chemistry, cosmography, and physics so pleasant – and even reconciled me at last to the differential and integral calculus (but never Barty!).

      He could be rather snobbish at times, which was not a common French fault in the forties – we didn't even know what to call it.

      For instance, he was fond of bragging to us boys about the golden splendors of his Sunday dissipation, and his grand acquaintances, even in class. He would even interrupt himself in the middle of an equation at the blackboard to do so.

      "You mustn't imagine to yourselves, messieurs, that because I teach you boys science at the Pension Brossard, and take you out walking on Thursday afternoons, and all that, that I do not associate avec des gens du monde! Last night, for example, I was dining at the Café de Paris with a very intimate friend of mine – he's a marquis – and when the bill was brought, what do you think it came to? you give it up?" (vous donnez votre langue aux chats?). "Well, it came to fifty‐seven francs, fifty centimes! We tossed up who should pay – et, ma foi, le sort a favorisé M. le Marquis!"

      To this there was nothing to say; so none of us said anything, except du Tertre‐Jouan, our marquis (No. 2), who said, in his sulky, insolent, peasantlike manner:

      "Et comment q'ça s'appelle, vot' marquis?" (What does it call itself, your marquis?)

      Upon which M. Dumollard turns very red ("pique un soleil"), and says:

      "Monsieur le Marquis Paul – François – Victor du Tertre‐Jouan de Haultcastel de St.‐Paterne, vous êtes un paltoquet et un rustre!.."

      And goes back to his equations.

      Du Tertre‐Jouan was nearly six feet high, and afraid of nobody – a kind of clodhopping young rustic Hercules, and had proved his mettle quite recently – when a brutal usher, whom I will call Monsieur Boulot (though his real name was Patachou), a Méridional with a horrible divergent squint, made poor Rapaud go down on his knees in the classe de géographie ancienne, and slapped him violently on the face twice running – a way he had with Rapaud.

      It happened like this. It was a kind of penitential class for dunces during play‐time. M. Boulot drew in chalk an outline of ancient Greece on the blackboard, and under it he wrote —

      "Timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes!"

      "Rapaud, translate me that line of Virgil!" says Boulot.

      "J'estime les Danois et leurs dents de fer!" says poor Rapaud (I esteem the Danish and their iron teeth). And we all laughed. For which he underwent the brutal slapping.

      The 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 СКАЧАТЬ