The Martian: A Novel. Du Maurier George

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 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, Barty's failure was as great a disappointment as it was a painful surprise.

      "Try again Josselin! Don't leave here till you have passed. If you are content to fail in this, at the very outset of your career, you will never succeed in anything through life! Stay with us as my guest till you can go up again, and again if necessary. Do, my dear child – it will make me so happy! I shall feel it as a proof that you reciprocate in some degree the warm friendship I have always borne you – in common with everybody in the school! Je t'en prie, mon garçon!"

      Then he went to the Rohans and tried to persuade them. But Lord Archibald didn't care much about Bachots, nor his wife either. They were going back to live in England, besides; and Barty was going into the Guards.

      I left school also – with a mixture of hope and elation, and yet the most poignant regret.

      I can hardly find words to express the gratitude and affection I felt for Mérovée Brossard when I bade him farewell.

      Except his father before him, he was the best and finest Frenchman I ever knew. There is nothing invidious in my saying this, and in this way. I merely speak of the Brossards, father and son, as Frenchmen in this connection, because their admirable qualities of heart and mind were so essentially French; they would have done equal honor to any country in the world.

      I corresponded with him regularly for a few years, and so did Barty; and then our letters grew fewer and farther between, and finally left off altogether – as nearly always happens in such cases, I think. And I never saw him again; for when he broke up the school he went to his own province in the southeast, and lived there till twenty years ago, when he died – unmarried, I believe.

      Then there was Monsieur Bonzig, and Mlle. Marceline, and others – and three or four boys with whom both Barty and I were on terms of warm and intimate friendship. None of these boys that I know of have risen to any world‐wide fame; and, oddly enough, none of them have ever given sign of life to Barty Josselin, who is just as famous in France for his French literary work as on this side of the Channel for all he has done in English. He towers just as much there as here; and this double eminence now dominates the entire globe, and we are beginning at last to realize everywhere that this bright luminary in our firmament is no planet, like Mars or Jupiter, but, like Sirius, a sun.

      Yet never a line from an old comrade in that school where СКАЧАТЬ