“Plantel, the turn of your phrase is French, not in the least Latin. Try to understand the genius of the language. Listen to me!”
As a consequence, the pupils of the Institution Robineau carried off at the end of the year all the prizes for Latin composition, translation and oratory.
Next year, the proprietor, a little man as clever as a monkey and nearly as grotesque in his grimaces, printed on his programs and advertisements and printed on the board of the Institution:
“Speciality of Latin studies. Five first prizes obtained in the five classes of the Lycée. Two prizes with special mention in the General Examination of all schools and colleges of France.”
During ten years the Institution Robineau triumphed in this way. So my father, attracted by this success, put me as a day-boarder with this Robineau, whom we called Robinetto or Robinettino, and made me take private lessons from Daddy Piquedent at the rate of five francs per hour, of which he had two and the proprietor three. I was eighteen then and in the highest form.
These private lessons took place in a little room looking out over the street, and so it happened that Daddy Piquedent, instead of talking Latin to me, as he did in the class, told me all his troubles in French. Having neither relations nor friends, the poor chap became very fond of me and poured out all his misery on my bosom.
Never in the last ten or fifteen years had he been alone with anyone.
“I am like an oak in the desert,” said he. “Sicut quercus in solitudine.”
The other ushers disgusted him; he knew no one in the town, since he had no free time in which to make acquaintances. “Not even the nights, my friend; and that is the hardest for me. My only dream would be to have a room, furnished with my books and with little things of my own which no one else had the right to touch. And I have nothing of my own, nothing but my clothes, nothing, not even my mattress and my pillow. I have not even four walls where I can shut myself up except when I come to give a lesson in this room. Can you understand that? A man who passes all his life without ever having the right, without even having the time, to shut himself up alone, no matter where, to think, to reflect, to work, to dream! Ah, my friend, a key, the key of a door that I could lock—that would be happiness—the only happiness I want.
“Here, in the daytime the classroom with all those rascals shuffling about, at night the dormitory with the same rascals snoring—and I sleep in public in a bed at the end of two rows of these little imps over whom I have to keep watch. I can never be alone, never! If I go out, the street is crowded, and if I am tired of walking, I can only go into a café full of smokers and billiard-players. I tell you it is a prison!”
I asked him:
“Why have you not tried some other career, M. Piquedent?”
He cried out:
“And which, my young friend, which? I am neither bootmaker nor carpenter, nor hatter, nor baker, nor barber. I know nothing but Latin, and I have no diploma allowing me to sell it dear. If I were a Doctor of Literature, I could sell for a hundred francs what I sell for five, and probably give less value for it, for my degree would be enough to justify my interpretation.”
Sometimes he used to say to me:
“I have no rest in life except the hours I pass with you. Don’t be afraid, you will lose nothing. I will make up for it by making you answer twice as often as the others in the classroom.”
One day I was bold enough to offer him a cigarette. He looked at me at first almost stupefied, then at the door:
“Suppose someone came in, my boy?”
“Well, we will smoke at the window,” said I to him.
We went to lean on the windowsill above the street, hiding the little cylinders of tobacco in the hollows of our hands.
Opposite us was a laundry—four women dressed in white cotton running the heavy hot iron up and down over the linen before them, raising a thin vapour.
Suddenly another, a fifth, carrying in her arms a large basket that bent her double, came out, to carry home to the customers their shirts, handkerchiefs and sheets. She stopped at the door as if she were already tired, then she raised her eyes, smiled on seeing us smoking, threw us with her free hand the knowing kiss of a careless workgirl, and went away with a slow step, dragging her feet.
She was a girl of twenty, little, rather thin, pale, quite pretty, a knowing look, laughing eyes under light hair badly arranged.
Daddy Piquedent, moved, murmured:
“What a life for a woman! Only fit for a horse.”
And he grew sentimental over the wretchedness of the people. He had the overexcited heart of the sentimental democrat, and he spoke of the fatigues of the working-classes with phrases borrowed from Rousseau and tears in his voice.
Next day, as we were leaning out of the window, the same girl saw us and called out: “Hullo, boys,” in a funny little voice, offering us a catch with her hands.
I threw her a cigarette, which she began to smoke at once. And the four other ironers rushed to the door, holding out their hands to get one too.
Day by day, friendly gestures passed between the workers of the pavement and the idlers of the boarding-school.
Daddy Piquedent was comic to watch. He was shaking with fright that he would be seen, for he might have lost his place, and he used to make timid and ridiculous gestures, as if he were the lover in a play, to which the women answered with a volley of kisses.
A wicked
