George Du Maurier - The Martian - A Novel

M. Mérovée, in a real rage this time, forgot his dignity, and pursued him all over the school – through open windows and back again – into his own garden (Tusculum) – over trellis railings – all along the top of a wall – and finally, quite blown out, sat down on the edge of the tank: the whole school was in fits by this time, even M. Dumollard – and at last Mérovée began to laugh too. So the thing had to be forgiven – but only that once!

Once also, that year, but in the winter, a great compliment was paid to la perfide Albion in the persons of MM. Josselin et Maurice, which I cannot help recording with a little complacency.

On a Thursday walk in the Bois de Boulogne a boy called out "À bas Dumollard!" in a falsetto squeak. Dumollard, who was on duty that walk, was furious, of course – but he couldn't identify the boy by the sound of his voice. He made his complaint to M. Mérovée – and next morning, after prayers, Mérovée came into the school‐room, and told us he should go the round of the boys there and then, and ask each boy separately to own up if it were he who had uttered the seditious cry.

"And mind you!" he said – "you are all and each of you on your 'word of honor' — l'étude entière !"

So round he went, from boy to boy, deliberately fixing each boy with his eye, and severely asking – "Est‐ce toi ?" "Est‐ce toi ?" "Est‐ce toi ?" etc., and waiting very deliberately indeed for the answer, and even asking for it again if it were not given in a firm and audible voice. And the answer was always, "Non, m'sieur, ce n'est pas moi!"

But when he came to each of us (Josselin and me) he just mumbled his "Est‐ce toi?" in a quite perfunctory voice, and didn't even wait for the answer!

When he got to the last boy of all, who said "Non, m'sieur," like all the rest, he left the room, saying, tragically (and, as I thought, rather theatrically for him ):

"Je m'en vais le cœur navré – il y a un lâche parmi vous!" (My heart is harrowed – there's a coward among you.)

There was an awkward silence for a few moments.

Presently Rapaud got up and went out. We all knew that Rapaud was the delinquent – he had bragged about it so – overnight in the dormitory. He went straight to M. Mérovée and confessed, stating that he did not like to be put on his word of honor before the whole school. I forget whether he was punished or not, or how. He had to make his apologies to M. Dumollard, of course.

To put the whole school on its word of honor was thought a very severe measure, coming as it did from the head master in person. "La parole d'honneur" was held to be very sacred between boy and boy, and even between boy and head master. The boy who broke it was always "mis à la quarantaine" (sent to Coventry) by the rest of the school.

"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:

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 —

"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.