“Here is a new day scholar, Monsieur Tavernier. You will find out how far advanced he is in reading and writing, if you please.” M. Tavernier was a tall young man with a sallow complexion, a bachelor who, had he been living like his late father, a sergeant of the gendarmes, in a pretty house surrounded by apple trees and green grass, would not, perhaps, have had that ‘papier-mache’ appearance, and would not have been dressed at eight o’clock in the morning in a black coat of the kind we see hanging in the Morgue. M. Tavernier received the newcomer with a sickly smile, which disappeared as soon as M. Batifol left the room.
“Go and take your place in that empty seat there, in the third row,” said M. Tavernier, in an indifferent tone.
He deigned, however, to conduct Amedee to the seat which he was to occupy. Amedee’s neighbor, one of the future citizens preparing for social life--several with patches upon their trousers--had been naughty enough to bring into class a handful of cockchafers. He was punished by a quarter of an hour’s standing up, which he did soon after, sulking at the foot of the sycamore-tree in the large court.
“You will soon see what a cur he is,” whispered the pupil in disgrace; as soon as the teacher had returned to his seat.
M. Tavernier struck his ruler on the edge of his chair, and, having reestablished silence, invited pupil Godard to recite his lesson.
Pupil Godard, who was a chubby-faced fellow with sleepy eyes, rose automatically and in one single stream, like a running tap, recited, without stopping to take breath, “The Wolf and the Lamb,” rolling off La Fontaine’s fable like the thread from a bobbin run by steam.
“The-strongest-reason-is-always-the-best-and-we-will-prove-it-at-once, a-lamb-was-quenching-his-thirst-in-a-stream-of-pure-running-water--”
Suddenly Godard was confused, he hesitated. The machine had been badly oiled. Something obstructed the bobbin.
“In-a-stream-of-pure-running-water-in-a stream--”
Then he stopped short, the tap was closed. Godard did not know his lesson, and he, too, was condemned to remain on guard under the sycamore during recess.
After pupil Godard came pupil Grosdidier; then Blanc, then Moreau (Gaston), then Moreau (Ernest), then Malepert; then another, and another, who babbled with the same intelligence and volubility, with the same piping voice, this cruel and wonderful fable. It was as irritating and monotonous as a fine rain. All the pupils in the “ninth preparatory” were disgusted for fifteen years, at least, with this most exquisite of French poems.