The Martian: A Novel. Du Maurier George

so deep and stiff it almost amounted to stays.

      As for the boys themselves, some were energetic and industrious – some listless and lazy and lolling, and quite languid with the heat – some fidgety and restless, on the lookout for excitement of any kind: a cab or carriage raising the dust on its way to the Bois – a water‐cart laying it (there were no hydrants then); a courier bearing royal despatches, or a mounted orderly; the Passy omnibus, to or fro every ten or twelve minutes; the marchand de coco with his bell; a regiment of the line with its band; a chorus of peripatetic Orphéonistes – a swallow, a butterfly, a humblebee; a far‐off balloon, oh, joy! – any sight or sound to relieve the tedium of those two mortal school‐hours that dragged their weary lengths from half past one till half past three – every day but Sunday and Thursday.

      (Even now I find the early afternoon a little trying to wear through without a nap, say from two to four.)

      At 3.30 there would come a half‐hour's interval of play, and then the class of French literature from four till dinner‐time at six – a class that was more than endurable on account of the liveliness and charm of Monsieur Durosier, who journeyed all the way from the Collége de France every Saturday afternoon in June and July to tell us boys of the quatrième all about Villon and Ronsard, and Marot and Charles d'Orléans (exceptis excipiendis, of course), and other pleasant people who didn't deal in Greek or Latin or mathematics, and knew better than to trouble themselves overmuch about formal French grammar and niggling French prosody.

      Besides, everything was pleasant on a Saturday afternoon on account of the nearness of the day of days —

      "And that's the day that comes between

      The Saturday and Monday"…

      in France.

      I had just finished translating my twenty lines of Virgil —

      "Infandum, regina, jubes renovare," etc.

      Oh, crimini, but it was hot! and how I disliked the pious Æneas! I couldn't have hated him worse if I'd been poor Dido's favorite younger brother (not mentioned by Publius Vergilius Maro, if I remember).

      Palaiseau, who sat next to me, had a cold in his head, and kept sniffing in a manner that got on my nerves.

      "Mouche‐toi donc, animal!" I whispered; "tu me dégoûtes, à la fin!"

      Palaiseau always sniffed, whether he had a cold or not.

      "Taisez‐vous, Maurice – ou je vous donne cent vers à copier!" said M. Bonzig, and his eyes quiveringly glittered through his glasses as he fixed me.

      Palaiseau, in his brief triumph, sniffed louder.

      "Palaiseau," said Monsieur Bonzig, "si vous vous serviez de votre mouchoir – hein? Je crois que cela ne gênerait personne!" (If you were to use your pocket‐handkerchief – eh? I don't think it would inconvenience anybody!)

      At this there was a general titter all round, which was immediately suppressed, as in a court of law; and Palaiseau reluctantly and noisily did as he was told.

      In front of me that dishonest little sneak Rapaud, with a tall parapet of books before him to serve as a screen, one hand shading his eyes, and an inkless pen in the other, was scratching his copy‐book with noisy earnestness, as if time were too short for all he had to write about the pious Æneas's recitative, while he surreptitiously read the Comte de Monte Cristo, which lay open in his lap – just at the part where the body, sewn up in a sack, was going to be hurled into the Mediterranean. I knew the page well. There was a splash of red ink on it.

      It made my blood boil with virtuous indignation to watch him, and I coughed and hemmed again and again to attract his attention, for his back was nearly towards me. He heard me perfectly, but took no notice whatever, the deceitful little beast. He was to have given up Monte Cristo to me at half‐past two, and here it was twenty minutes to three! Besides which, it was my Monte Cristo, bought with my own small savings, and smuggled into school by me at great risk to myself.

      "Maurice!" said M. Bonzig.

      "Oui, m'sieur!" said I. I will translate:

      "You shall conjugate and copy out for me forty times the compoundverb, 'I cough without necessity to distract the attention of my comrade Rapaud from his Latin exercise!'"

      "Moi, m'sieur?" I ask, innocently.

      "Oui, vous!"

      "Bien, m'sieur!"

      Just then there was a clatter by the fountain, and the shrill small pipe of D'Aurigny, the youngest boy in the school, exclaimed:

      "Hé! Hé! Oh là là! Le Roi qui passe!"

      And we all jumped up, and stood on forms, and craned our necks to see Louis Philippe I. and his Queen drive quickly by in their big blue carriage and four, with their two blue‐and‐silver liveried outriders trotting in front, on their way from St.‐Cloud to the Tuileries.

      "Sponde! Sélancy! fermez les fenêtres, ou je vous mets tous au pain sec pour un mois!" thundered M. Bonzig, who did not approve of kings and queens – an appalling threat which appalled nobody, for when he forgot to forget he always relented; for instance, he quite forgot to insist on that formidable compound verb of mine.

      Suddenly the door of the school‐room flew open, and the tall, portly figure of Monsieur Brossard appeared, leading by the wrist a very fair‐haired boy of thirteen or so, dressed in an Eton jacket and light blue trousers, with a white chimney‐pot silk hat, which he carried in his hand – an English boy, evidently; but of an aspect so singularly agreeable one didn't need to be English one's self to warm towards him at once.

      "Monsieur Bonzig, and gentlemen!" said the head master (in French, of course). "Here is the new boy; he calls himself Bartholomiou Josselin. He is English, but he knows French as well as you. I hope you will find in him a good comrade, honorable and frank and brave, and that he will find the same in you. – Maurice!" (that was me).

      "Oui, m'sieur!"

      "I specially recommend Josselin to you."

      "Moi, m'sieur?"

      "Yes, you; he is of your age, and one of your compatriots. Don't forget."

      "Bien, m'sieur."

      "And now, Josselin, take that vacant desk, which will be yours henceforth. You will find the necessary books and copy‐books inside; you will be in the fifth class, under Monsieur Dumollard. You will occupy yourself with the study of Cornelius Nepos, the commentaries of Cæsar, and Xenophon's retreat of the ten thousand. Soyez diligent et attentif, mon ami; à plus tard!"

      He gave the boy a friendly pat on the cheek and left the room.

      Josselin walked to his desk and sat down, between d'Adhémar and Laferté, both of whom were en cinquième. He pulled a Cæsar out of his desk and tried to read it. He became an object of passionate interest to the whole school‐room, till M. Bonzig said:

      "The first who lifts his eyes from his desk to stare at 'le nouveau' shall be au piquet for half an hour!" (To be au piquet is to stand with your back to a tree for part of the following play‐time; and the play‐time which was to follow would last just thirty minutes.)

      Presently I looked up, in spite of piquet, and caught the new boy's eye, which was large and blue and soft, and very sad and sentimental, and looked as if he were thinking of his mammy, as I did constantly of mine during my first week at Brossard's, three years before.

      Soon, however, that sad eye slowly winked at me, with an expression so droll that I all but laughed aloud.

      Then its owner felt in the inner breast pocket of his Eton jacket with great care, and delicately drew forth by the tail a very fat white mouse, that seemed quite tame, and ran up his arm to his wide shirt collar, and tried to burrow there; and the boys began to interest themselves breathlessly in this engaging little quadruped.

      M. Bonzig looked up again, furious; but his spectacles had grown misty from the heat and he couldn't see, and he wiped them; and meanwhile the mouse was quickly smuggled back to its former