What luck! the top and bottom ones had gone but the thick wad in the middle was almost intact; it was definitely Anais’s writing.
I took the packet away in my satchel so as to read them at home at leisure, and I rejoined Anais, who was quite calm, and strolling about while she waited for me.
We set off again together: she stared at me surreptitiously. Suddenly, she stopped dead and gave an agonized sigh … I saw her gaze anxiously fixed on my hands and then I noticed they were black from the burnt papers I had touched.
I wasn’t going to lie to her – certainly not. I took the offensive:
‘Well, what’s the matter?’
‘So you went and searched in the stove, eh?’
‘Certainly I did!
No danger of my losing a chance like that of reading your letters!’
‘Are they burnt?’
‘No, luckily: here, look inside.’
I showed her the papers, keeping a firm hold on them.
She darted positively murderous looks at me but did not dare pounce on my satchel, she was too sure I’d thrash her!
I decided to comfort her a little; she made me feel almost sorry for her.
‘Listen, I’m going to read what isn’t burnt – because I just can’t bear not to – and then I’ll bring you the whole lot back this afternoon.
So I’m not such a beast after all, am I?’
She was highly mistrustful.
‘Word of honour!
I’ll give you them back at recreation before we go into class.’
She went off, helpless and uneasy, looking even longer and yellower than usual.
At home, I went through those letters at last.
Immense disappointment!
They weren’t a bit what I’d imagined.
A mixture of silly sentimentalities and practical directions:
‘I always think of you when there’s moonlight … Do make sure, on Thursday, to bring the corn-sack you took last time, to Vrimes’ field; Mama would kick up a shindy if she saw grass-stains on my frock!’
Then there were obscure allusions which must have reminded young Gangneau of various smutty episodes … In short, yes, a disappointment.
I would give her back her letters which were far less amusing than her cold, whimsical, humorous self.
I gave them back to her; she could not believe her own eyes.
She was so overjoyed at seeing them that she couldn’t resist making fun of me for having read them.
Once she’d run and thrown them down the lavatory, she resumed her shut, impenetrable face, without the faintest trace of humiliation.
Happy disposition!
Bother, I’ve caught a cold!
I stay in Papa’s library, reading Michelet’s absurd History of France, written in alexandrines. (Am I exaggerating a bit?) I’m not in the least bored, curled up in this big armchair, surrounded by books, with my beautiful Fanchette for company.
She’s the most intelligent cat in the world and she loves me disinterestedly in spite of the miseries I inflict on her, biting her in her pink ears and making her go through the most complicated training.
She loves me so much that she understands what I say and comes and rubs against my mouth when she hears the sound of my voice.
She also loves books like an old scholar, this Fanchette, and worries me every night after dinner to remove two or three volumes of Papa’s big Larousse from their shelf. The space they make leaves a little square room in which Fanchette settles down and washes herself; I shut the glass door on her and her imprisoned purr vibrates with a noise like an incessant, muffled drum.
From time to time, I look at her; then she makes me a sign with her eyebrows which she raises like a human being.
Lovely Fanchette, how intelligent and understanding you are! (Much more so than Luce Lanthenay, that inferior breed of cat!) You amused me from the moment you came into the world; you’d only got one eye open when you were already attempting warlike steps in your basket, though you were still incapable of standing up on your four matchsticks.
Ever since, you’ve lived joyously, making me laugh with your belly-dances in honour of cockchafers and butterflies, your clumsy calls to the birds you’re stalking, your way of quarrelling with me and giving me sharp taps that reecho on my hands.
Your behaviour is quite disgraceful: two or three times a year I catch you on the garden walls, wearing a crazy, ridiculous expression, with a swarm of tom-cats round you.
I even know your favourite, you perverse Fanchette – he’s a dirty-grey Tom, long and lean, with half his fur gone. He’s got ears like a rabbit’s and coarse, plebeian limbs. How can you make a mesalliance with this low-born animal, and make it so often?
But, even at those demented seasons, as soon as you catch sight of me, your natural face returns for a moment; and you give me a friendly mew which says something like:
‘You see what I’m up to. Don’t despise me too much, nature has her urgent demands. But I’ll soon come home again and I’ll lick myself for ages to purify myself of this dissolute life.’
O, beautiful Fanchette, your bad behaviour is so remarkably becoming to you!
When my cold was over, I observed that people at school were beginning to get very agitated about the approaching exams; we were now at the end of May and we ‘went up’ on the 5th of July!
I was sorry not to be more moved, but the others made up for me, especially little Luce Lanthenay, who burst into floods of tears whenever she got a bad mark.
As for Mademoiselle Sergent, she was busy with everything, but most of all, with the little thing with the beautiful eyes who kept her ‘on a string’.
She’d blossomed out, that Aimee, in an astonishing way!
Her marvellous complexion, her velvety skin and her eyes, ‘that you could strike medals out of’, as Anais says, make her into a spiteful and triumphant little creature.
She is so much prettier than she was last year!
No one would pay any more attention now to the slight crumpling of her face, to the little crease on the left of her lip when she smiles; and, anyhow, she has such white, pointed teeth!