The approach of the examinations, the honour that our possible successes would reflect on this fine new school had at last dragged our teachers from their sweet solitude.
They kept us, the six candidates, in close confinement; they pestered us with endless repetitions; they forced us to listen, to remember, even to understand, making us come in an hour before the others and leave an hour after them!
Nearly all of us became pale, tired and stupid; some of us lost appetite and sleep as a result of work and anxiety.
I myself remained looking almost fresh, because I didn’t worry overmuch and I have a matt skin.
Little Luce did too; like her sister Aimee, she possesses one of those enviable, indestructible pink and white complexions …
We knew that Mademoiselle Sergent was going to take us all together to the principal town of the Department and we should stay with her at the same hotel. She would take charge of all the expenses and we would settle our accounts on our return.
But for that cursed exam, we should have found this little trip enchanting.
These last days have been deplorable.
Mistresses and pupils alike have been so atrociously nervy that they explode every other minute.
Aimee flung her exercise-book in the face of a boarder who had made the same idiotic mistake for the third time in an arithmetic problem, then promptly fled to her own room.
Little Luce was slapped by her sister and came and threw herself in my arms for me to comfort her.
I hit Anais when she was teasing me at the wrong moment.
One of the Jauberts was seized, first with a frantic burst of sobbing, then with a no less frantic attack of nerves, because, she screamed, ‘she would never manage to pass! …’ (wet towels, orange-flower water, encouragements).
Mademoiselle Sergent, also exasperated, made poor Marie Belhomme, who regularly forgets next day what she learnt the day before, spin round like a top in front of the blackboard.
I can only rest properly at night in the top of the big walnut-tree, on a long branch that the wind rocks … the wind, the darkness, the leaves … Fanchette comes and joins me up there; each time I hear strong claws climbing up, with such sureness!
She mews in astonishment:
‘What on earth are you doing up in this tree?
I’m made to be up here, but you … it always shocks me a little!’
Then she wanders about the little branches, all white in the blackness, and talks to the sleeping birds, ingenuously, in the hope they’ll come and obligingly let themselves be eaten – why, of course!
It’s the eve of our departure.
No work today.
We took our suitcases to school (a dress and a few underclothes; we’re only staying two days).
Tomorrow morning, we all meet at half past nine and go off in old Racalin’s evil-smelling omnibus which will cart us off to the station.
It’s over.
We returned from the main town yesterday, triumphant all except (naturally) poor Marie Belhomme, who was ploughed.
Mademoiselle Sergent is thoroughly puffed-up over such a success.
I must tell the whole story.
On the morning of our departure, we were piled into old Racalin’s omnibus.
He happened to be dead-drunk and drove us crazily, zigzagging from one ditch to the other, asking us if he was taking us all to be married, and congratulating himself on the masterly way he was bumping us about:
‘Be going ever sho eashy, bean’t I? …’ while Marie uttered shrill cries and turned green with terror.
At the station, they parked us in the waiting-room. Mademoiselle Sergent took our tickets and lavished tender farewells on the beloved who had come along to accompany her thus far.
The beloved, in a frock of unbleached linen, and wearing a big, artless hat under which she looked fresher than a convolvulus (that bitch of an Aimee!) excited the admiration of three cigar-smoking commercial travellers who, amused at this departure of a batch of schoolgirls, had come into the waiting-room to dazzle us with their rings and their witticisms, for they found it irresistible to let out the most shocking remarks.
I nudged Marie Belhomme to warn her to listen; she strained her ears but could not understand: however I couldn’t draw diagrams to help her out!
The gawky Anais understood perfectly well and wore herself out in adopting graceful attitudes and making vain efforts to blush.
The train puffed and whistled: we grabbed our suitcases and surged into a second-class carriage.
It was overheated to the point of suffocation; luckily the journey only lasted three hours!
I installed myself in a corner so as to be able to breathe a little and we didn’t talk at all on the way, it was so entertaining to watch the landscape flying past.
Little Luce, nestling beside me, slipped her arm under mine but I extricated myself, saying:
‘Let go, it’s too hot.’
Yet I had on a dress of cream tussore, very straight and smocked like a baby’s, clasped at the waist with a leather belt that was wider than my hand and had a square opening in front.
Anais, brightened up by a red linen frock, looked her best; so did Marie Belhomme, who was in half-mourning, wearing mauve linen with a black flower-pattern.
Luce Lanthenay had kept to her black uniform and wore a black hat with a red bow.
The two Jauberts continued to be non-existent and drew out of their pockets some lists of questions that Mademoiselle Sergent, disdainful of this excessive zeal, made them put back again.
They couldn’t get over it!
Factory chimneys appeared, then scattered white houses that suddenly huddled closer together and became a crowd; the next moment, we were at the station and were getting out.
Mademoiselle Sergent hustled us towards an omnibus and soon we were bumping along over grievous cobblestones, like cats’ skulls, towards the Hotel de la Poste.
Idlers were strolling about the streets, which were gay with bunting, for tomorrow it was St Someone-or-other’s day – a great local feast – and the Philharmonic would be in full blast in the evening.
The manageress of the hotel, Mme Cherbay, a fat, gushing woman who came from the same part of the country as Mademoiselle Sergent, fussed over us.
There were endless staircases, then a corridor and … three rooms for six.
That had never occurred to me!