I re-entered looking very meek.
‘Claudine,’ said Mademoiselle by way of explanation. ‘Come and read this at sight.
Monsieur Rabastens is musical but not so musical as you are.’
How amiable she was!
What a complete changeover!
This was a song from The Chalet, boring to tears.
Nothing reduces my voice to a shred like singing in front of people I don’t know, so I read it correctly but in an absurdly shaky voice that became firmer, thank heavens, at the end of the piece.
‘Ah, Mademoiselle, allow me to congratulate you. You sing with such forrce!’
I protested politely, mentally sticking out my tongue (my tonngue, he’d say) at him.
And I went off to find the otherrs (it’s catching) who gave me a welcome like vinegar.
‘Darling!’ the lanky Anais said between her teeth. ‘I hope you’re in everyone’s good books now!
You must have produced a smashing impression on those gentlemen, so we shall be seeing them often.’
The Jauberts indulged in covert, sneering giggles of jealousy.
‘Let me alone, will you?
Honestly, there’s nothing to foam at the mouth about because I happened to read something at sight.
Rabastens is one hundred and fifty per cent a southerner and that’s a species I detest.
As to Richelieu, if he comes here often, I know quite well who the attraction is.’
‘Well, who?’
‘Mademoiselle Aimee, of course!
He positively devours her with his eyes.’
‘Own up,’ whispered Anais. ‘It’s not him you’re jealous of, so it must be her …’
That insufferable Anais! That girl sees everything and what she doesn’t see, she invents!
The two masters re-entered the playground; Antonin Rabastens expansive and smiling at us all, the other nervous, almost cowed.
It was time they went away; the bell was on the point of ringing for the end of recreation and their urchins in the neighbouring playground were making as much noise as if the whole lot had been simultaneously plunged in a cauldron of boiling water.
The bell rang for us and I said to Anais:
‘I say, it’s a long time since the District Superintendent came.
I shall be awfully surprised if he doesn’t turn up this week.’
‘He arrived yesterday. He’s sure to come and poke his nose in here.’
Dutertre, the District Superintendent of Schools, is also the doctor to the orphanage. Most of the children there attend the school and this gives him double authorization to visit us. Heaven knows he makes enough use of it!
Some people declare that Mademoiselle Sergent is his mistress. I don’t know if it’s true or not.
What I am prepared to bet is that he owes her money. Electoral campaigns cost a lot and this Dutertre, who hasn’t a penny, has set his heart, in spite of persistent failure, on replacing the dumb, but immensely rich old moron who represents the voters of Fresnois in the Chambre des Deputes.
And I’m absolutely certain that passionate redhead is in love with him!
She trembles with jealous fury when she sees him pawing us rather too insistently.
For, I repeat, he frequently honours us with his visits. He sits on the tables, behaves badly, lingers with the older ones, especially with me, reads our essays, thrusts his moustache in our ears, strokes our necks and calls us tu (he knew us when we were so high), flashing his wolf’s teeth and his black eyes.
We find him extremely amiable but I know him to be such a rotter that I don’t feel in the least shy with him. And this scandalizes my schoolfriends.
It was our day for the sewing-lesson. We were plying our needles lazily and talking in inaudible voices.
Suddenly, to our joy, we saw white flakes beginning to fall.
What luck!
We should be able to make slides; there’d be lots of tumbles; we’d have snowball fights.
Mademoiselle Sergent stared at us without seeing us, her mind elsewhere.
Tap, tap on the window-panes!
Through the whirling feathers of the snow, we could see Dutertre knocking on the glass.
He was all wrapped up in furs and wore a fur cap. He looked handsome in them, with his shining eyes and the teeth he is always displaying.
The first bench (myself, Marie Belhomme, and the lanky Anais) came to life; I fluffed up my hair on my temples, Anais bit her lips to make them red and Marie tightened her belt by a hole.
The Jaubert sisters clasped their hands like two pictures of First Communicants:
‘I am the temple of the Holy Ghost.’
Mademoiselle Sergent leapt to her feet, so brusquely that she upset her chair and her footstool, and ran to open the door.
The sight of all this commotion made me split with laughter.
Anais took advantage of my helplessness to pinch me and to make diabolical faces at me as she chewed charcoal and india-rubber. (However much they forbid her these strange comestibles, all day long her pockets and her mouth are filled with pencil stubs, filthy black india-rubber, charcoal, and pink blotting-paper.
Chalk, pencil-lead and such-like satisfy her stomach in the most peculiar way: it must be those things she eats that give her a complexion the colour of wood and grey plaster.