While we were waiting for the period of French Composition, we were nearly all of us dozing on our chairs, overcome with heat.
Mademoiselle was reading the illustrated papers and got up, after a glance at the clock:
‘Come along, children, we must go … Try not to make yourselves out too stupid in the paper you’re just going to do.
And you, Claudine, if you’re not marked eighteen out of twenty for French Composition, I’ll throw you in the river.’
‘I’d be cooler there, at least!’
What dolts these examiners were!
The most obtuse mind would have grasped that, in this crushing heat, we should have written more lucid French essays in the morning.
But not they.
Whatever we were capable of, at this hour?
Though full, the playground was more silent than this morning and their Lordships were keeping us waiting again!
I went off by myself into the walled garden: I sat down under the clematis, in the shade, and I closed my eyes, drunk with drowsiness …
There were shouts and calls:
‘Claudine! Claudine!’
I started up, only half-awake for I had been well and truly asleep, to find myself faced with Luce, looking terrified as she shook me to my feet and dragged me along with her.
‘But you’re crazy!
But you don’t know what’s happening!
My dear, we went in a quarter of an hour ago!
They’ve dictated the synopsis of the essay and then at last Marie Belhomme and I plucked up courage to say you weren’t there … they looked for you … Mademoiselle Sergent! out in the fields – and I thought maybe you were strolling about here … My dear, you aren’t half going to catch it, up there!’
I dashed up the staircase, Luce after me: a mild hullabaloo arose at my entrance and their Lordships, red from a prolonged luncheon, turned towards me:
‘You had forgotten all about it, Mademoiselle?
Where were you?’
It was Roubaud who had spoken to me, half amiable, half thoroughly nasty.
‘I was in the garden over there. I was having a siesta.’
A pane of the open window showed me my dim reflection; I had mauve clematis petals in my hair, leaves on my frock, a little green insect and a lady-bird on my shoulder; my hair was in wild disarray … The general effect was not unattractive … At least, I could only presume so, for their Lordships considered me at length and Roubaud asked me point-blank:
‘You don’t know a picture called Primavera, by Botticelli?’
Aha!
I was expecting that.
‘Yes, I do, Sir … I’ve been told that already.’
I had cut the compliment off short and he pinched his lips with annoyance.
The black-coated men laughed among themselves; I went to my place, escorted by these reassuring words mumbled by Salle, a worthy man, although he was too short-sighted to recognize me, poor fellow: ‘In any case, you’re not late. Copy the synopsis written on the blackboard, your companions have not begun yet.’
There, there, he needn’t have been frightened – I wasn’t going to scold him!
Forward, French Composition!
This little adventure had given me new heart.
‘Synopsis – Develop the thoughts and comments aroused in you by these words of Chrysale:
“What matter if she fails to observe the laws of Vaugelas,” etc.’
By unheard-of-luck, it was not too stupid or too repellent a subject.
All round me I could hear anxious and agonized questions, for most of these little girls had never heard of Chrysale nor of Les Femmes savantes.
They were going to make a splendid hash of it!
I couldn’t help laughing over it in advance.
I prepared a little lubrication that wasn’t too silly, adorned with various quotations to prove that one knew one’s Moliere tolerably well; it went quite well and I ended up by being quite oblivious to what was going on about me.
As I looked up in search of a recalcitrant word, I noticed that Roubaud was deeply absorbed in sketching my portrait in a little notebook.
I was quite agreeable, and I resumed the pose without appearing to do so.
Paf!
Yet another little ball had dropped.
It was from Luce:
‘Can you write me one or two general ideas?
I’m in a hopeless mess, I’m simply wretched.
I send you a kiss from the distance.’
I looked at her and saw her poor little face was all blotched and her eyes red. She answered my look by a despairing shake of the head.
I scribbled down everything I could for her on a bit of tracing-paper and launched the ball, not in the air – too dangerous – but along the ground in the aisle that separated the two rows of tables, and Luce deftly put her foot on it.