‘Mademoiselle Vigoureux!’ called Roubaud. He was taking the alphabet by the tail.
A plump little thing hurried forward; she wore the white hat, wreathed in daisies, of the Villeneuve school.
‘Mademoiselle Mariblom!’ barked old Salle, who thought he was taking the middle of the alphabet and was reading it all wrong.
Marie Belhomme advanced, crimson, and seated herself on the chair opposite old Salle; he stared at her and asked her if she knew what the Iliad was.
Luce, just behind me, sighed:
‘At least, she’s begun – the great thing is to begin!’
The unoccupied competitors, of whom I was one, dispersed shyly, scattered themselves about the room and went to listen to their colleagues sitting on the stool of repentance.
I myself went off to the examination of the Aubert girl to give myself a little entertainment.
At the moment I approached, old Lacroix was asking her:
‘So you don’t know who married Philip the Handsome?’
Her eyes were starting out of her head and her face was red and glistening with sweat; her mittens revealed fingers like sausages:
‘He married … no, he didn’t marry … Surr, Surr,’ she cried all of a sudden, ‘I’ve forgotten. Everything!’
She was trembling; big tears rolled down her cheeks.
Lacroix looked at her, vicious as the plague.
‘You’ve forgotten everything?
With what remains, you get a nice zero.’
‘Yes, yes,’ she stammered. ‘But it doesn’t matter, I’d rather go off back home, I don’t care …’
They took her away, hiccuping with great sobs. Through the window, I heard her outside, telling her mortified teacher:
‘Honest I’d rather look after Dad’s cows, so I would. An’ I’ll never come back here, I won’t.
An’ I’ll take the two o’clock train, so I will.’
In the classroom, her schoolmates were discussing the ‘regrettable incident’, grave and disapproving.
‘My dear, can you imagine her being so idiotic!
My dear, if they’d asked me a question as easy as that, I’d have been only too pleased, my dear!’
‘Mademoiselle Claudine!’
It was old Lerouge who was asking for me!
Ugh! Arithmetic … Luckily he looked like a kindly Papa … I saw at once that he wouldn’t do me any harm.
‘Let’s see, my child, now could you tell me something about right-angled triangles?’
‘Yes, Sir, though, actually, I don’t much care for them.’
‘Now, now!
You make them out worse than they are.
Let’s see, construct me a right-angled triangle on this blackboard, and then you’ll give it its dimensions and then you’ll talk to me nicely about the square on the hypotenuse …’
One would have to be pretty determined, to get oneself ploughed by a man like that!
So I was as meek as a lamb with a pink ribbon round its neck and I said everything I knew.
Actually, it didn’t take long.
‘But you’re getting along splendidly.
Tell me, as well, how one recognizes that a number is divisible by 9, and I’ll let you off any more.’
I rattled off: ‘sum of the digits … necessary condition … adequate condition.’
‘You can go, my child, that’s enough.’
I stood up with a sigh of relief and found Luce behind me. She said:
‘You’re lucky, I’m so glad you were.’
She said it charmingly: for the first time, I stroked her neck without laughing at her.
Goodness!
It was me again!
One hadn’t time to breathe!
It was the porcupine, Lacroix; things were getting hot!
I installed myself; he looked at me over the top of his eyeglasses and said:
‘Ha! What was the War of the Two Roses?’
After the names of the leaders of the two factions, I stopped dead.
‘And then?
And then?