‘Nut gall … tannin … iron monoxide … gum …’
‘You don’t know the proportions?’
‘No.’
‘Pity!
Can you tell me something about mica?’
‘I’ve never seen it anywhere except in the little panes in the doors of stoves.’
‘Really?
Once more, a pity!
The lead in pencils, what is it made of?’
‘Graphite, a soft stone that is cut into thin rods and enclosed between two halves of a wooden cylinder.’
‘Is that the only use of graphite?’
‘I don’t know any others.’
‘As usual, what a pity!
Only pencils are made with it?’
‘Yes, but a great many are made; there are some mines in Russia, I think.
People consume a fabulous quantity throughout the entire world, especially examiners who sketch portraits of candidates in their notebooks …’
(He blushed and fidgeted.)
‘We will pass on to English.’
Opening a little collection of Miss Edgeworth’s Tales, he said:
‘Please translate a few sentences for me.’
‘Translate, yes, but read … that’s another matter!’
‘Why?’
‘Because our English mistress pronounces it in a ridiculous way.
And I don’t know how to pronounce it otherwise.’
‘Pooh! What does that matter?’
‘It matters that I don’t like making a fool of myself.’
‘Read a little, I’ll pull you up at once.’
I read but in a very low voice, hardly articulating the syllables and I translated the sentences before I had uttered the last words.
Roubaud burst out laughing, in spite of himself, at such eagerness not to display my deficiency in English and I felt like scratching his face.
As if it were my fault!
‘Good.
Will you give me some instances of irregular verbs, with their form in the present tense and in the past participle?’
‘To see, I saw, seen.
To be, I was, been.
To drink, I drank, drunk.
To …’
‘That’s enough, thank you, Good luck, Mademoiselle.’
‘Too kind of you, Sir.’
I discovered the next day that that hypocrite had given me extremely bad marks, three below the average, so that I would have been ploughed if my marks for written work, especially for French Composition, hadn’t pleaded in my favour.
Beware of these underhand men in pretentious neckties who stroke their moustaches and pencil your portrait while giving you surreptitious looks!
It was true that I had annoyed him, but the fact remains that straightforward bulldogs like old Lacroix are worth a hundred of him!
Delivered from physics and chemistry as well as English, I sat down and busied myself with making my disordered hair look slightly more artistic.
Luce made a bee-line for me and obligingly rolled my curls round her finger, kittenish and cuddling as usual!
She certainly had courage, in a temperature like that!
‘Where are the others, baby?’
‘The others? Oh, they’ve all finished, they’re down in the playground with Mademoiselle.
And all the girls from the other schools who’ve finished are down there too.’
The room was, in fact, rapidly emptying.
That fat, kind Mademoiselle Michelot summoned me at last.
She was red and exhausted enough to make Anais herself feel sorry for her.