I sat down; she studied me with big, puzzled, good-natured eyes, without saying a word.
‘You are … musical, Mademoiselle Sergent told me.’
‘Yes, Mademoiselle, I play the piano.’
She threw up her arms and exclaimed: ‘Then you know much more about it than I do.’
It was a cry from the heart; I couldn’t help laughing.
‘Dear me, now! Listen … I’m going to make you read at sight and that’ll be all.
I’ll find you something difficult, you’ll get through it without any trouble.’
The ‘something difficult’ she found was a fairly simple exercise which, being all in semiquavers, with seven flats in the key-signature, had seemed to her ‘black’ and redoubtable.
I sang it allegro vivace, surrounded by a circle of admiring little girls who sighed with envy.
Mademoiselle Michelot nodded her head, and, without further insistence, awarded me a 20 which made the audience turn green.
Ouf!
So it was actually over!
Soon I would be back in Montigny; I would return to school, run about the woods, watch the frolics of our instructresses (poor little Aimee, she must be languishing, all by herself!).
I tore down to the playground; Mademoiselle Sergent was only waiting for me and stood up as soon as she saw me.
‘Well! Is it all over?’
‘Yes, thank the Lord!
I’ve got twenty for music.’
‘Twenty for music!’. My companions shouted the words in chorus, unable to believe their ears.
‘It only needed that – that you should not have got twenty for music,’ said Mademoiselle, with an air of detachment, but secretly flattered.
‘All the same,’ said Anais, annoyed and jealous, ‘twenty for music, nineteen for French Composition … if you’ve got a lot of marks like those!’
‘Don’t worry, sweet child, the elegant Roubaud will have marked me extremely stingily!’
‘Because?’ inquired Mademoiselle, promptly uneasy.
‘Because I didn’t have much to say to him.
He asked me what wood they made flutes out of, no, pencils, something of that sort, and then something or other about ink … and about Botticelli … Quite frankly, the two of us didn’t “click”.’
The Headmistress’s brow darkened again.
‘I should have been extremely surprised if you hadn’t done something idiotic!
You’ll have no one but yourself to blame if you fail.’
‘Alas, who knows?
I shall blame it on Monsieur Antonin Rabastens – he has inspired me with a violent passion and my studies have suffered deplorably as a result.’
At this, Marie Belhomme clasped her midwife’s hands and declared that, if she had a lover, she would not say it so brazenly.
Anais looked at me out of the corner of her eye to find out if I were joking or not, and Mademoiselle, shrugging her shoulders, took us back to the hotel, lagging and dropping behind and dawdling so much that she invariably had to wait for someone at every turning.
We had dinner; we yawned. At nine o’clock we were smitten again with the fever of going to read the names of the elect on the gates of that ugly Paradise.
‘I shan’t take any of you,’ declared Mademoiselle, ‘I shall go alone and you will wait here.’
But there arose a concert of groans that she relented and let us come.
Once again we took candles as a precaution, but this time they were not needed; a benevolent hand had hung a big lantern over the white notice on which our names were inscribed … there, I’m going a little too fast in saying ‘our’ … suppose mine wasn’t to be found in the list?
Anais would have fainted from joy!
Luckily in the midst of exclamations, shoves from behind and much clapping of hands, I read out: Anais, Claudine, etc … All of us, in fact!
Alas, no, not Marie:
‘Marie’s failed,’ murmured Luce.
‘Marie’s not on it,’ whispered Anais, hiding her malicious delight with considerable difficulty.
Poor Marie Belhomme remained rooted to the spot, her face quite white, in front of the cruel sheet which she studied with her glittering, birdlike eyes huge and round: then the corners of her mouth pulled down and she burst into noisy tears … Mademoiselle took her away, annoyed; we followed, without giving a thought to the passers-by who looked back.
Marie was moaning and sobbing out loud.
‘Come, come, little girl,’ said Mademoiselle. ‘You’re being unreasonable. You can try again in October, you’ll have better luck … Why think, that gives you two more months to work in …’
‘Oh, oh!’ wailed the other, inconsolable.
‘You’ll pass, I tell you!
Look, I promise you that you’ll pass!
Now are you satisfied?’
This affirmation did, indeed, have a happy result.
Marie no longer did more than give little grunts, like a month-old puppy when you stop it from sucking the teat, and walked along dabbing her eyes.
Her handkerchief was wringing wet and she ingenuously wrung it out as we walked over the bridge.