From time to time, a little girl in white forced her way through to the steps of the platform, climbed up and got herself hustled and pushed into the back rows by Mademoiselle whose nerves were on edge from all these delays and who was champing her bit under her eye-veil. She was even more furious on account of little Aimee who was making great play with her long lashes and her lovely eyes at a group of draper’s assistants who had bicycled over from Villeneuve.
A great
‘Ah!’ heaved the crowd towards the doors of the banqueting-room which had just opened to let out the Minister, even redder and more perspiring than this morning, followed by his escort of black dress-suits.
Already people made way for him with more familiarity, with smiles of recognition: if he stayed here three days, the rural policemen would be tapping him on the stomach, asking him for a tobacconist’s shop for his daughter-in-law who’s got three children, poor girl, and no husband.
Mademoiselle massed us on the right-hand side of the platform, for the Minister and his confederates were going to sit on this row of seats, the better to hear us sing.
Their Lordships installed themselves; Dutertre, the colour of Russia leather, was laughing and talking too loud, drunk, as if by accident.
Mademoiselle threatened us under her breath with appalling punishments if we sang out of tune, and off we went with the Hymn to Nature: ‘Lo, the sky is tinged with morning, Glowing beams grow brighter yet: Haste, arise! the day is dawning, Honest toil demands our sweat!’
(If it’s not content with the sweat of the official cortege, honest toil must demand a great deal!)
The small voices were a little lost in the open air; I did my very utmost to superintend the ‘seconds’ and the ‘thirds’ simultaneously.
Monsieur Jean Dupuy vaguely followed the beat by nodding his head; he was sleepy, dreaming of the report in the Petit Parisien.
The whole-hearted applause woke him up; he stood up, went forward and clumsily complimented Mademoiselle Sergent who promptly turned shy, stared at the ground and retired into her shell … Queer woman!
We were dislodged and the pupils of the boys’ School took our place. They had come to bray in chorus a completely imbecile song: ‘Sursum corda!
Sursum corda!
Up all hearts! this noble order
Be the cry that spurs our soul! Rally, brothers, thrust aside All that might our wills divide, March on firmly to the goal!
Fling cold selfishness away,
Traitors, who for wealth betray, Are not such a bitter foe To the burning love we owe As patriots to … etc., etc …’
After them, the brass-band of the main town,
‘The Friendly Club of Fresnois’, came to shatter our ears.
It was excessively boring, all this!
If I could only find a peaceful corner … And then, since no one was paying the least attention to us, upon my word, I left without telling anyone. I went back home, I undressed and I lay down till dinnertime.
Why not? I should be fresher at the ball!
At nine o’clock, I was standing on the steps in front of the house, breathing in the coolness that was falling at last.
At the top of the street, under the triumphal arch, ripened paper balloons in the shape of huge coloured fruits.
All ready, my gloves on, a white hood under my arm, a white fan clasped in my fingers, I waited for Marie and Anais who were coming to fetch me … Light footsteps and well-known voices were heard approaching down the street, it was my two friends … I protested:
‘Are you mad?
To leave for the ball at half past nine!
But the room won’t even be lit up – it’s ridiculous!’
‘My dear, Mademoiselle said:
“It’ll begin at half past eight. In this part of the world, they’re like that, you can’t make them wait.
They’ll rush off to the ball as soon as they’ve wiped their mouths!”
That’s what she said.’
‘All the more reason not to imitate the boys and girls round here!
If the “dress-suits” dance tonight, they’ll arrive about eleven, as people do in Paris, and we shall already have lost our bloom from dancing!
Come into the garden for a little with me.’
They followed me, much against their wills, into the dusky tree-lined paths where my cat Fanchette, dressed in white, like us, was dancing after moths, capering like a crazy creature … She mistrusted the sound of strange voices and climbed up into a fir-tree, from which her eyes followed us, like two tiny green lanterns.
In any case, Fanchette despised me these days: what with the examination, and the opening of the Schools, I was never there any more. I no longer caught her flies, quantities of flies, that I impaled in a row on a hatpin and which she picked off delicately in order to eat them, coughing occasionally because of a wing stuck uncomfortably in her throat; I hardly ever gave her coarse cooking-chocolate now or the bodies of butterflies, which she adored, and sometimes, in the evening, I went so far as to forget to ‘make her room’ between two volumes of Larousse – patience, Fanchette darling!
Soon I shall have all the time in the world to tease you and make you jump through a hoop because, alas! I shall never be going back to the School …
Anais and Marie could not keep still and only answered me with absent-minded Yeses and Noes – their legs were itching to dance.
All right, we would go since they were so desperately keen to be off!
‘But you’ll see that our lady mistresses won’t even have come downstairs!’
‘Oh! You know, they’ve only got to come down the little inside staircase to find themselves right in the ballroom; they’ll take a peep now and then through the little door to see whether it’s the right moment to make their entrance.’
‘Exactly. Whereas if we arrive too early, we’ll look utter fools, all by ourselves – except for three cats and a calf – in that enormous room!’
‘Oh! You’re simply maddening, Claudine!
Look? if there’s nobody there, we’ll go up the little staircase and rout out the boarders and we’ll go downstairs again when the dancers have arrived!’
‘All right. In that case, I’m quite willing.’
To think I had feared that this great room would be a desert!
It was already more than half-full of couples who were gyrating to the strains of a mixed orchestra (mounted on the garlanded platform at the end of the room); an orchestra composed of Trouillard and other local violinists, trombonists and cornet-players mingled with sections of
‘The Friendly Club of Fresnois’ in gold-braided caps.
All of them were blowing, scraping, and banging, far from in unison but with tremendous spirit.