CHAPTER VI

The Abbé Grégoire's College--The reception I got there--The fountains play to celebrate my arrival--The conspiracy against me--Bligny challenges me to single combat--I win.

It was arranged that I should go to the Abbé Grégoire's college in Villers-Cotterets instead of to the Seminary. They styled the Abbé Grégoire's school a _College_, just as in England the illegitimate sons of noblemen are called "lords."

It is a matter of courtesy.

However that may be, it was decided that I should go to the Abbé Grégoire's college.

Oh! if I begin to talk of the Abbé Grégoire, I shall go on indefinitely,--for he was an upright, worthy, and saintly man.

He was not a genius, he was something better than that--he was a thoroughly good man; during the years he governed the school two hundred scholars passed through his hands, and I do not know of a single one who has turned out badly.

During the forty years he served the church at Villers-Cotterets, not a single petty scandal which could make the irreligious or the libertine smile had ever been brought against him. Mothers who had confessed to him in their girlhood and during his youth took their daughters to him in full confidence, for they knew that then, as in their own time, only good and fatherly advice would be given through the confessional grating.

He never had a servant or a housekeeper; he lived with his sister, a little wizened old lady, rather hunch-backed, rather inclined to be shrewish, who adored--nay, who worshipped her brother.

Poor dear abbé, what a life we led him! How we enraged him, how he scolded us, and how much he loved us!

It was the same with him as with Hiraux; I loved him so warmly before there was any thought of being his pupil, that I submitted to the great change in my life without the least dread. Besides, what was it, compared with the Seminary?

His classes began at half-past eight in the morning, directly after mass, and closed at noon. We all went home to our dinner for an hour, then returned at one o'clock; at five minutes past one, school began again, and went on until four.

Add to this Sundays, saints'-days, greater feasts and lesser feasts, and you can see my life was not a very hard one.

As a whole, I was not very much liked by the other children of the town at that age; I was vain and impudent and overbearing, and filled with self-confidence and admiration for my small person; yet, notwithstanding all this, I was capable of good feeling, when heart, rather than intellect or self-love, was called into play.

As far as physical qualities went, I was quite a pretty child: I had long, fair, curly hair, which fell on my shoulders, and which did not turn crisp until my fifteenth year; large blue eyes, which even until now have retained somewhat of their early freshness; a straight nose, small and well shaped; thick red sensitive lips; white but uneven teeth. In addition to this, my complexion was dazzlingly white, due, so my mother believed, to the brandy my father had made her drink during her pregnancy; it turned darker when my hair became crisp.

I was in figure as long and thin as a lath.

The school accommodation was not large: twenty-five or thirty pupils were enough to fill it, and it was quite an event when a fresh pupil arrived in the midst of the small circle.

It was a great event on my side too. I was dressed in a suit the whole of which was made out of a coat that had been my grandfather's. It was the colour of _café au lait_, deepened in tone, spotted all over with black points. I felt very proud of it, and I thought it would create quite a sensation among my comrades.

At eight o'clock one Monday morning, in the autumn, I took my way to the source whence I was to drink deep of the water of knowledge. I walked solemnly along, with my nose held proudly up, carrying my library of grammars, the _Epitome historiæ sacræ_, dictionaries and other aids under my arm, all of them as new as my clothes, and I enjoyed in anticipation the effect my appearance would produce upon the communion of martyrs.

The entrance to the courtyard at the Abbé Grégoire's was through a great door, which seemed like the entrance to a deep vault, and opened on the rue de Soissons. This door was wide open, and I looked through into the courtyard: it was empty.

I guessed at first that I was late and everyone was already in school. I quickly stepped across the threshold; as soon as the door closed behind me I heard loud shouts of glee, and a dewiness, which strongly resembled a shower, descended upon me from the top of a double amphitheatre of barrels.

I raised my eyes, and beheld each pupil perched on a barrel, in the same attitude and performing the same action, as the _Manneken-Pis_ fountain of Brussels. The fountains were playing in honour of my arrival.

Such a manner of reception displeased me greatly. I took to my heels, in order to protect myself from this novel kind of shower-bath; but I had stood for a moment in hesitation and astonishment; then, when my mind was made up, I had had five or six paces to go before I was free; so, when I came out of the vault-like passage, I was streaming all over.

I was by nature very tearful. Often, as a child, I would sit down in a corner and cry without any reason. Then, as I always spoke of myself, like Cæsar, in the third person, and as they had adopted this manner of addressing me, for the fun of it, my mother would come to me and ask:

"Why is Dumas crying?"

"Dumas cries," I would reply, "because Dumas has tears."

This answer relieved her of all uneasiness, and nearly always satisfied my mother, who would go away laughing, leaving me to cry on at my leisure.

If I cried without any motive, the reader will readily understand that, when there was a strong incentive, there was all the more reason why I should give way to torrents of tears.

What more justifiable excuse could I have had than the humiliation to which I had just been subjected and the injury it had just done my new suit?

Therefore, when the Abbé Grégoire came by to say mass, he found me on the steps, in floods of water, like the Biblis of M. Dupaty.

The abbé had scarcely come in view when my schoolfellows came up to me, surrounded me in rings on the staircase, and, with every appearance of deep interest, asked each other why I was crying. The Abbé Grégoire broke through the hypocritical circle, ascended two or three steps, and, putting up his eyeglass, for he was as blind as a mole, looked at me and asked me what was the matter.

I was about to reply when I saw twenty shut fists behind the abbé, and twenty threatening faces making significant gestures at me. I uttered a howl, at which the abbé turned round: immediately all the faces smiled, all the hands were returned to their pockets.

"But what is the matter with him?" asked the abbé.

"We don't know," replied the hypocrites; "he has been going on like that ever since he came."

"What! he has cried ever since he came?"

"Yes, indeed he has. Hasn't he? hasn't he? hasn't he?"

"Yes! yes! yes!" all the voices responded. "Dumas is crying."

"Come, what are you crying for, Dumas?"

"Oh!" replied one of them who knew the tradition, "Dumas is probably crying because 'Dumas has tears'--"

This mocking remark infuriated me.

"No!" I cried, "no, I am not crying because I have tears; I am crying because--because--because they have made water on my head, there!"

The crime was so unusual, the idea so whimsical, that the abbé made me repeat the accusation twice over; then, turning to his pupils, he said:

"Go upstairs, gentlemen; we will go into this matter there."

"Ah! you brat! ah! you tell-tale! ah! you traitor!" a dozen lads whispered to me; "you wait a bit,--we'll see when school is over--!"

The abbé turned round.

All were silent, and they entered the classroom.

Each boy took his place, but I, who had not one, remained standing.

"Come here, my young friend," said the abbé.

"Here I am, M. l'abbé," I said, whimpering.

He felt me.

"The child is soaked through--!"

My lamentations broke forth afresh.

"Of course he is wet," said a big boy; "think of the time he has been crying."

"What!" cried the abbé, "you dare to suggest that his own tears have soaked him like this?"

"Certainly!"

"But, M. l'abbé," I exclaimed, "I could not cry down my back, and I am as wet behind as in front."

The abbé verified my statement.

"You are right," he said. "No recreation at midday; bring me the cane at once; and you boys must do three hundred lines by to-morrow morning."

Then arose a chorus of complaints and groans equal to those Dante heard in the first circle of the Inferno.

With these groans and complaints fierce threats were mingled which made my flesh creep.

Nevertheless, they had to submit: the abbé kept up the ancient scholastic traditions; he had a deaf ear and a vigorous hand; and a thrashing all round with the cane increased the groans, the complaints, and the threats.

I realised that I was collecting a storm over my head which would result later in a hail of fisticuffs.

The caning had this much good, that it did away with work during all that class; not a line was written from nine o'clock to midday, under pretext that the abbé had hit so hard that their hands were numbed.

The abbé accepted the excuse.

At noon, each boy tried to find some excuse to escape retention. It was incredible the things they had to do and what importance their going out was that day.

I remember three of the excuses given: Saunier had to take his clarionet lesson; Ronet had to take a dose of oil; Leloir ought to be drawing for conscription!

These three pretexts were handed in by the three scholars named Saunier, Ronet and Leloir.

Needless to relate, the clarionet lesson, castor oil, and drawing for conscription had to wait till the next day, and at midday I went out of college absolutely alone.

Oh! what profound reflections I made as I returned home! How well I realised that it would have been far better to laugh at the joke, no matter how grim it was, than to cry as I had done! I placed Heraclitus a thousand times higher than Democritus!

My mother was much struck by my sadness, and she questioned me closely upon the causes of my melancholy, but I had been too ready to tell tales, and I preserved profound silence.

At one o'clock I returned to the college: all the lads had had their dinner sent in to them from their homes; the greater number of these dinners, let it be said, to the parents' honour, consisted of a simple slice of dry bread.

The complaints and groans had stopped, but the threatenings had increased, the clouds were lowering and full of lightnings. I could not raise my nose from the paper upon which I was declining _rosa_ but I caught sight of a fist which had nothing in common with the declension I was writing out.

I realised that, when I went out, I was going to be beaten to pulp. The bigger boys were too conscious of their superior strength to threaten the most, for they felt they could not take revenge on a child: the worst were those of about my own age, specially a lad called Bligny, the son of a draper, living in the place de la Fontaine, who was so angry with me that by common consent the task of taking a general vengeance on me was consigned to him. Bligny was two years older than I, so that I had been used to look upon him as a big lad, although I was really as tall as he.

I was therefore not too well at ease at the prospect of a duel with him.

Still, I had so often heard the story of the three duels my father had fought when he first entered the army, on behalf of the honour of the king and the queen, that I knew I must not shirk my first fight.

I was so preoccupied that I made quite a dozen mistakes in the three or four declensions I had to do during school hours.

I do not know how long the time may have seemed to my companions, but I know that never before had it seemed to me to fly so fast. Four o'clock struck, and the Abbé Grégoire said his prayer before I thought half the class was over.

There was nothing to be done but to leave, and I decided upon my line of action. I tied up my books in as leisurely a fashion as possible, hoping that, if I went down the staircase last, the torrent would have flown by and I should find a free passage; yet I knew in my inmost heart that I had brought too great a punishment down on my head by my denunciation to get off so cheaply.

I could have spoken to the Abbé Grégoire, and he would himself have taken me home or sent his sister Alexandrine with me; but I felt that that would be cowardly, and would only defer matters. M. Grégoire or his sister could not always conduct me home; there would come a day when I should be obliged to go by myself, and then I should be certain to have a brush with one or other of my schoolfellows.

I resolved, therefore, to face the danger and to take the bull by the horns.

Remember, all these thoughts were whirling in the head of a lad only ten years old.

I took my stand, I said good-bye to the Abbé Grégoire, I heaved a big sigh, and then I went downstairs.

I was not mistaken: the whole school was seated in a semi circle, like Roman spectators, on the raised seats of their amphitheatre; and, standing at the bottom of the stairs, with his coat off and his shirt sleeves tucked up, Bligny awaited me.

Ah! I confess that when I reached the turn of the stair case and saw all these preparations taken for the inevitable battle, my heart failed me, and I nearly ran up again; but although I had tried to repress my momentary hesitation it had not escaped my comrades; there was a general outcry and the most scurrilous epithets were yelled at me from the courtyard below. I felt myself turn pale and tremble all over, and a cold sweat broke out on my forehead. I took measure of the two extremities to which I was reduced,--either to receive a few blows in the eye or on the teeth and all would be settled, or ever afterwards to be the sport of my schoolfellows and to have to go through it afresh each day. I gripped hold of my courage, which was fast ebbing away; I pulled myself together by an act of the will, till I felt myself completely master of the situation. There was a brief struggle, at the end of which I felt my moral courage getting the better of my physical; reason conquered instinct.

All the same, I felt that I wanted an incentive to goad me forward, that that goad was within my own control, and that, if I would use it, I must stimulate my courage with lashing words.

"Ah!" I said, looking at Bligny--"Ah! is this the game?"

"Yes, this is the game," he replied.

"You want to fight, then, do you?"

"Yes, rather."

"Ah! you are longing for it?"

"Yes."

"Ah! really?"

"Yes."

"Well, then, come on!"

I had now goaded myself to action; I put my books on the ground, I threw off my jacket, and I hurled myself upon my antagonist, shouting:

"Ah! you want to fight!... ah! you want to fight!... take that! and that! and that!"

Marshal de Saxe, that great military philosopher, said very truly that the whole art of war consists in pretending not to be afraid and in inspiring fear in the enemy.

I appeared quite fearless, and Bligny was beaten.

I do not wish to imply he was beaten without a contest, not so; but it would have been better for him if he had not fought: he received a blow in the eye, another blow on his mouth, and made a hasty retreat after this double attack, which he only opposed by a feeble hit at my nose. The whole affair was over in less than a minute, and the victory was mine.

I ought to do my comrades the justice of saying that this victory was followed by unanimous applause.

I then put my jacket on again, and collected my books, murmuring:

"You see! you see! you see!" which seemed to mean, "Look at me, see what I am! a coward at bottom, but when driven to desperation, an Alexander, a Hannibal, or a Cæsar; you see!"

This seemed also to be the opinion of the spectators, for they opened their ranks to let me pass through, and I went out through the great porch, recently the scene of my humiliation and now my triumphal arch. I found a book which had dropped out of Bligny's waistcoat when he staggered from my blow; and, as I considered that the spoils of the conquered belonged by right to the conqueror, I picked it up and carried it off.

I opened it as I took it away, and saw it was M. Tissot's well-known work.

I did not know what the title meant, and I allowed my mother to take the book away from me and to hide it.

Two years afterwards I discovered it and read it.

Had I read it the day of my victory it would have been fruitless, because I should not have understood it.

Two years later it was providential.