by Colette
In the morning, they woke us up at half past five: we got up in a state of torpor and I drenched myself in cold water to rouse myself a little. While I was splashing, Luce and the lanky Anaïs came in to borrow my scented soap, ask for a corkscrew, etc. Marie begged me to start plaiting her chignon for her. They were an amusing sight, all those little creatures, still half-asleep and wearing next to nothing.
We exchanged views on ingenious precautions to take against the examinations. Anaïs had copied out all the history dates she wasn’t sure of on the corner of her handkerchief (I should need a tablecloth!). Marie Belhomme had contrived to make a minute atlas which could be slipped into the palm of her hand. On her white cuffs, Luce had written dates, fragments of royal reigns, arithmetic theorems – a whole manual. The Jaubert sisters had also put down quantities of useful information on strips of thin paper which they rolled up in the tubes of their penholders. They were all very anxious concerning the examiners themselves; I heard Luce say: ‘In arithmetic, it’s Lerouge who takes the oral questions; in physics and chemistry, it’s Roubaud … apparently he’s an absolute beast; in literature, it’s old Sallé …’
I broke in:
‘Which Sallé? The one who used to be Principal of the college?’
‘Yes, that’s the one.’
‘What luck!’
I was delighted that I was to be questioned by this extremely kind old gentleman whom Papa and I knew very well; he would be good to me.
Mademoiselle Sergent appeared, concentrated and taciturn at this zero hour before battle.
‘You haven’t forgotten anything? Let’s be off.’
Our little squad crossed the bridge, mounted through various steep streets and lanes, and eventually arrived in front of a battered old porch, on whose door an almost-effaced inscription proclaimed it to be the Rivoire Institute. It had once been the Girls’ Boarding-School, but had been deserted for the past two or three years on account of its decrepitude. (Why did they park us there?) In the courtyard that had lost half its paving-stones, some sixty girls were chattering vivaciously, in well split-off groups; the schools didn’t mix with each other. There were some from Villeneuve, from Beaulieu, and from a dozen country-towns in the district; all of them clustered in little groups round their respective Headmistresses and making copious and far from charitable remarks about the other schools.
The moment we arrived, we were stared out of countenance and criticized from top to toe. I was singled out for particularly sharp scrutiny on account of my white dress with blue stripes and my big floppy lace hat which stood out against the black of the uniforms. As I smiled insolently at the candidates who were glaring at me, they turned away in the most contemptuous way imaginable. Luce and Marie flushed under the stares and shrank back into their shells: the gawky Anaïs exulted in the consciousness of being so hypercritically examined. The examiners had not arrived yet; we were merely marking time. I was getting bored. A little door without a latch yawned open on a dark corridor, lit at the far end by a luminous pane. While Mademoiselle Sergent was exchanging icily polite remarks with her colleagues, I slipped quietly into the passage: at the end was a glass door – or the remains of one – I lifted the rusty latch and found myself in a little square courtyard, by a shed. It was overgrown with jasmine and clematis, and there was a little wild plum-tree and all sorts of charming weeds, growing unchecked. On the ground – admirable find! – some strawberries had ripened and smelt delicious.
I promptly decided to call the others to show them these marvels! I went back to the playground without attracting attention and I informed my companions of the existence of this unknown orchard. After nervous glances at Mademoiselle Sergent who was talking to an elderly headmistress, at the door which had still not opened on the examiners (they sleep late, those chaps), Marie Belhomme, Luce Lanthenay, and the lanky Anaïs made up their minds, but the Jauberts refrained. We ate the strawberries, we plundered the clematis, we shook the plum-tree; then, hearing an even louder hullabaloo in the front courtyard, we guessed that our torturers had arrived.
As fast as our legs could carry us, we dashed back along the corridor; we arrived just in time to see a file of black-clad gentlemen, by no means handsome ones, entering the ancient building in solemn silence. In their wake, we climbed the staircase, the sixty-odd of us making a noise like a squadron of cavalry. But, on the first floor, they halted us on the threshold of a deserted study-room; we had to allow their Lordships to instal themselves. They sat down at a big table, mopped their brows, and deliberated. What about? the advisability of allowing us to enter? But no, I was certain they were exchanging observations about the weather and chatting about their trifling affairs while we were held back with difficulty on the landing and the stairs on to which we overflowed.
Being in the front rank, I was able to observe these great men: a tall, greying one with a gentle, grandfatherly expression – kind old Sallé, twisted and gouty, with his hands like gnarled vines – a fat short one, his neck swathed in a shot-silk cravat worthy of Rabastens himself – that was Roubaud, the terrible, who would question us tomorrow in ‘science’.
At last, they decided to tell us to come in. We filled this ugly old room, with its indescribably dirty plaster walls, scored all over with inscriptions and pupils’ names. The tables were appalling too, scarred with penknives and black and purple from inkpots upset over them in former days. It was shameful to intern us in such a hovel.
One of the gentlemen proceeded to allot us our places; he held a big list in his hand and carefully mixed all the schools, separating the girls from the same district as widely as possible, so as to avoid any communication between them. (Didn’t he realize one could always convey information?) I found myself at the end of a table, by a small girl, in mourning, with large, serious eyes. Where were my classmates? Far away, I caught sight of Luce who was sending me despairing signs and looks; Marie Belhomme was fidgeting about at a table just in front of her. They would be able to pass information to each other, those two weak vessels … Roubaud was going round distributing large sheets of writing-paper, stamped in blue on the top left-hand corner, and sealing-wafers. We all understood the routine; we had to write our names in the corner, along with that of the school where we had done our studies, then to fold over this corner and seal it. (The idea was to reassure everyone about the impartiality of the criticisms.)
This little formality over, we waited for them to be kind enough to dictate something to us. I looked about me at the little unknown faces, several of which made me feel sorry for them, they were already so strained and anxious.
Everyone gave a start; Roubaud had broken the silence and spoken: ‘Spelling test, young ladies, be ready to take it down. I shall repeat the sentence I dictate only once.’
There was a great hush of concentration. No wonder! Five-sixths of these little girls had their whole future at stake. And to think that all of those would become schoolmistresses, that they would toil from seven in the morning till five in the afternoon and tremble before a Headmistress who would be unkind most of the time, to earn seventy-five francs a month! Out of those sixty girls, forty-five were the daughters of peasants or manual labourers; in order not to work in the fields or at the loom, they had preferred to make their skins yellow and their chests hollow and deform their right shoulders. They were bravely preparing to spend three years at a Training College, getting up at five a.m. and going to bed at eight-thirty p.m. and having two hours recreation out of the twenty-four and ruining their digestions, since few stomachs survived three years of the college refectory. But at least they would wear hats and would not make clothes for other people or look after animals or draw buckets from the well, and they would despise their parents. And what was I, Claudine, doing here? I was here because I had nothing else to do and so that, while I was undergoing the ordeal of being questioned by these professors, Papa could mess about in peace with his slugs. I was also there ‘for the honour of the School’, to obtain one more Certifica
te for it, one more glory for this unique, incredible, delightful School …
They had crammed this dictation with so many participles and laid so many traps of ambiguous plurals and all the sentences were so twisted and inverted that the piece ended by making no sense at all. It was puerile!
I was pretty sure I had made no mistakes; all I had to do was to be careful about the accents, for they counted stray accents hovering in the wrong place over words as half-mistakes and quarter-mistakes. While I was reading it through again, a little ball of paper, very deftly aimed, landed on my exam sheet; the lanky Anaïs had written to me asking: ‘Should there be an s to trouvés, in the second sentence?’ She hadn’t the faintest idea, that Anaïs! Should I lie to her? No, I disdained her own usual methods. Raising my head, I signalled an imperceptible ‘Yes’ and, calmly, she made the correction.
‘You have five minutes for revision,’ announced the voice of Roubaud; ‘the handwriting test will follow.’
A second and larger ball of paper arrived. I looked about me: it came from Luce whose anxious eyes were seeking mine. But … but she was asking for four words! If I sent back the ball, I was sure it would get pinched. I had an inspiration, a really brilliant one: I took the black leather satchel containing pencils and charcoal (the candidates had to provide everything themselves) and, using a bit of plaster torn off the wall as chalk, I wrote down the four words that were worrying Luce. Then I suddenly lifted the satchel above my head, with its virgin side turned towards the examiners who, in any case, weren’t paying much attention to us. Luce’s face lit up; she made some hurried corrections: my neighbour, the girl in mourning, who had observed the scene, spoke to me:
‘I say, you, aren’t you frightened?’
‘Not much, as you see. Got to help one another a bit.’
‘Yes … of course. Still, I wouldn’t dare. You’re called Claudine, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. How did you know?’
‘Oh, you’ve been “talked of” for quite a time. I’m from the school at Villeneuve; our mistresses used to say about you: “She’s an intelligent girl but as impudent as a cock-sparrow and her tomboyishness and the way she does her hair set a very bad example. All the same, if she chooses to take the trouble to exert herself, she’ll be a redoubtable competitor in the exam.” You’re known at Bellevue too; they say you’re a bit crazy and more than a bit eccentric.’
‘Charming women, your teachers! But they’re more interested in me than I am in them. So tell them they’re only a pack of old maids who are furious because they’re running to seed. Tell them that from me, will you?’
Scandalized, she said no more. Besides, Roubaud was promenading his plump little pot-belly between the tables and gathering up our papers which he carried up to the others of his species.
Then he distributed other sheets of paper to us for the handwriting test and went off to inscribe four lines on the blackboard in a ‘beautiful hand’.
Tu t’en souviens, Cinna, tant d’heur et tant de gloire, etc., etc….
‘Young ladies, you are asked to execute a line of thick cursive, one of medium cursive, one of fine cursive, one of thick round-hand, one of medium round-hand, one of fine round-hand, one of thick slanting-hand midway between round and cursive, one of medium, and one of fine. You have one hour.’
It was an hour of rest, that hour. The exercise was not tiring and they were not very exacting about handwriting. The round-hand and the slanting suited me all right because they almost amounted to drawing; my cursive is vile; my looped letters and my capitals have considerable difficulty in keeping the prescribed number of ‘bodies’ and ‘half-bodies’. Never mind! I was feeling hungry when we got to the end of the period.
We fairly flew out of that depressing, musty room into the playground to rejoin our anxious teachers who were clustered in the shade that was not even cool. Promptly there was a torrential outburst of words and questions and laments: ‘Did it go well? What was the subject for dictation? Did you remember the difficult phrases?’
‘It was this – that – I put indication in the singular – I put it in the plural – the participle was invariable, wasn’t it, Mademoiselle? I wanted to correct it, and then, after all, I left it – such a difficult dictation! …’
It was past twelve and the hotel was so far away …
I was yawning from starvation. Mademoiselle Sergent took us to a nearby restaurant, as our hotel was too far away to walk back there in this oppressive heat. Marie Belhomme wept and wouldn’t eat, disheartened by three mistakes she had made (and every mistake took off two marks!). I told the Headmistress – who seemed to have forgotten all about my escapade of last night – our methods of communicating; she laughed over them, delighted, and merely cautioned us not to do too many rash things. During examinations, she egged us on to the worst kinds of cheating; all for the honour of the school.
While we were waiting for the period of French Composition, we were nearly all of us dozing on our chairs, overcome with heat. Mademoiselle was reading the illustrated papers and got up, after a glance at the clock: ‘Come along, children, we must go … Try not to make yourselves out too stupid in the paper you’re just going to do. And you, Claudine, if you’re not marked eighteen out of twenty for French Composition, I’ll throw you in the river.’
‘I’d be cooler there, at least!’
What dolts these examiners were! The most obtuse mind would have grasped that, in this crushing heat, we should have written more lucid French essays in the morning. But not they. Whatever we were capable of, at this hour?
Though full, the playground was more silent than this morning and their Lordships were keeping us waiting again! I went off by myself into the walled garden: I sat down under the clematis, in the shade, and I closed my eyes, drunk with drowsiness …
There were shouts and calls: ‘Claudine! Claudine!’ I started up, only half-awake for I had been well and truly asleep, to find myself faced with Luce, looking terrified as she shook me to my feet and dragged me along with her. ‘But you’re crazy! But you don’t know what’s happening! My dear, we went in a quarter of an hour ago! They’ve dictated the synopsis of the essay and then at last Marie Belhomme and I plucked up courage to say you weren’t there … they looked for you … Mademoiselle Sergent! out in the fields – and I thought maybe you were strolling about here … My dear, you aren’t half going to catch it, up there!’
I dashed up the staircase, Luce after me: a mild hullabaloo arose at my entrance and their Lordships, red from a prolonged luncheon, turned towards me:
‘You had forgotten all about it, Mademoiselle? Where were you?’ It was Roubaud who had spoken to me, half amiable, half thoroughly nasty.
‘I was in the garden over there. I was having a siesta.’ A pane of the open window showed me my dim reflection; I had mauve clematis petals in my hair, leaves on my frock, a little green insect and a lady-bird on my shoulder; my hair was in wild disarray … The general effect was not unattractive … At least, I could only presume so, for their Lordships considered me at length and Roubaud asked me point-blank:
‘You don’t know a picture called Primavera, by Botticelli?’
Aha! I was expecting that.
‘Yes, I do, Sir … I’ve been told that already.’
I had cut the compliment off short and he pinched his lips with annoyance. The black-coated men laughed among themselves; I went to my place, escorted by these reassuring words mumbled by Sallé, a worthy man, although he was too short-sighted to recognize me, poor fellow: ‘In any case, you’re not late. Copy the synopsis written on the blackboard, your companions have not begun yet.’ There, there, he needn’t have been frightened – I wasn’t going to scold him!
Forward, French Composition! This little adventure had given me new heart.
‘Synopsis – Develop the thoughts and comments aroused in you by these words of Chrysale: “What matter if she fails to observe the laws of Vaugelas,” etc.’
By unheard-of-luck, it
was not too stupid or too repellent a subject. All round me I could hear anxious and agonized questions, for most of these little girls had never heard of Chrysale nor of Les Femmes savantes. They were going to make a splendid hash of it! I couldn’t help laughing over it in advance. I prepared a little lubrication that wasn’t too silly, adorned with various quotations to prove that one knew one’s Molière tolerably well; it went quite well and I ended up by being quite oblivious to what was going on about me.
As I looked up in search of a recalcitrant word, I noticed that Roubaud was deeply absorbed in sketching my portrait in a little notebook. I was quite agreeable, and I resumed the pose without appearing to do so.
Paf! Yet another little ball had dropped. It was from Luce: ‘Can you write me one or two general ideas? I’m in a hopeless mess, I’m simply wretched. I send you a kiss from the distance.’ I looked at her and saw her poor little face was all blotched and her eyes red. She answered my look by a despairing shake of the head. I scribbled down everything I could for her on a bit of tracing-paper and launched the ball, not in the air – too dangerous – but along the ground in the aisle that separated the two rows of tables, and Luce deftly put her foot on it.
I titivated up my final version, developing the things that pleased them and displeased me. Ouf! Finished! I could have a look at what the others were doing …
Anaïs was working without raising her head, sly and secretive, her left arm curved over her paper to prevent her neighbour from copying. Roubaud had finished his sketch and it was getting late, though the sun was almost as high as ever. I was exhausted: tonight I would go to bed virtuously with the others, with no music. I went on observing the classroom; a whole regiment of tables in four ranks, extending right down to the end; the bent black figures of little girls of whom all one could see were smooth chignons or hanging plaits, tight as ropes; very few light dresses, only those of elementary schools like ours; the green ribbons at the necks of the boarders from Villeneuve made a splash of colour. There was a great hush, disturbed only by the faint rustle of paper being turned over or by a sigh of weariness … At last, Roubaud folded up the Fresnois Monitor, over which he had dozed a little, and took out his watch: ‘Time is up, young ladies. I will collect your papers!’ A few faint groans were heard; the little things who hadn’t finished took fright and asked for five minutes’ grace which was granted them; then the examiners collected up the fair copies and left us. We all stood up, yawning and stretching, and, before we had reached the bottom of the staircase, the groups had re-formed. Anaïs rushed up to me: