“Valérie’s fourth uncle,” said Colette.
Gustave and Koufra held the door ajar in order to watch the tele screen. It was, indeed, Uncle Florentin, a notary in the foremost office in Lille, another somewhat strong-minded man with an expansive manner, but very busy.
“Good day, my child… Still serious, I see; I’m delighted… I scarcely have time to embrace you and chat for a while… You’re right, I approve; you’ll succeed; you’ll be a palaeographical archivist—your aunt is happy and proud in anticipation!”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“It’s admirable, the past reborn before your eyes, men of distant centuries reappearing, in their true context, in their true features! One ends up knowing them better than one’s contemporaries. How I’d love that!”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“And then, beneath the dust of ancient documents, parchments indecipherable for the layman, one discovers the true reasons, the real causes of great events, revolutions… it’s fascinating! And the secrets of kings and queens, the mysteries of courts: one has the right to be indiscreet—it’s fascinating! Study, work, prepare yourself! How I’d love to be in your shoes!”
“Yes, Uncle…”
Valérie was able to return to her friends. She sighed a little. Her uncles, who took such a paternal interest in her education and her future, were so good! She reproached herself for not having showed them enough affection, for not having asked them about their health, and that of her aunts, and the whole set of little cousins of both sexes.
“Well, that’s the family council concluded,” said Gustave. “Have you decided anything?”
“Well, Mademoiselle Yes Uncle,” Colette added, “I’ll wager that you haven’t yet said anything, that you haven’t yet revealed to your uncles that you’re thinking of going into the diplomatic service?”
“Or that you want to be an astronomer?” said someone else.
“A stockbroker… a tax inspector… a veterinarian… captain of a long-haul vessel…”
“Yes, my children,” said Gustave, “you have no suspicion of the resolution and obstinate determination of Mademoiselle Yes Uncle… Yes, yes, she does not deign to make the slightest objection to Uncle Lucien or Uncle Pierre, any more than to Uncle Georges or Uncle Florentin, because she refuses to argue, but the truth is that she has a secret vocation that she will unveil when the time is ripe—probably something extraordinary, perhaps even blameworthy. Then people can say what they want, but you’ll see: nothing will make her yield!”
“Yes, Uncle…yes, Gustave!”
VII. An Automotive Plow Race
on the Agronomy Course.9
On returning to school on Monday morning, they were able to see that the weather was improving. It was not raining; a pleasant and gentle Sun displayed itself. The classes in practical agronomy at Chambourcy and Villennes were overflowing with merriment. At Chambourcy, they were rubbing their hands joyfully at the fine day in prospect.
“We have to organize an automotive trenching-plow race against Villennes,” Gustave said. “I’ve mentioned the idea to Colette and she’s already talked about it in whispers.”
“Perhaps we ought to go over last year’s course, in order to do a little revision in agronomy,” suggested a few timorous pupils.
“Hang on, I’ll put you through a rapid exam. Tell me what the differences are between cereals, leguminous vegetables and oleaginous plants? Are carrots cereals? Do rye and maize grow on trees? You know all that? Good, that’s fine, you’re all up to scratch. Monsieur Thomassin would be proud of you.”
The pupils of Chambourcy got astride bicycles and motorcycles in order to reach the site of the course rapidly. A little cloud of dust on the road on the far side announced the arrival of the Villennes pupils.
Next to the absent-minded Monsieur Radoux, traveling at a moderate speed well behind the other pupils, was Marcel Labrouscade, the school’s future great littérateur, who was discussing—or, rather, arguing about—poetry with the form-master. Labrouscade’s literary opinions, which were very advanced, sometimes exasperated Monsieur Radoux, but as the school magazine—of which Labrouscade was the editor—occasionally published Monsieur Radoux’s verses, signed with a pseudonym, they nevertheless had an understanding.
“I have the beginning of a little poem to communicate to you, my dear master,” said Labrouscade. “It’s inspired by the agronomy course. I’d like to bring Virgil up to date, for he isn’t any longer, and in a few years, no one will understand him any longer…”
“Oh!” said Monsieur Radoux.
“Yes, yes—a Virgil in tune with the march of progress, do you see? That would be rather interesting. Listen to my little trial…
“The pensive agriculturalist, on his polyplow, dreams of importation;
“Watching over his engine, firm at the steering-wheel, he lets the clutch in or out.
“And the machine, pricking, forcing, piercing, rolling over the glebe ’tis furrowing,
“With its 12 pointed plowshares…”10
“What’s that?”
“I told you—a fragment of a didactic poem inspired by today’s course…”
“Those are lines of verse?”
“Short lines, only 20 feet…that’s a concession to partisans of ancient rhythms, because of the age-old subject-matter. I hesitated between 20 feet, the double Alexandrine, and even 30 feet, which I find quite musical…”
Monsieur Radoux and the poet Labrouscade were delayed by their discussion; when they arrived on the terrain, the course was already under way.
On a concrete-covered area in the very center, near the buildings of a rectilinear model farm, which looked as if had been taken out of a box for an agricultural exhibition, the savant professor of modern agronomy, the engineer Thomassin, was speaking, with a roll of papers in his hand.
“…I repeat that I am not content! You have not lived up to the expectations of your professors; our farm at Chambourcy-Villennes has not yielded the expected practical results, permitting the partial remuneration of the capital invested… In spite of all the trouble that your professors have gone to, the balance-sheet is deplorable!”
The schoolboys of Chambourcy, lined up to the right and the schoolgirls of Villennes, grouped to the professor’s left, tried to impose mournful expressions on their physiognomy. How, in spite of the ardor they had put into the work, and the prodigies of activity an intelligence they had deployed in the previous year, had the agricultural endeavors of Chambourcy and Villennes Schools, both in the first rank, turned out so badly?
Gustave Turbille affected authentic amazement. How? It was incomprehensible! There had not been any cataclysm, nor even any gross atmospheric perturbations.
“The figures are there, unfortunately!” the professor went on. “Quality of produce decidedly inferior, yield ridiculously mediocre, 80% below average! The administration, which has made considerable sacrifices for the practical organization of courses, expected that our cereal production might at least supply the flour required by the two schools…
“Well, it’s a shame! A deficit of 75%. And our legumes, the importance of which was explained to you by the savant specialist professor—do you know the figure at which last year’s production of our legumes was evaluated in Les Halles? You have no suspicion? Well, exactly 66.50 francs—just 66.50 francs! What a balance-sheet! How shameful! How offensive! But we won’t rest on that; we shall pick ourselves up, we shall catch up! We must! Your honor is at stake; you will throw yourselves furiously into study and work; you will struggle zealously and competitively. Chambourcy will not allow itself to be outdone by Villennes, nor Villennes by Chambourcy!”
“Yes, yes, Monsieur! No, no! Yes, Monsieur!” cried the pupils to the right and the pupils to the left.
Gustave offered an example of stern resolution to Chambourcy, raising his hand toward the heavens as if he were taking an oath, as if he were swearing by Ceres, the ancient goddess of agriculture—for want of one more modern�
�and Colette did the same for Villennes.
“Yes, yes—we won’t let ourselves be outdone in a little while with the trenching-plow and automatic digger,” Gustave added, in a low voice, nudging his comrades.
“In his laboratory, the agricultural chemist meditates on,
“Compost and phosphates, analyzes and weighs…” Labrouscade wrote in his notebook. “Good! My poem’s growing—better than our wheat! It’s always the way…”
The eminent professor, after his severe exposé of the results of the previous year, so painful for the self-respect of the two schools, spoke for a further half an hour. It was a little preparatory theoretical summary before passing on to the practical course. He recalled preceding studies of the physical and chemical properties of the soil, which it was necessary to know for the purposes of crop rotation, and explained the different chemical operations comprising agriculture; he talked about selection, fertilization… Today, they were going to proceed with the initial operations: ploughing, clearing, sowing….
The students took notes, and the inspired Labrouscade immediately put the formulas into verses of 20 feet…or thereabouts.
In front of the wide-open machine-shed—in which one could admire rollers, harrowers, harvesters, automotive reapers of the most improved models, extremely complicated and refined instruments bristling with teeth, rakes, combs and plowshares of every shape and size, combined in all sorts of unexpected and extraordinary ways—the mechanics had brought out four large trenching-polyplows, admirable in their cleanliness and shininess, with an impressive and almost menacing appearance, like machines of war, all of them ready to hurtle forward to attack the work.
There were two for Chambourcy and two for Villennes; the pupils’ ranks closed up in order to hear the explanations of their functioning given by the mechanics.
The explanations, trials and supplementary explanations took a good half-hour. Koufra scribbled notes furiously. Labrouscade penned fragments of verse, of which he only had to adjust the meter on going back inside. Gustave grew impatient, sometimes interrupting the mechanic in order to prove that he understood the mechanism well enough to start the plow moving without attachments or hoppers.
The professor designated two pupils per plow as drivers. Gustave Turbille had been the first to be chosen, naturally; the second Chambourcian machine was entrusted to the studious Koufra. For Villennes, Colette was also designated as a driver.
Monsieur Thomassin gave the signal. Gustave immediately started his engine. Koufra would have had difficulty doing the same on the second machine; his notes, when consulted, said nothing about that—fortunately, his acolyte, more knowledgeable about automobiles, took hold of the steering-wheel.
The Chambourcy pupils followed behind the machines, while the professor climbed on to a little belvedere, from the top of which he could follow their movements.
“Now comes the truly interesting moment!” Gustave shouted to his sister Colette, as he passed alongside her while turning round. “We’ll meet again after the first turn!”
The two schools’ plows set off, turning their backs to one another at first; when they reached the limits of their particular ground they were turn round and come back to the central path, where they would meet, only to depart again on a second furrow, and so for the entire field.
At the first turn, Gustave, standing up on his polyplow, called out to his sister Colette, who was concentrating hard on the steering-wheel for the sake of the elegance of her furrow-reversal. “Hey!” he cried. “What diggers we’d make! Here are furrows that one would have thought traced by ruler, but have been done by hand and eye! Personally, I prefer fantasy and well-executed flourishes…but beware of bad reports and deficits in the yield! All the same, this plowing doesn’t seem to me to be sufficiently sportive; we’ll give it a little interest, won’t we? Let’s go…flat out! I’ll give you half a dozen furrows…”
The automotive plows accelerated; Colette’s made an abrupt jump as it turned, earth flying up from beneath the blades.
“Look out—no tricks!” said Gustave. “Perfectly straight furrows!”
From his observatory, the professor was soon able to observe the acceleration of speed and a few irregular turns, which he initially attributed to an excess of determination on the part of pupils desirous of redeeming the faults of the previous year.
“Too much zeal!” he shouted, as the plows passed in front of him. “Slow down!”
“You can never have too much zeal!” shouted Gustave, when he was far enough away from the professor. “Giddy up, you old nag! Giddy up, my 25 fine horses! And up with Chambourcy! Hey, Villennians, this might shake you up more than tennis, don’t you think?”
Indeed, it was becoming more exciting than tennis. As they got further away from the master’s eye, the furrows were no longer designed in such a neatly—stupidly, Gustave said—rectilinear fashion; they affected curves unusual in banal plowing, sometimes cutting out artistic flourishes, like those the audacious Gustave liked so much, or even zigzagging in an incoherent fashion—especially on the Villennes side, when Colette was subject to distractions that were translated into hesitations of the steering-wheel.
What a race, in the end! The pupils of the two schools, on the central path, became very excited, amusing themselves madly and shouting encouragement to their respective teams at the top of their voices; it was already evident that Chambourcy would win, by ten or 12 furrows.
At each passage, Gustave offered Colette mocking consolations on Villennes’ behalf; the racket of laughter and shouting increased to such an extent that Monsieur Thomassin’s advice, criticisms an objurgations were lavished utterly in vain.
“Won—in an armchair!” said Gustave, jumping to the ground after the last furrow.
Koufra was also glad to get down; several times over he had thought that he might fall head-first from his perch in front of the terrible plowshares. Finally, no accident—and a win! Villennes, humiliated, bowed its head.
Monsieur Thomassin manifested his discontent. “Certainly,” he said, “I can give credit to the pupils of Chambourcy in particular, but I disapprove of that inordinate speed. It’s necessary to control one’s ardor. At any rate, we shall catch up, I hope, with the sowing. Calm and deliberation in the movement!”
For greater safety, he placed a mechanic in each automotive sower. Gustave pleaded fatigue and ceded his place to Koufra. The sowing was therefore done in a less sportive but more regular fashion. Gustave found the rest of the operations dull, and that spoiled the day.
Among all the pupils of Chambourcy going back after the course, there was only the poet Labrouscade who was showing a little enthusiasm. He brought back 35 completed lines of his modernized Virgil—each of 20 feet—15 half-lines, and a few brand-new mechano-poetic ideas, plus a certain number of rare rhymes to mount in the first stanzas. He murmured his 35 complete lines to Monsieur Radoux while pedaling alongside him.
VIII. Poetry Champion and Editor-in-Chief
of the Free Student.
Gustave’s best friend at the school—after Koufra, of course—was the audacious inventor of rhymes Marcel Labrouscade, one of the glories of Chambourcy, a future great man, firmly determined to force his way into the Académie française before 30, and, in the meantime, the editor-in-chief of The Free and Universal Student, Magazine of the Open Air School of Chambourcy.
This magazine had commenced the publication of The Amended Virgil, but Labrouscade had had the chagrin of not seeing his Modern Georgics greeted with the enthusiasm he had expected to burst forth. Labrouscade, alas, had received a certain number of threats to cancel subscriptions, accompanied by critiques formulated with frank brutality. They subject was thought to be too classical and the poem soporific to a superlative degree.
One can disdain bad reviews, scorning them and abusing their authors—obtuse brains, obstinate or obliterated—and one can even offer a few rounds in the boxing ring to excessively virulent detractors, but cancelled subscriptio
ns are more annoying. Labrouacade was gripped by melancholy, and interrupted the publication of his poem. To give a little animation to his journal and revive subscriptions, he launched into a polemic directed against the Villennes School Magazine.
This little war was ignited in connection with the course in modern agronomy, by pointed jokes and excessively lively mockery regarding the deplorable weakness of Villennes in all sports, up to and including mathematics. Labrouscade having offered some humiliating advice, as if to little debutants, Villennes retaliated, and its magazine, instead of replying to the sporting criticisms, indulged in a malicious parody of Labrouscade’s poem, of which it published a pastiche in lines of 75 feet, signed by Mademoiselle Colette Turbille, the very own sister of his old comrade.
And the battle was joined!
That was not all. The editor of the Free Student, thus provoked, avid for combat and filled with righteous fury, still had another affair in hand.
He was in the grounds, in a deserted corner for which he had a particular fondness when he had to mediate, far from the football players, for some sensational number, and was mentally preparing a sharp riposte to Mademoiselle Colette, when his friend Gustave appeared unexpectedly, unaccustomedly grave and solemn.
“I have something important to say to you, Monsieur Labrouscade.”
“I don’t have time—you’re distracting me…”
“You’ll have to make time. You’re going to follow me to the tele…”
“Eh? What? Why? What are you saying? What do you want from me?”
“Personally, as a friend, I don’t want anything! I remain your friend. You can welcome me like a dog at a game of skittles—it’s all the same to me! You insult me, I insult you; as friends, that’s unimportant…but as a second sent to you by an adversary, that’s another thing, and I demand satisfaction!”
Chalet in the Sky Page 5