Are We to Teach Latin?
This question of Latin in our schools, with which we have been bored for some time, reminds me of a story, a story of my youth.
I was finishing my school life with the proprietor of one of those boarding-schools in a large town in the Provinces—the Institution Robineau, celebrated throughout the province for the high standard of the Latin which was taught there.
For ten years the Institution Robineau had beaten in the scholarship examinations the Imperial School of the town and all the colleges of the subprefecture, and its constant success was due, people said, to an usher, a simple usher, M. Piquedent, or rather Daddy Piquedent.
He was one of those grey men, whose age it was impossible to guess, but whose history was plain to read. He had probably taken a place as usher in some school at the age of twenty so that he might have leisure to study for the licentiate in letters, and afterwards for the degree of Doctor of Literature, and had found himself so entangled in this ill-fated life that he had remained an usher forever. But his love for Latin had not left him, and tormented him like a morbid passion. He continued to read poets, prose-writers, historians, to interpret them, to penetrate their meaning, to comment on them with a perseverance which bordered on madness.
One day the idea struck him to make all the pupils of his class answer him only in Latin, and he kept them at it until they were capable of keeping up an entire conversation with him, just as if they were speaking their mother tongue. He listened to them like a conductor at a rehearsal of an orchestra, every now and then striking his desk with his ruler:
“Lefrère, Lefrère, you are making a solecism. Don’t you remember the rule?”
“Plantel, the turn of your phrase is French, not in the least Latin. Try to understand the genius of the language. Listen to me!”
As a consequence, the pupils of the Institution Robineau carried off at the end of the year all the prizes for Latin composition, translation and oratory.
Next year, the proprietor, a little man as clever as a monkey and nearly as grotesque in his grimaces, printed on his programs and advertisements and printed on the board of the Institution:
“Speciality of Latin studies. Five first prizes obtained in the five classes of the Lycée. Two prizes with special mention in the General Examination of all schools and colleges of France.”
During ten years the Institution Robineau triumphed in this way. So my father, attracted by this success, put me as a day-boarder with this Robineau, whom we called Robinetto or Robinettino, and made me take private lessons from Daddy Piquedent at the rate of five francs per hour, of which he had two and the proprietor three. I was eighteen then and in the highest form.
These private lessons took place in a little room looking out over the street, and so it happened that Daddy Piquedent, instead of talking Latin to me, as he did in the class, told me all his troubles in French. Having neither relations nor friends, the poor chap became very fond of me and poured out all his misery on my bosom.
Never in the last ten or fifteen years had he been alone with anyone.
“I am like an oak in the desert,” said he. “Sicut quercus in solitudine.”
The other ushers disgusted him; he knew no one in the town, since he had no free time in which to make acquaintances. “Not even the nights, my friend; and that is the hardest for me. My only dream would be to have a room, furnished with my books and with little things of my own which no one else had the right to touch. And I have nothing of my own, nothing but my clothes, nothing, not even my mattress and my pillow. I have not even four walls where I can shut myself up except when I come to give a lesson in this room. Can you understand that? A man who passes all his life without ever having the right, without even having the time, to shut himself up alone, no matter where, to think, to reflect, to work, to dream! Ah, my friend, a key, the key of a door that I could lock—that would be happiness—the only happiness I want.
“Here, in the daytime the classroom with all those rascals shuffling about, at night the dormitory with the same rascals snoring—and I sleep in public in a bed at the end of two rows of these little imps over whom I have to keep watch. I can never be alone, never! If I go out, the street is crowded, and if I am tired of walking, I can only go into a café full of smokers and billiard-players. I tell you it is a prison!”
I asked him:
“Why have you not tried some other career, M. Piquedent?”
He cried out:
“And which, my young friend, which? I am neither bootmaker nor carpenter, nor hatter, nor baker, nor barber. I know nothing but Latin, and I have no diploma allowing me to sell it dear. If I were a Doctor of Literature, I could sell for a hundred francs what I sell for five, and probably give less value for it, for my degree would be enough to justify my interpretation.”
Sometimes he used to say to me:
“I have no rest in life except the hours I pass with you. Don’t be afraid, you will lose nothing. I will make up for it by making you answer twice as often as the others in the classroom.”
One day I was bold enough to offer him a cigarette. He looked at me at first almost stupefied, then at the door:
“Suppose someone came in, my boy?”
“Well, we will smoke at the window,” said I to him.
We went to lean on the windowsill above the street, hiding the little cylinders of tobacco in the hollows of our hands.
Opposite us was a laundry—four women dressed in white cotton running the heavy hot iron up and down over the linen before them, raising a thin vapour.
Suddenly another, a fifth, carrying in her arms a large basket that bent her double, came out, to carry home to the customers their shirts, handkerchiefs and sheets. She stopped at the door as if she were already tired, then she raised her eyes, smiled on seeing us smoking, threw us with her free hand the knowing kiss of a careless workgirl, and went away with a slow step, dragging her feet.
She was a girl of twenty, little, rather thin, pale, quite pretty, a knowing look, laughing eyes under light hair badly arranged.
Daddy Piquedent, moved, murmured:
“What a life for a woman! Only fit for a horse.”
And he grew sentimental over the wretchedness of the people. He had the overexcited heart of the sentimental democrat, and he spoke of the fatigues of the working-classes with phrases borrowed from Rousseau and tears in his voice.
Next day, as we were leaning out of the window, the same girl saw us and called out: “Hullo, boys,” in a funny little voice, offering us a catch with her hands.
I threw her a cigarette, which she began to smoke at once. And the four other ironers rushed to the door, holding out their hands to get one too.
Day by day, friendly gestures passed between the workers of the pavement and the idlers of the boarding-school.
Daddy Piquedent was comic to watch. He was shaking with fright that he would be seen, for he might have lost his place, and he used to make timid and ridiculous gestures, as if he were the lover in a play, to which the women answered with a volley of kisses.
A wicked idea was germinating in my head. One day, as I came into our room, I said under my breath to the old usher:
“You would hardly believe me, M. Piquedent, I have met the little laundress! You know the one I mean, the one with the basket, and I have spoken to her!”
“What did she say to you?”
“She said—good heavens—she told me … that she liked the look of you. In fact, I believe … I believe … she is a little bit in love with you. …”
I saw him turn pale; he replied:
“She is laughing at me, no doubt. Things like that do not happen at my age.”
I said in a serious tone:
“Why not? You are very presentable!”
I felt he was taken in by my scheme, and so I said no more.
But every day I pretended that I had met the girl and spoken to her about him; so successful was I that he ended by believing me and by sending her ardent and convinced kisses.
Then it happened one morning that I really did meet her on my way to school. I stepped up to her on the spot as if I had known her for ten years.
“Good day, Mademoiselle. How are you?”
“Very well, thanks, sir!”
“Would you like a cigarette?”
“Oh! not in the street.”
“You can smoke it at home.”
“Then I should like one.”
“I say, Mademoiselle, you don’t know—”
“What don’t I know?”
“The old man, my old teacher …”
“Daddy Piquedent?”
“Yes, Daddy Piquedent. So you know his name?”
“I should say I did. Well?”
“Well, then, he is in love with you.”
She began to laugh wildly, and cried:
“What a lark!”
“Not at all, it’s no lark. He talks about you all the lesson hour. I bet he’d marry you!”
She stopped laughing. The thought of marriage sobers all girls. Then she repeated, still incredulous:
“What a lark!”
“I swear it’s true.”
She picked up the basket lying at her feet.
“Very well, we shall see,” said she.
And she went away.
No sooner had I entered the school than I took Daddy Piquedent on one side:
“You must write to her, she is out of her wits about you.”
And he wrote a long letter, sweetly tender, full of phrases and periphrases, of metaphors and comparisons, of philosophy and scholastic gallantry, a true masterpiece of burlesque grace, which I undertook to deliver to the young person.
She read it gravely, with emotion, and then she murmured:
“How well he writes! You can see he has had an education! Is it true that he would marry me?”
I answered boldly:
“I should say so! He is off his head about it!”
“Then he must invite me to dinner on Sunday at the Isle of Flowers.”
I promised that she should get an invitation.
Daddy Piquedent was very much moved by all that I told him about her. I added:
“She loves you, M. Piquedent; and I believe her to be a respectable girl. You must not seduce her and leave her in misery!”
He answered with decision:
“I myself am a respectable man, my friend.”
I had not, I own, any plan. I was planning a hoax, a schoolboy hoax, nothing more. I had guessed the simplicity of the old usher, his innocence and his weakness. I was amusing myself without a thought of the consequences. I was eighteen, and I had had the reputation in the school of a sly dog for a long time.
So it was agreed that Daddy Piquedent and I should take a fly to the boathouse at the Cow’s Tail, where we would find Angela, and that I should row them up in my boat, for at that time I had a boat. I was to take them then to the Isle of Flowers, where we would all three have dinner. I had insisted on being there, to enjoy my success, and the old fellow accepted my plan, proving beyond doubt that he had lost his head, by running the risk of dismissal.
When we got to the quay, where my boat had been moored since the morning, I saw in the grass, or rather above the high herbage of the brink, an enormous red umbrella like a gigantic toadstool. Under the umbrella was the little laundress in her Sunday best. I was surprised, she was really very nice, though a little on the pale side, and graceful, even though she had rather a suburban air.
Daddy Piquedent took off his hat with a bow. She held out her hand, and they looked at each other without saying a word. Then they got into the boat and I took the oars.
They were sitting side by side in the stern.
The old fellow spoke first:
“What pleasant weather for a jaunt on the river!”
“Oh, yes,” she murmured.
She let her hand drag in the stream, skimming the water with her fingers, that raised a thin translucent sheet like a blade of glass, making a tiny noise, a pleasant lapping along the sides of the boat.
When we were in the restaurant, she found her voice again, and ordered the dinner: whitebait, a chicken, and salad; afterwards she took us for a walk on the island, which she knew thoroughly.
She was lighthearted now, playful, and even a little inclined to mockery.
Until dessert, nothing was said about love. I had provided some champagne, and Daddy Piquedent had taken too much. A little excited herself, she called him: M. Piquenez.
Without any preparation, he said:
“Mademoiselle, M. Raoul has told you my feelings.”
She became as serious as a judge.
“Yes, sir!”
“Do you feel any response to them?”
“People don’t answer such questions!”
He heaved with emotion and went on:
“But will a day come when I could please you?”
She smiled:
“You great stupid! You are very nice.”
“But, Mademoiselle, do you think that later we could …”
She hesitated a second, then, with a trembling voice, said: “It is marriage you mean when you say that, isn’t it? Otherwise nothing doing, you know?”
“Yes, Mademoiselle!”
“Very well, all right, M. Piquenez!”
And thus it happened that these two chuckle-heads resolved to get married to each other, by the machinations of a careless boy. But I did not believe it serious, nor perhaps did they. A thought occurred to her.
“You know, I have nothing, not a penny.”
He stammered, for he was as drunk as Silenus:
“But I have saved five thousand francs.”
She cried out in triumph:
“Then we could set up together?”
He became uneasy:
“Set up what?”
“How should I know? We’ll see. You can do a lot of things with five thousand francs. You don’t want me to come and live in your boarding-school, do you?”
He had not looked so far ahead, and stammered perplexedly:
“Set up what? It’s not so easy! I don’t know anything but Latin!”
She reflected in her turn, passing in review all the professions which she had dreamed of.
“Couldn’t you be a doctor?”
“No, I have no diploma!”
“Nor a chemist?”
“Not that either!”
She uttered a cry of joy. She had found the solution.
“Then we will buy a grocer’s shop. Oh! what luck! We will buy a grocery. Not a big one, of course: you can’t go very far on a thousand francs.”
The idea revolted him.
“No, I can’t be a grocer. I am … I am … I am too well known. All I know … all I know … is Latin … I …”
But she answered by putting a full glass of champagne between his lips. He drank and was silent.
We got into the boat again. The night was dark, very dark. I could see, however, that they were sitting with their arms round each other’s waists, and that they kissed each other now and then.
It was a frightful castastrophe. The discovery of our escapade led to the dismissal of Daddy Piquedent. My father, justly offended, sent me to finish my course in the Ribaudet boarding-school.
I passed my entrance examination six weeks later. Then I went to Paris to study law at the university, and only came back to my native city two years later.
Turning into the Rue du Serpent, a shop caught my eye. On it appeared: Colonial Products Piquedent, and below, for the benefit of the more ignorant: Grocery.
I cried out:
“Quantum mutatus ab illo!”
He raised his head, left his customer, and rushed at me with his hands outstretched.
“Ah, my young friend, here you are at last! Splendid! Splendid!”
A fine plump woman suddenly jumped from behind the desk and threw herself round my neck. I could hardly recognise her, she had grown so stout.
I asked:
“So you’re doing well?”
Piquedent had returned to his weighing:
“Oh! very well, very well, very well. I made three thousand francs net this year!”
“And the Latin, M. Piquedent?”
“Oh! good heavens, Latin, Latin, Latin! I tell you there’s no nourishment in it for a man.”