Claudine at School

by Colette

  ‘We certainly are! You’d think all the festivities were for us!’

  Anaïs did not breathe a word, too absorbed in her dignity, too busy searching out among the crowd, that made way before us, for boys whom she knew and who she imagined thought she was dazzling. Not beautiful today, nevertheless, in all that white – no, certainly not beautiful! … but her narrow eyes sparkled with pride all the same. At the crossroads of the Market, they shouted to us: ‘Halt!’ We had to let ourselves be joined by the boys’ school, a whole dark procession which was only kept in regular ranks with infinite difficulty. The boys seemed thoroughly contemptible to us today, sunburnt and awkward in their best suits; their great, clumsy hands held up flags.

  During the halt, we all three turned round, in spite of our importance: behind us Luce and her like leant like warriors on the spears of their pennants; the little thing was radiant with vanity and held herself straight, like Fanchette when she is showing off; she kept laughing low from sheer pleasure! And, as far as eye could see, under the green arches, with their starched, full-skirted dresses and their bushy manes, stretched the deep ranks of the army of female Gauls.

  ‘Forward march!’ We set off again, light as wrens; we went down the Rue du Cloître and eventually we passed that green wall made of trimmed yew that represented a fortified castle. As the sun struck hot on the road, they halted us in the shade of a little acacia wood just outside the town, there to await the arrival of the ministerial carriages. We relaxed a little.

  ‘Is my wreath keeping on all right?’ inquired Anaïs.

  ‘Yes … see for yourself.’

  I passed her a little pocket-mirror that I had prudently brought and we made sure that our head-dresses were in position … The crowd had followed us, but too tightly packed in the road, it had broken down the hedges that bordered it and was trampling down the fields, regardless of the second crop. The boys, delirious with excitement, carried bunches of flowers and flags, not to mention bottles! (I was sure of this because I had just seen one stop, throw back his head and drink from the neck of one that held a litre.)

  The ‘Society’ ladies had remained at the gates of the town and were seated, some on the grass, some on camp-stools, and all under parasols. They would wait there, it was more refined; it was unbecoming to show too much enthusiasm.

  Over there, flags floated over the red roofs of the station, towards which the crowd was hurrying; the noise of it retreated into the distance. Mademoiselle Sergent, all in black, and her Aimée, all in white, already out of breath from supervising us and trotting beside us, sat down on the grass, lifting up their skirts so as not to get green stains on them. We waited, standing. We had no desire to talk – I went over in my head the rather absurd little complimentary speech, composed by Antonin Rabastens, that I should have to recite in a moment.

  Mr Minister, – The children of the schools of Montigny, bearing the flowers of their native countryside …

  (If anyone has ever seen fields of camellias here, let them say so!)

  … come to you, full of gratitude …

  Boom!!! A fusillade bursting out at the station brought our mistresses to their feet.

  The shouts of the populace came to us in a muffled roar, that suddenly grew louder and came nearer, with a confused din of joyous cries, the tramp of innumerable feet and the gallop of horses’ hooves … Tense, we all watched the spot where the road turned … At last, at last, the vanguard came in sight: dusty urchins trailing branches and bawling; then floods of people; then two broughams that glittered in the sun and two or three laudaus from which emerged arms waving hats … We watched them, all eyes … The carriages approached at a slowed-down trot; they were there, in front of us.

  A young man in black evening clothes jumped out and offered his arm to support the Minister of Agriculture. The great man had not a ha’porth of distinction, in spite of the pains he took to appear imposing to us. I even found him slightly ridiculous, this haughty little gentleman, stout as a bullfinch, who was mopping his undistinguished brow and his hard eyes and his short, reddish beard for he was dripping with sweat. After all, he wasn’t dressed in white muslin – and cloth in this heat! …

  A minute of interested silence greeted him, then, immediately, came extravagant cries of ‘Long live the Minister! Long live Agriculture! Long live the Republic! …’ Monsieur Jean Dupuy thanked them with a cramped, but adequate gesture. A fat gentleman, embroidered in silver, wearing a cocked hat, his hand on the mother-of-pearl hilt of a little sword, came and placed himself on the left of the illustrious man; an old general with a little white goatee, a tall, bent man, flanked him on the right. And the imposing trio came forward, escorted by a troop of men in black evening clothes adorned with red ribbons, rows of decorations or military medals. Between the heads and shoulders I made out the triumphant face of that blackguard of a Dutertre. He was acclaimed by the crowd who made much of him being both the Minister’s friend and the future Deputy.

  I sought Mademoiselle’s eyes and asked, with my chin and my eyebrows: ‘Should I get on with the little speech?’ She signalled ‘Yes’ and I advanced with my two acolytes. A startling silence suddenly descended; – Heavens! How was I going to dare to speak in front of all these people? If only I wasn’t choked with that beastly stage-fright! – first of all, keeping well together, we dived into our skirts in a magnificent curtsy that made our dresses frou-frou and I began, my ears buzzing so much that I couldn’t hear my own voice:

  Mr Minister, – The children of the schools of Montigny, bearing the flowers of their native countryside, come to you, full of gratitude …

  And then my voice suddenly became firmer and I went on, clearly articulating the prose in which Rabastens guaranteed our ‘unshakeable loyalty to Republican institutions’, as calm now as if I were reciting Eugène Manuel’s The Dress in class.

  In any case, the official trio wasn’t listening to me; the Minister was reflecting that he was dying of thirst and the two other great personages were exchanging appreciative remarks in whispers:

  ‘Mr Prefect, wherever does that little peach spring from?’

  ‘Not the faintest idea, General. She’s as pretty as a picture.’

  ‘A little Primitive (he too!). If she looks in the least like a Fresnois girl, I’ll eat my …’

  ‘Pray accept these flowers of our maternal soil!’ – I concluded, offering my bouquet to His Excellency. Anaïs, looking supercilious as she always does when she is aiming at being distinguished, handed hers to the Prefect, and Marie Belhomme, crimson with emotion, presented hers to the General.

  The Minister mumbled a reply in which I caught the words ‘Republic … solicitude of the Government … confidence in the loyalty’; he got on my nerves. Then he remained motionless and so did I; everyone was waiting expectantly, then Dutertre bent down to his ear and prompted him: ‘Come on, you must kiss her!’

  Thereupon he kissed me, but clumsily (his harsh beard scratched me). The brass band of the main town blared the Marseillaise, and, doing an about-turn, we marched towards the town, followed by the banner-bearers; the rest of the Schools made way for us and, leading the majestic procession, we passed under the ‘fortified castle’, and returned once more under the leafy arches. All about us, people were shouting in a shrill, frenzied way, but we honestly gave no sign that we heard anything! Erect and crowned with flowers, it was the three of us they were acclaiming, quite as much as the Minister … Ah! if I had any imagination, I should have seen us at once as three king’s daughters, entering some ‘loyal town’ with their father; the girls in white would be our ladies-in-waiting, we would be being escorted to the tournament where the noble knights would dispute for the honour of … Heaven send that those wretched boys hadn’t overfilled the little coloured lamps with oil earlier this morning! With the jolts those urchins were giving to the posts on which they were perched, yelling, we should be a nice sight! We did not talk, we had nothing to say to each other; we had quite enough to do throwing out
our chests the way people do in Paris and leaning our heads in the direction of the wind to make our hair stream out …

  We arrived in the front-courtyard of the Schools, we halted and massed in close formation. The crowd surged in on all sides, beat up against the walls and climbed up on to them. With the tips of our fingers, we rather icily pushed away our companions who were over-anxious to surround us and overwhelm us. There were sharp exchanges of ‘Do be careful!’ ‘Well, you needn’t look as much as if butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth! You’ve had enough people staring at you all the morning!’ The lanky Anaïs greeted these jeers in disdainful silence; Marie Belhomme became fidgety; I restrained myself with great difficulty from pulling off one of my strapless shoes and applying it to the face of the bitchier of the two Jauberts who had slyly jostled me.

  The Minister, escorted by the General, the Prefect and a host of councillors, secretaries, and I don’t know what else (I’m not up in that world) who had forced a way for him through the crowd, had mounted the platform and installed himself in the handsome, over-gilded armchair that the Mayor had specially provided from his own drawing-room. A meagre consolation for the poor man who was tied to his bed with gout on that unforgettable day! Monsieur Jean Dupuy sweated and mopped himself; what would he not have given for it to be tomorrow! Still, that’s what he’s paid for … Behind him, in concentric semi-circles, sat the district councillors and the municipal council of Montigny … all those perspiring people couldn’t smell very agreeable … Well, and what about us? Was it over, our glory? Were we to be left down there, without anyone so much as offering us a chair? That was really too much! ‘Come on, all of you, we’re going to sit down.’ Not without difficulty, we made ourselves a gangway as far as the platform, we, the flag, and all the pennant-bearers. There, lifting my head, I hailed Dutertre in an undertone – he was chatting, leaning over the back of the Prefect’s chair right at the edge of the platform. ‘Sir, hi, Sir! Monsieur Dutertre, I say! … Doctor!’ He heard that appeal better than the others and bent down, smiling and showing his fangs: ‘It’s you! What do you want? My heart? I give it to you!’ I was quite sure he was drunk already.

  ‘No, Sir, I’d much rather have a chair for myself and some others for the girls with me. They’ve abandoned us there all by ourselves, with the mere mortals – it’s heart-rending.’

  ‘That cries out for justice, pure and simple. You shall all sit in tiers on the steps so that the populace can at least refresh its eyes while we’re boring them with our speeches. Up with the lot of you!’

  We did not wait to be asked twice. Anaïs, Marie, and I climbed up first, with Luce, the Jauberts, and the other pennant-bearers behind us. Their lances got caught and entangled in each other and they tugged them furiously, their teeth gritted and their eyes lowered because they thought the crowd was laughing at them. A man – the sacristan – took pity on them and obligingly collected the little flags and carried them away; no doubt the white dresses, the flowers, and the banners gave the good fellow the illusion that he was assisting at a slightly more secular Corpus Christi procession, and, from long force of habit, he removed our candles – I mean our flags – at the end of the ceremony.

  Installed and enthroned, we gazed at the crowd at our feet and the Schools in front of us, those Schools so charming today under the curtains of greenery and flowers, under all that quivering decoration that hid their bleak, barrack-like look. As to the vulgar herd of our schoolmates, left standing below, who stared at us enviously, and nudged each other and gave sickly smiles, we disdained them.

  On the platform, there was a scraping of chairs and some coughing: we half-turned round to see the orator. It was Dutertre; he was standing up, in the middle, lithe and bowing, and preparing to speak without notes, empty-handed. A deep hush descended. One could hear, as at High Mass, the shrill weeping of a small child who was pining to get away, and, just as at High Mass, it raised a laugh. Then:

  Mr Minister,

  He did not speak for more than two minutes; his speech was deft and ruthless, packed with fulsome compliments and subtle scurrilous allusions, of which I probably only understood a quarter. It was savage against the Deputy and charming towards all the rest of humanity; towards his glorious Minister and dear friend – they must have done some dirty deals together – towards his dear fellow-citizens, towards the Headmistress, ‘so unquestionably of the very highest order, Gentlemen, that the number of awards and certificates gained by her pupils dispenses me from any other encomium’, … (Mademoiselle Sergent, seated down below, modestly lowered hear head beneath her veil); even, believe it or not, towards us: ‘flowers carrying flowers, a feminine flag, patriotic and enchanting’. At this unexpected thrust, Marie Belhomme lost her head and covered her eyes with her hand, Anaïs renewed her vain efforts to blush, and I could not prevent myself from rippling my spine. The crowd looked at us and smiled at us, and Luce winked at me …

  … of France and of the Republic!

  The clapping and the shouts of applause lasted five minutes, so violent that they went bzii in one’s ears; while they were dying down, the lanky Anaïs said to me:

  ‘My dear, d’you see Monmond?’

  ‘Where? … Yes, I see him. Well, what about him?’

  ‘He keeps staring all the time at that Joublin girl.’

  ‘Does that give you corns?’

  ‘No, but honest! He must have queer tastes! Just look at him! He’s making her stand on a bench and he’s holding her up! I bet he’s feeling if she’s got firm calves.’

  ‘Probably. Poor Jeannette, I wonder whether it’s only the arrival of the Minister that’s put her in such a state of excitement! She’s as red as your ribbons and she’s trembling all over …’

  ‘Old thing, do you know who Rabastens is getting off with?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Look at him, you’ll soon see.’

  It was true; the handsome assistant-master was fixedly gazing at someone … and that someone was my incorrigible Claire, dressed in pale blue, whose lovely, rather melancholy eyes were dwelling with satisfaction on the irresistible Antonin … Good! My First Communion partner was caught again! It wouldn’t be long before I should be hearing romantic descriptions of meetings, of delights, of desertions … Lord, how hungry I was!

  ‘Aren’t you hungry, Marie?’

  ‘Yes, I am a bit.’

  ‘I’m dying of starvation. I say, do you like the milliner’s new dress?’

  ‘No, I think it’s loud. She thinks the more a dress shrieks at you, the smarter it is. The Mayoress ordered hers from Paris, did you know?’

  ‘Fat lot of good that’s done her! She wears it like a dog dressed-up. The watchmaker’s wife has got on the same bodice she wore two years ago!’

  ‘Yes, I know! Bet she wants to give her daughter a dowry so she’s got good reason, poor thing!’

  The revered little Jean Dupuy had stood up and was beginning his reply in a dry voice, wearing an air of importance that was highly diverting. Luckily, he did not speak for long. Everyone clapped, including ourselves, as loud as we could. It was amusing, all those heads waving, all those hands beating in the air down there at our feet, all those black mouths yelling … And what glorious sunshine over it all! a trifle too hot …

  There was a scuffling of chairs on the platform; all their Lordships were getting up. They signed to us to go down; they led the Minister away to feed; now we could go off to lunch!

  With great difficulty, tossed about in the crowd which kept pushing in opposite directions, we managed at last to get out of the courtyard into the square where the cohorts were thinning out a little. All the little girls in white were going off, alone or with immensely proud Mammas who were waiting for them; the three of us were going to separate, too.

  ‘Did you enjoy yourself?’ asked Anaïs.

  ‘Certainly I did. It went off very well – it was great fun!’

  ‘Well, to my mind … Somehow, I thought it would have been more amusing … It
needed a bit of livening-up, in fact!’

  ‘Shut up, you give me a pain! I know what you thought it needed. You’d have liked to stand up and sing something, all by yourself on the platform. Then the whole thing would have immediately seemed much gayer to you.’

  ‘Go on, you can’t hurt my feelings. Everyone knows what those polite remarks mean from you!’

  ‘As for me,’ confessed Marie, ‘I’ve never enjoyed myself so much in my life. Oh! What he said about us … I didn’t know where to hide myself! … What time do we have to be back?’

  ‘Two o’clock precisely. That means half past two, you can be quite sure the banquet won’t be finished before that. Goodbye, see you very soon!’

  At home, Papa inquired with interest:

  ‘Did he speak well, Méline?’

  ‘Méline! Why not Sully? It’s Jean Dupuy, you know, Papa!’

  ‘Why, yes.’

  But he found his daughter pretty and looked at her with satisfaction.

  After lunch, I tidied myself up; I rearranged my wreath of marguerites, I shook the dust off my muslin skirts and I waited patiently for two hours, fighting off with all my might a violent desire to take a siesta. Heavens, how hot it would be down there! – ‘Fanchette, don’t touch my skirt, it’s muslin. No, I’m not going to catch flies for you, can’t you see I’m receiving the Minister?’

  I went out once again; the streets were already humming and rang with the sound of footsteps, all of which were going downhill towards the Schools. Nearly all my schoolmates were already there when I arrived; red faces, muslin skirts already limp and crumpled; the crisp freshness of this morning had gone. Luce was stretching and yawning; she had eaten her lunch too fast; she was sleepy; she was too hot; she could ‘feel herself growing claws’. Anaïs alone remained the same; just as pale, just as cold, neither languid nor excited.

  Our two mistresses came down at last. Mademoiselle Sergent, her cheeks burning, was scolding Aimée who had stained the hem of her skirt with raspberry juice; the spoilt little thing sulked and shrugged her shoulders and turned away, refusing to see the tender beseeching in her friend’s eyes. Luce eagerly watched all this, fuming and sneering.