"Et une boussole dans l'estomac!" said Mlle. Marceline.
I don't think he was quite so innocent as all that, perhaps—but no young beast of the field was ever more harmless.
That year the examinations were good all round; even I did not disgrace myself, and Barty was brilliant. But there were no delightful holidays for me to record. Barty went to Yorkshire, and I remained in Paris with my mother.
There is only one thing more worth mentioning that year.
My father had inherited from his father a system of shorthand, which he called Blaze—I don't know why! His father had learnt it of a Dutch Jew.
It is, I think, the best kind of cipher ever invented (I have taken interest in these things and studied them). It is very difficult to learn, but I learnt it as a child—and it was of immense use to me at lectures we used to attend at the Sorbonne and Collège de France.
Barty was very anxious to know it, and after some trouble I obtained my father's permission to impart this calligraphic crypt to Barty, on condition he should swear on his honor never to reveal it: and this he did.
With his extraordinary quickness and the perseverance he always had when he wished a thing very much, he made himself a complete master of this occult science before he left school, two or three years later: it took me seven years—beginning when I was four! It does equally well for French or English, and it played an important part in Barty's career. My sister knew it, but imperfectly; my mother not at all—for all she tried so hard and was so persevering; it must be learnt young. As far as I am aware, no one else knows it in England or France—or even the world—although it is such a useful invention; quite a marvel of simple ingenuity when one has mastered the symbols, which certainly take a long time and a deal of hard work.
Barty and I got to talk it on our fingers as rapidly as ordinary speech and with the slightest possible gestures: this was his improvement.
Barty came back from his holidays full of Whitby, and its sailors and whalers, and fishermen and cobles and cliffs—all of which had evidently had an immense attraction for him. He was always fond of that class; possibly also some vague atavistic sympathy for the toilers of the sea lay dormant in his blood like an inherited memory.
And he brought back many tokens of these good people's regard—two formidable clasp‑knives (for each of which he had to pay the giver one farthing in current coin of the realm); spirit‑flasks, leather bottles, jet ornaments; woollen jerseys and comforters knitted for him by their wives and daughters; fossil ammonites and coprolites; a couple of young sea‑gulls to add to his menagerie; and many old English marine ditties, which he had to sing to M. Bonzig with his now cracked voice, and then translate into French. Indeed, Bonzig and Barty became inseparable companions during the Thursday promenade, on the strength of their common interest in ships and the sea; and Barty never wearied of describing the place he loved, nor Bonzig of listening and commenting.
"Ah! mon cher! ce que je donnerais, moi, pour voir le retour d'un baleinier à Ouittebé! Quelle 'marine' ça ferait! hein? avec la grande falaise, et la bonne petite église en haut, près de la Vieille Abbaye—et les toits rouges qui fument, et les trois jetées en pierre, et le vieux pont‑levis—et toute cette grouille de mariniers avec leurs femmes et leurs enfants—et ces braves filles qui attendent le retour du bien‑aimé! nom d'un nom! dire que vous avez vu tout ça, vous—qui n'avez pas encore seize ans … quelle chance! … dites—qu'est‑ce que ça veut bien dire, ce
'Ouïle mé sekile rô!'
Chantez‑moi ça encore une fois!"
And Barty, whose voice was breaking, would raucously sing him the good old ditty for the sixth time:
"Weel may the keel row, the keel row, the keel row,
Weel may the keel row
That brings my laddie home!"
which he would find rather difficult to render literally into colloquial seafaring French!
He translated it thus:
"Vogue la carène,
Vogue la carène
Qui me ramène
Mon bien aimé!"
"Ah! vous verrez," says Bonzig—"vous verrez, aux prochaines vacances de Pâques—je ferai un si joli tableau de tout ça! avec la brume du soir qui tombe, vous savez—et le soleil qui disparait—et la marée qui monte et la lune qui se lève à l'horizon! et les mouettes et les goëlands—et les bruyères lointaines—et le vieux manoir seigneurial de votre grand‑père … c'est bien ça, n'est‑ce pas?"
"Oui, oui, M'sieur Bonzig—vous y êtes, en plein!"
And the good usher in his excitement would light himself a cigarette of caporal, and inhale the smoke as if it were a sea‑breeze, and exhale it like a regular sou'‑wester! and sing:
"Ouïle—mé—sekile rô,
Tat brinn my laddé ôme!"
Barty also brought back with him the complete poetical works of Byron and Thomas Moore, the gift of his noble grandfather, who adored these two bards to the exclusion of all other bards that ever wrote in English. And during that year we both got to know them, possibly as well as Lord Whitby himself. Especially "Don Juan," in which we grew to be as word‑perfect as in Polyeucte, Le Misanthrope, Athalie, Philoctète, Le Lutrin, the first six books of the Æneid and the Iliad, the Ars Poetica, and the Art Poétique (Boileau).
Every line of these has gone out of my head—long ago, alas! But I could still stand a pretty severe examination in the now all‑but‑forgotten English epic—from Dan to Beersheba—I mean from "I want a hero" to "The phantom of her frolic grace, Fitz‑Fulke!"
Barty, however, remembered everything—what he ought to, and what he ought not! He had the most astounding memory: wax to receive and marble to retain; also a wonderful facility for writing verse, mostly comic, both in English and French. Greek and Latin verse were not taught us at Brossard's, for good French reasons, into which I will not enter now.
We also grew very fond of Lamartine and Victor Hugo, quite openly—and of De Musset under the rose.
"C'était dans la nuit brune
Sur le clocher jauni,
La lune,
Comme un point sur son i!"
(not for the young person).
I have a vague but pleasant impression of that year. Its weathers, its changing seasons, its severe frosts, with Sunday skatings on the dangerous canals, St.‑Ouen and De l'Ourcq; its genial spring, all convolvulus and gobéas, and early almond blossom and later horse‑chestnut spikes, and more lime and syringa than ever; its warm soft summer and the ever‑delightful school of natation by the Isle of Swans.
This particular temptation led us into trouble. We would rise before dawn, Barty and Jolivet and I, and let ourselves over the wall and run the two miles, and get a heavenly swim and a promise of silence for a franc apiece; and run back again and jump into bed a few minutes before the five‑o'clock bell rang the réveillé.
But we did this once too often—for M. Dumollard had been looking at Venus with his telescope (I think it was Venus) one morning before sunrise, and spied us out en flagrant délit; perhaps with that very telescope. Anyhow, he pounced on us when we came back. And our punishment would have been extremely harsh but for Barty, who turned it all into a joke.
After breakfast