In the meantime, alas! I had to spend many long and wearisome hours in
going through the form of studying my lessons.
Topffer, who is the only real poet of school-boys, that genus so
misunderstood, divides us into three groups: first, those who are in
boarding schools; second, those who do all their studying at home at a
window which overlooks a gloomy courtyard containing a twisted old fig
tree; third, those who also study at home in a bright little room whose
window commands a view of the street.
I belonged to that third class whom Topffer considers extraordinarily
privileged, and as likely, in consequence, to grow up into happy men.
My room was upon the first floor, and it opened into the street; it had
white curtains, and its green paper was embellished with bouquets of
white roses. Near the window was my work desk, and above it, upon a
book-shelf, was my very much neglected library.
In fine weather I always opened this window, but I kept my venetian
blinds half-closed, so that I might look out without having my idleness
seen, and reported by a meddlesome neighbor. Morning and evening I
glanced to the end of the quiet street that stretched its sunny length
between the white country houses and lost itself among the old trees
growing beyond the ramparts. I could see from there the occasional
passers-by, all well known to me, the neighborhood cats that prowled
within doorways or upon house-tops, the swifts darting about in the warm
air, and the swallows skimming along the dusty street. . . . Oh! how
many hours have I spent at that window feeling like a caged sparrow, my
spirit filled with vague reverie; and meantime my ink-blotted copy-book
lay open before me, but no inspiration would come, and the composition
that I was engaged upon got itself finished very laboriously,--often not
at all.
And before long I began to play tricks upon the pedestrians, a fatal
result of my idleness over which I often felt remorseful.
I am bound to confess that my great friend Lucette was usually a willing
assistant in these pranks. Although now almost a young lady sixteen or
seventeen years of age, she was at times almost as much of a child as I.
“You must never tell any one!” she would say with an irrepressible smile
of mischief in her merry eyes (but I may tell now after so many years
have passed, now that the flowers of twenty summers have bloomed upon
her grave).
Our pranks consisted of taking cherry stems, plum stones and any sort
of trash, and wrapping them neatly into white or pink paper parcels that
looked very attractive to the eye; we then threw these bundles into the
street and hid ourselves behind the shutters to see who picked them up.
Sometimes we would write letters, impertinent or incoherent ones, with
accompanying drawings to illustrate the text; these we addressed to the
different eccentric people in our neighborhood, and, with the aid of
a thread, we lowered them to the sidewalk at about the same time these
persons were in the habit of passing. . . .
Oh! how merrily we laughed as we composed these hodge-podges of style!
With no one else have I ever laughed so heartily as with Lucette,--and
we usually roared over things that no one except ourselves could
possibly have considered funny. Over and above the bond of little
brother and grown sister there was between us a sympathy springing from
our appreciation of the ridiculous, and our notions of what constituted
fun were in complete accord. She was the sprightliest person I ever
knew, and sometimes a single word would start us to laughing at our own
or our neighbors' expense, until our sides ached and we almost fell upon
the floor.
This part of my nature was not, I must confess, in harmony with the
gloomy reveries evoked by the pictures of the Book of Revelation, and
with my ascetic religious convictions. But I was already full of strange
contradictions.
Poor little Lucette or Lucon (Lucon was the masculine for Lucette, and
I used to call her “My dear Lucon”); poor little Lucette was also one of
my professors, but one who caused me neither fear nor disgust. Like “Mr.
Ratin” she also kept a book wherein she would inscribe “good” or “very
good,” and I showed it to my parents every evening. Until now I have
neglected to say that it had been one of her amusements to teach me to
play upon the piano; she taught me by stealth so that I might
surprise my parents by playing for them, upon the occasion of a family
celebration, the “Little Swiss Boy” or the “Rocks of St. Malo.” The
result was she had been requested to go on with lessons that had had
such a favorable beginning, and my musical education was entrusted to
her until it came time for me to play the music of Chopin and Liszt.
Painting and music were the only things I worked at industriously and
faithfully.
My sister taught me painting; I do not, however, remember when I
commenced it, but it must have been very early in my life; it seems to
me that there was never a time when I was not able, with my pencil or my
brush, to express in some measure the odd fancies of my imaginations.