“Why did you not take up some other line, Monsieur Piquedent?”
He exclaimed:
“What, my little friend? I am not a shoemaker, or a joiner, or a hatter,
or a baker, or a hairdresser. I only know Latin, and I have no diploma
which would enable me to sell my knowledge at a high price. If I were a
doctor I would sell for a hundred francs what I now sell for a hundred
sous; and I would supply it probably of an inferior quality, for my
title would be enough to sustain my reputation.”
Sometimes he would say to me:
“I have no rest in life except in the hours spent with you. Don't be
afraid! you'll lose nothing by that. I'll make it up to you in the
class-room by making you speak twice as much Latin as the others.”
One day, I grew bolder, and offered him a cigarette. He stared at me in
astonishment at first, then he gave a glance toward the door.
“If any one were to come in, my dear boy?”
“Well, let us smoke at the window,” said I.
And we went and leaned our elbows on the windowsill looking on the
street, holding concealed in our hands the little rolls of tobacco.
Just opposite to us was a laundry. Four women in loose white waists were
passing hot, heavy irons over the linen spread out before them, from
which a warm steam arose.
Suddenly, another, a fifth, carrying on her arm a large basket which
made her stoop, came out to take the customers their shirts, their
handkerchiefs, and their sheets. She stopped on the threshold as if she
were already fatigued; then, she raised her eyes, smiled as she saw us
smoking, flung at us, with her left hand, which was free, the sly kiss
characteristic of a free-and-easy working-woman, and went away at a slow
place, dragging her feet as she went.
She was a woman of about twenty, small, rather thin, pale, rather
pretty, with a roguish air and laughing eyes beneath her ill-combed fair
hair.
Pere Piquedent, affected, began murmuring:
“What an occupation for a woman! Really a trade only fit for a horse.”
And he spoke with emotion about the misery of the people. He had a heart
which swelled with lofty democratic sentiment, and he referred to the
fatiguing pursuits of the working class with phrases borrowed from
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and with sobs in his throat.
Next day, as we were leaning our elbows on the same window sill, the
same woman perceived us and cried out to us:
“Good-day, scholars!” in a comical sort of tone, while she made a
contemptuous gesture with her hands.
I flung her a cigarette, which she immediately began to smoke. And the
four other ironers rushed out to the door with outstretched hands to get
cigarettes also.
And each day a friendly intercourse was established between the
working-women of the pavement and the idlers of the boarding school.
Pere Piquedent was really a comical sight. He trembled at being noticed,
for he might lose his position; and he made timid and ridiculous
gestures, quite a theatrical display of love signals, to which the women
responded with a regular fusillade of kisses.
A perfidious idea came into my mind. One day, on entering our room, I
said to the old usher in a low tone:
“You would not believe it, Monsieur Piquedent, I met the little
washerwoman! You know the one I mean, the woman who had the basket, and
I spoke to her!”
He asked, rather worried at my manner:
“What did she say to you?”
“She said to me--why, she said she thought you were very nice. The fact
of the matter is, I believe, I believe, that she is a little in love
with you.” I saw that he was growing pale.
“She is laughing at me, of course. These things don't happen at my age,”
he replied.