AT MONSIEUR MILLET’S SCHOOL
After that experience, my parents had to find me another school, not too
distant from Maillane, nor of too exalted a condition, for we country
people were not proud. So they placed me at a school in Avignon, with
Monsieur Millet, who lived in the Rue Pétramale.
This time, it was Uncle Bénoni who acted as charioteer. Although
Maillane is not more than about six miles from Avignon, at a time when
no railways existed, and the roads were broken with heavy waggon wheels,
and one had to cross the large bed of the Durance by ferry, the journey
to Avignon was a matter of some importance.
Three of my aunts, with my mother, Uncle Bénoni, and myself, all
scrambled into the cart, in which was placed a straw mattress, and thus,
a goodly caravan load, we started at sunrise.
I said advisedly “three of my aunts.” Few people, I am sure, can boast
of as many aunts as I had. There were a round dozen. First and foremost
came the Great-aunt Mistrale, then Aunt Jeanneton, Aunt Madelon, Aunt
Véronique, Aunt Poulinette, Aunt Bourdette, Aunt Françoise, Aunt Marie,
Aunt Rion, Aunt Thérèse, Aunt Mélanie and Aunt Lisa. All of them,
to-day, are dead and buried, but I love to say over the names of those
good women, who, like beneficent fairies, each with her own special
attraction, circled round the cradle of my childhood. Add to my aunts
the same number of uncles, and then the cousins, their numerous progeny,
and you can form some idea of my relations.
Uncle Bénoni was my mother’s brother and the youngest of the
family--dark, thin, loosely made, with a turned-up nose and eyes black
as jet. By trade he was a land-surveyor, but he had the reputation of an
idler, and was even proud of it. He had a passion for three things,
however--dancing, music and jesting.
There was not a better dancer in Maillane, nor one more amusing. At the
feast of Saint-Eloi or of Sainte-Agathe, when he and Jésette, the
wrestler, danced the _contredanse_ on the green together, every one
crowded there to see him as he imitated the pigeon’s flight. He played,
more or less well, on every sort of instrument, violin, bassoon, horn,
clarinette, but it was with the tambour-pipes that he excelled, In his
youth Bénoni had not his equal at serenading the village beauties, or
for sounding the revel on a May night. And whenever there was a
pilgrimage to be made, either to Notre Dame de Lumière, or to
Saint-Gent, to Vaucluse or Les Saintes-Maries, Bénoni was invariably the
charioteer, and the life and soul of the party, ever willing, nay,
delighted, to leave his own work, the daily round of the quiet home, and
to be off for a jaunt.
Parties of fifteen to twenty young people in every cart would start off
at dawn, foremost among them my uncle, seated on the shaft acting as
driver, and keeping up a ceaseless flow of chaff, banter and laughter,
during the whole journey.
There was one strange idea he had somehow got fixed in his head, and
that was, when he married, to wed no one save a girl of noble birth.
“But such girls wish to marry men of noble birth,” he was warned.
“Well,” retorted Bénoni, “are not we noble too, in our family? Do you
imagine that we Poulinets are a set of clowns like you folk. Our
ancestor was a noble exile, he wore a cloak lined with red velvet,
buckles on his shoes, and silk stockings!”
At last, by dint of patient inquiries, he really did hear of a family
belonging to the old aristocracy, nearly ruined and with seven
unmarried, dowerless daughters. The father, a dissipated fellow, was in
the habit of selling a portion of his property every year to his
creditors, and they ended by acquiring everything, even the château. So
my gallant Uncle Bénoni put on his best attire, and one fine day
presented himself as a suitor. The eldest of the girls, though daughter
of a marquis and Commander of Malta, to escape the inevitable destiny of
becoming an old maid, ended by accepting him.
It was from such a source that the pretty story entitled “Fin du
Marquisat d’Aurel” was taken, written by Henri de la Madeleine, and
telling of a noble family fallen to the plebeian class.
As I said, my uncle was an idle fellow. Often about the middle of the
day, when he should have been digging or forking in the garden, he would
fling aside his tools, and retiring to the shade, draw out his flute and
start a _rigaudon_. At the sound of music, the girls at work in the
neighbouring fields would come running, and forthwith he would play a
_sauterelle_ and start them all dancing.
In winter he seldom got up before midday.
“Where can one be so snug, so warm, as in one’s bed?” he laughed.
And when we asked if he did not get bored staying in bed, his reply was:
“Not I! When I am sleepy I sleep, and when I am not, I say psalms for
the dead.”
Curiously enough, this light-hearted son of Provence never missed a
funeral, and the service over, he was always the last to leave the
cemetery, remaining behind that he might pray for his own family and for
others. Then, resuming his old gaiety, he would observe:
“Another one gone--carried into the city of Saint Repose!”
In his turn he had also to go there. He was eighty-three and the doctor
had told his family there was nothing more to be done.
“Bah,” answered, Bénoni, “what’s the good of worrying. It is the sickest
man that will die first.”
He always had his flute on the table beside him.
“Those idiots gave me a bell to ring; but I made them fetch my flute,
which answers far better. If I want anything I just play an air instead
of calling or ringing.”
And so it happened that he died with his flute in his hand, and they
placed it with him in his coffin. This gave rise to the story started by
the girls of the silk-mill at Maillane, that as the clock struck twelve,
old Bénoni, flute in hand, rose from
[Illustration: ARLESIENNES AT MAILLANE.]
his grave and began playing a veritable devil’s dance, whereupon all the
other corpses also arose carrying their coffins, and there in the middle
of the “Grand Clos,” having set fire to the coffins in order to warm
themselves, they proceeded to perform a mad jig round the fire till
daybreak, to the sound of Bénoni’s flute.
Having now introduced Uncle Bénoni, I must return to my journey with
him. Accompanied by my mother and my three aunts, we all set out for
Avignon. The whole way, as we jogged along, we discussed the state of
the crops, the plantations, the vineyards that we passed. I was told,
one after the other, all the traditional tales that marked the road to
Avignon; for example, how, at the bridge of “La Folie,” the wizards
formerly held their wild dances, and how at La Croisière the highwaymen
would stop the traveller with; “Your money or your life”; this was
liable to occur also at the Croix de la Lieue and the Rocher d’Aiguille.
At last we arrived at the sandy bed of the Durance. A year before the
flood had swept away the bridge, and it was necessary to cross the river
by a ferry-boat. We found some hundred carts there awaiting their turn
to go over. We waited with the rest for about two hours, and then
embarked, after chasing home “Le Juif,” the big dog, who had followed us
so far.
It was past twelve o’clock when we finally reached Avignon. We stabled
our horses, like all those from our village, at the Hôtel de Provence, a
little inn on the Place du Corps-Saint, and for the rest of the day we
roamed about the town.
“Would you like me to treat you to the theatre?” said Uncle Bénoni;
“they are giving _Maniclo_ and the _Bishop of Castro_ this evening.”
“Oh, let us go and see _Maniclo_!” we responded in chorus.
It was my first visit to the theatre and my star ordained I should see a
play of Provence. As for the _Bishop of Castro_, it was a sombre piece
that did not much interest us, and my aunts maintained that they played
_Maniclo_ much better at Maillane. For at that time, in our villages, we
got up plays both comic and tragic during the winter months. I have seen
the _Death of Cæsar, Zaire, Joseph and his Brethren_, played by the
villagers, their costumes made up out of their wives’ skirts and the
counterpanes from their beds. They loved the tragedies, and followed
with great pleasure the mournful declamation of the five-act piece. But
they also gave _L’Avocat Pathelin_, translated into Provençale, and
various lively comedies from the Marseillaise _répertoire_. Bénoni was
always the leading spirit of these evenings, where, with his violin, he
accompanied the songs, and as a youngster I remember taking part in
several plays and earning much applause.
The morning after _Maniclo_ came the inevitable parting, and with a
heart heavy as a pea that had soaked nine days, I bade farewell to my
mother, and went to be shut up in the school of Monsieur Millet, Rue
Pétramale. Monsieur Millet was a big man, tall, with heavy eyebrows, a
red face, little pig’s eyes, feet like an elephant’s, hideous square
fingers and slovenly appearance.
A woman from the hills, fat and uncomely, cooked for us and managed the
house. I never ate so many carrots before or since, carrots badly cooked
in a flour sauce. In three months, my poor little body was reduced to a
skeleton.
Avignon, the predestined, where one day the Gai-Savoir was to effect the
renaissance, was not at that time the bright town of to-day. She had not
enlarged her Place de l’Horloge, nor widened out the Place Pic, nor
constructed the Grande Rue. The Roque de Dom, which commands the town,
was no lovely garden laid out as for a king, but, save for the cemetery,
a bare and barren rock, while the ramparts, half in ruins, were
surrounded by ditches full of rubbish and stagnant water. Rough
street-porters formed the city corporation, and made laws as they chose
for the town suburbs. It was they and their chief, a sort of Hercules
nicknamed “Four Arms,” who swept away the Town Hall of Avignon in 1848.
Here, as in Italy, every week each house was visited by a black-clad
penitent, who, face covered, with two holes for eyes, went round shaking
his money-box chaunting solemnly:
“For the poor prisoners!”
In the streets one constantly ran up against all sorts of local
celebrities. There was the Sister Boute-Cuire, her covered basket on her
arm, and a big crucifix on her ample bosom; or the plasterer Barret, who
in some street fight with the Liberals had once lost his hat, and
thereupon sworn never to wear one again till Henri V. was on the throne,
a vow that involved his going bare-headed for the rest of his life. And
at every corner were to be seen the picturesque pensioners of Avignon, a
branch of the Military Hotel in Paris, with their wide-brimmed hats and
long blue capes, venerable remnants of ancient wars, maimed, lame and
blind, who with wooden legs and cautious steps hammered their careful
way along the cobbled pavements.
The town was passing through a state of unrest and upheaval between the
old and new _règimes_, the members of which still fought in secret.
Terrible memories of past evils, abuses, reproaches, yet survived, and
were very bitter between people of a certain age. The Carlists talked
incessantly of the Orange Tribunal, of Jourdan Coupe-têtes, of the
massacres of La Glacière. The Liberals were always ready to retaliate
with the year 1815, and the assassination of Marshal Brune, whose corpse
had been thrown into the Rhône, while his property was plundered and the
murderers let go unpunished. Among these latter, Pointer left so
notorious a reputation that, did any upstart achieve sudden success in
his business, it was at once said of him, “Here are some of Maréchal
Brune’s _louis_ cropping up again.”
The people of Avignon, like those of Aix and Marseilles, and indeed of
all the towns of Provence at that time, regretted the disappearance of
the Lily and the White Flag. The warm sympathy on the part of our
predecessors for the royal cause was not, I think, so much a political
opinion as an unconscious and popular protest against the aggressive
centralisation, which the Jacobinism of the first Empire had made so
odious.
The Lily had always been to the Provençals (who bore it in their
national coat of arms) the symbol of a time when their customs,
traditions and franchise were respected by the Government; but to think
that our fathers wished to return to the abuses which obtained before
the Revolution would be a great error, for it was Provence who sent
Mirabeau to the Etats Généraux, and there was no part of France where
the Revolution was carried on with more passionate fervour than in
Provence.
The ancient city of Avignon is so steeped in bygone glories that it is
impossible to take a step without awakening some memory of the past.
Close to the spot where our school was situated once stood the Convent
of Sainte-Claire, and it was in that convent chapel that Petrarch first
beheld his Laura one April morning in 1327.
Our quarter had other associations in those days of a more lugubrious
character, owing to the near proximity of the University and the Medical
School. No little shoeblack or chimney-sweep could ever be induced to
come and work at our school, for it was firmly believed that the
students laid in wait to catch all the small boys, for the purpose of
bleeding and skinning them, and afterwards dissecting their corpses.
It was not less interesting for us, children of villages for the most
part, when we went out to ramble about in the labyrinth of alleys that
formed our neighbourhood, such as the “Little Paradise,” which had been
a “hot quarter,” and was so still, or the Street of Brandy, or of the
“Cat,” or the “Cock,” or the Devil! But what a difference between this
and the beautiful valleys all flowered with asphodel, and the fine air,
the peace and the liberty of St. Michel de Frigolet. Some days my heart
would ache with home-sickness, and yet Monsieur Millet, who was a good
devil at bottom, ended by taming me. He was from Caderousse, a farmer’s
son, like myself, and he had a great admiration for the famous poem,
“The Siege of Caderousse.” He knew it by heart, and sometimes, while
explaining some grand fight of the Greeks or the Trojans, he would
suddenly give a shake to his grey tuft of hair and exclaim:
“Now see, this is one of the finest bits of Virgil, isn’t it? Listen, my
children, and you shall hear that Favre, the songster of the Siege of
Caderousse, follows very close at Virgil’s heels.”
How they appealed to us, these recitations in our own tongue--so full of
savour! The fat Millet would shout with laughter, and I, who had
retained in my blood more than the others the honeyed essence of my
childhood, found nothing gave me more pleasure than these fruits of my
own country.
Monsieur Millet would go every day about five o’clock to read the news
in the Café Baretta, which he called the “Café of talking animals.” It
was kept, if I am not mistaken, by the uncle, or perhaps grandfather, of
Mademoiselle Baretta of the Théatre-Français; then, the next day, if he
were in a good temper, he would give us an epitome, not without a touch
of malice, of the eternal growling of the old politicians assembled
there, who at that time talked of nothing but the “Little One,” as they
called Henri V.
It was that year I made my first communion in the Church of
Saint-Didier, and it was the bellringer Fanot, of whom Roumanille sang
later in his “Cloche Montée,” who daily rang us in for the Catechism.
Two months before the confirmation Monsieur Millet took us to the church
to be catechised. And there, with the other boys and girls, who were
also being prepared, we were ranged in rows on benches in the middle of
the nave. Chance willed that I, being among the last row of boys, should
find myself next a charming little girl placed in the first row of
girls. She was called Praxède, and had cheeks like the first blush of a
fresh rose. Children are queer things! We met every day, sitting next
to each other, and without premeditation our elbows would touch, we
would breathe in sympathy, whisper and shake over our little jokes till
(the angels must have smiled to see it) we ended by actually being in
love!
But what an innocent love! how full of mystic aspirations! Those same
angels, if they feel for each other reciprocal affection, must know just
such an emotion. We were both but twelve years old, the age of Beatrice
when Dante first saw her, and it was the vision of this young budding
maiden that evoked the “Paradise” of the great Florentine poet. There is
an expression in our language exactly rendering this soul delight which
intoxicates two young people in the first spring-time of youth, it
signifies being of one accord, “_nous nous agréions_.” It is true we
never met except in church, but the mere sight of each other filled our
hearts with happiness. I smiled at her, she smiled back, our voices were
united in the same songs of divine love, we made the same signs of
grace, and our souls were uplifted by the same mysteries of a simple
spontaneous faith. O dawn of love, blooming with a joy as innocent as
the daisy by the clear brook! First fleeting dawn of pure love!
Still I can picture Mademoiselle Praxède, as I saw her for the last
time--dressed all in white, crowned with a wreath of may, most sweet to
look upon beneath her transparent veil, as she mounted the steps of the
altar by my side, like a bride--lovely little bride of the Lamb.
Our confirmation once over, the episode was finished. Vainly, for long
afterwards, when we passed down the Rue de la Lice, where she lived, my
hungry eyes scanned the green shutters of the home of Praxède, but I
never saw her again. She had been sent to a convent school. The thought
that my sweet little friend of the rosy cheeks and charming smile was
lost to me for ever gave me a disgust for everything in life, and I fell
into a state of languor and melancholy.
When the holidays arrived and I returned to the farm, my mother found me
pale and feverish, and decided, in order both to cure and to divert me,
that I should go with her on a pilgrimage to Saint-Gent, the patron of
all those suffering from fever.
To Saint-Gent is also attributed the power of sending rain, which makes
him a sort of demi-god to the peasants on both sides of the Durance.
“I went to Saint-Gent before the Revolution,” said my father. “I was ten
years old and I walked the whole way barefoot with my poor mother. But
we had more faith in those days.” So we started one fine night in
September, by the light of the moon, with Uncle Bénoni, of whom I have
already spoken, as driver.
Other pilgrims bound for the fête joined us from Château-Renard, from
Noves, Thor, and from Pernes, their carts, covered like our own with
canvas stretched over wooden hoops, formed a long procession down the
road. Singing and shouting in chorus the canticle of Saint-Gent, a
magnificent old tune--Gounod, by the way, introduced it into his opera
of _Mireille_--we passed through the sleeping villages to the sound of
cracking whips, and not till the following afternoon about four o’clock
did we all arrive at the Gorge de Bausset, where, with “Long live
Saint-Gent,” we descended. There, in the very place where the venerated
hermit passed his days of penitence, the old people repeated to the
younger ones all they had heard tell of the saint.
“Gent,” they said, “was one of us, the son of peasants, a fine youth
from Monteux, who, at the age of fifteen, retired into the desert to
consecrate himself to God. He tilled the earth with two cows. One day a
wolf attacked and devoured one of his cows. Gent caught the wolf, and
harnessing him to the plough, made him work, yoked with the other cow.
Meanwhile at Monteux, since Gent departed, no rain had fallen for seven
years, so the Montelaix said to his mother Imberti:
“Good woman, you must go and find your son and tell him that since he
left us we have not had a drop of rain.”
The mother of Gent, by dint of searching and crying, at last found her
son, here, where we are at this moment, in the Gorge de Bausset, and as
his mother was thirsty, Gent pressed the steep rock with two of his
fingers and two springs jetted forth, one of wine, the other of water.
The spring of wine has dried up, but the water runs still, and it is as
the hand of God for healing all bad fevers.
There are two yearly pilgrimages to the Hermitage of Saint-Gent. The
first one, in May, is specially for the country people, the Montelaix,
and they carry his statue from Monteux to Bausset, a pilgrimage of some
six miles, made on foot in memory of the flight of the saint.
Here is the letter which Aubanel wrote to me in 1866, when he also made
the pilgrimage.
* * * * *
“MY DEAR FRIEND,--With Grivolas I have just returned from a pilgrimage
to Saint-Gent. It is a wonderful, sublime, and poetical experience, and
that nocturnal journey bearing the image of the saint has left on my
soul a unique impression. The mayor lent us a carriage, and we followed
with the pilgrims through fields and woods by the light of the moon, to
the song of nightingales, from eight o’clock in the evening till past
midnight. It was so impressive and mysterious--strange and
beautiful--that one felt the tears start. Four youths lightly clothed in
nankin, running like hares, flying like birds, set out with the sacred
burden, preceded by a man on horseback, galloping and signalling their
approach with pistol-shots. The people of the farms hurried out to see
the saint pass, men, women, children and old people, stopped the
carriers, kissing the statue, praying, weeping, gesticulating. Then off
went the bearers again more swiftly than ever, while the women cried
after them:
“‘Happy journey, boys.’
“And the men added:
“‘May the good saint uphold you.’
“And so they run till they pant for breath. Oh! that journey through the
night, and that little troop going forth into the darkness under the
protection of God and Saint-Gent, into the desert, no one knew whither.
I assure you there was in all this a profound note of poetry that made
an indelible impression on my mind.”
The second pilgrimage of Saint-Gent takes place in September, and it was
to that we went. Now as Saint-Gent had only been canonised by the voice
of the people, the priests take very little notice of him, and the
townsfolk still less. It is the people of the soil who recognise the
right of the good saint to be canonised, he who was simply one of
themselves, spoke and worked even as they, and who, with but moderate
delays, sends them the rain they pray for, and cures their fevers. His
cult is so fervent that, in the narrow gorge dedicated to the legend of
his memory, sometimes as many as 20,000 pilgrims are assembled.
Tradition records that Saint-Gent slept on a bed of stone with his head
down and his feet up; so all the pilgrims, in a spirit of devotion not
unmixed with gaiety, go and lie like fallen trees in the bed of
Saint-Gent, which is a hollow formed in the sloping rock; the women also
place themselves there, carefully holding each other’s skirts in a
decorous position.
We, too, lay in the stone bed like the others, and I went with my mother
to see the “Spring of the Wolf,” and the “Spring of the Cow.” Then on to
the Chapel of Saint-Gent, surrounded by a group of old walnut-trees, and
containing his tomb. And lastly, we visited the “terrible rock,” as the
old canticle calls it, from whence flows the miraculous fount which
cures fever.
Full of wonder at all these tales, these beliefs and visions, my soul
intoxicated by the scent of the plants and the sight of this place,
still hallowed by the impress of the saint’s feet, with the beautiful
faith of my twelve years I drank freely of the spring, and--people may
think what they please--from that moment I had no more fever. Therefore
do not be astonished that the daughter of the Félibre, the poor
Mireille, when lost in the Crau and dying of thirst, calls on the good
Saint-Gent to come to her rescue. (_Mireille_, Song viii.)
* * * * *
On my return to Avignon, a new arrangement was made for carrying on our
classes. We continued to live at the school of the fat Monsieur Millet,
but were taken twice a day to the Royal College, to attend the
University course as day scholars, and it was in this way that for five
years (1843-1847) I continued my education.
The masters of the college were not then, as now, young professors with
degrees and coats of the latest cut. The professional chairs were
occupied in our day by some of the drastic greybeards of the old
University. For example, in the fourth class we had the worthy Monsieur
Blanc, formerly a sergeant-major in the Imperial army, who, when our
replies were inadequate, promptly hurled at our heads the first book he
could lay hands on. In another class, Monsieur Lamy, a rabid classic,
who held in abhorrence the innovations of Victor Hugo; while for
rhetoric we had a rough patriot named Monsieur Chaulaire, who detested
the English, and with vehement emotion, banging his fist on the desk,
was wont to recite to us the warlike songs of Béranger.
One year I remember specially, for how it happened I have no idea, but
at the distribution of prizes in the church of the college, in presence
of the assembled fine world of Avignon, I found myself carrying off all
the prizes, even that for conduct. Every time my name was called, I
timidly advanced to fetch the beautiful book and the laurel crown from
the hand of the headmaster, then, returning through the applauding
crowd, I threw my trophies in my mother’s lap, and every one turned to
look with curiosity and astonishment at the beautiful Provençale who,
her face beaming with happiness but still calm and dignified, piled up
in her rush basket the laurels of her son. Afterwards, at the farm--_sic
transit gloria mundi_--these aforesaid laurels were placed on the
chimney-piece behind the pots.
Whatever was done, however, in the way of education to distract me from
my natural bent, the love of my own language remained always my ruling
passion, and many circumstances tended to nurture it.
On one occasion, having read, in I forget what journal, some Provençal
verses of Jasmin to Loïsa Puget, and recognising that there were poets
who still glorified the _langue d’Oc_, seized with a fine enthusiasm, I
did likewise for the celebrated hairdresser, and composed an
appreciation which begins thus:
Poet, honour to thy Gascon mother!
but, poor little chap, I received no answer. Of course I know the poor
’prentice verses deserved none, but--no use denying it--this disdain
hurt me, and when in after life I in my turn received such offerings,
remembering my own discomfort, I always felt it a duty to acknowledge
them with courtesy.
About the age of fourteen, the longing for my native fields and the
sound of my native tongue grew on me to such a degree that it ended by
making me quite ill from home-sickness.
Like the prodigal son, I said to myself, “How much happier are the
servants and shepherds of our farm, down there, who eat the good bread
that my mother provides; the friends of my childhood, too, my comrades
of Maillane, who live at liberty in the country, labouring, sowing,
reaping, and gathering olives, beneath the blessed sun of God, than I
who drudge between four walls, over translations and compositions.”
My sorrow was mixed with a strong distaste for the unreal world where I
was immured, and with a constant drawing towards some vague ideal which
I discerned in the blue distance of the horizon. So it fell out that one
day while reading, I think, the _Magazin des Familles_, I came upon a
description of the silent and contemplative life of the Monks of La
Chartreuse at Valbonne.
Thereupon I became possessed with the idea of this conventual life, and
escaping from the school one fine afternoon I set out alone, determined
and desperate, on the road to Pont Saint-Esprit, which winds along the
banks of the Rhône, for I knew Valbonne was somewhere in that
neighbourhood.
“There,” I said to myself, “I will go and knock at the door of the
convent, imploring and weeping until they consent to admit me. Then once
inside I will roam all day, in bliss, among the trees of the forest--I
will steep myself in thoughts of God and sanctify myself as did the good
Saint-Gent.”
Then suddenly a thought arrested me:
“And thy mother,” I said to myself, “to whom, miserable boy, thou hast
not even bidden farewell, and who, when she learns thou hast
disappeared, will seek thee by hill and by dale, poor woman, weeping
disconsolate as did the mother of Gent!”
Turning about, with a heavy heart and hesitating steps I made my way
back to the farm, in order to embrace my parents once more before
forsaking the world; but the nearer I drew to the paternal home, the
faster my monkish ideas and proud resolution melted in the warmth of my
filial love, as a ball of snow dissolves before the fire. At the door of
the farm, where I arrived late, my mother cried out in astonishment at
the sight of me:
“But why have you left your school before the holidays?”
And I, already ashamed of my flight, replied in a broken voice: “I am
home-sick--I cannot go back to that fat old Millet, where one has only
carrots to eat.”
But the next day our shepherd, Ronquet, took me back to my abhorred
jail, with the promise, however, that I should be liberated at the end
of the term.