HOW I TOOK MY DEGREE
“Well now,” said my father, “have you finished?”
“I have finished, so far,” I replied, “only ... I will now have to go to
Nîmes and take my bachelor’s degree--a step which gives me a certain
amount of apprehension.”
“Forward then--quick march! When I was a soldier, my son, we had harder
steps than that to take before the Siege of Figuières,” said my sire.
So I made my preparations forthwith for the journey to Nîmes, where at
that time the degrees were taken. My mother folded up my Sunday coat and
two white shirts in a big check handkerchief fastened together with four
pins. My father presented me with a small linen bag containing crowns to
the amount of £6, and added the caution:
“Take thou care neither to lose nor to squander them.”
My bundle under my arm, hat cocked over one ear, and a vine-stick in my
hand, I then departed.
Arrived at Nîmes, I met a crowd of other students from all the
neighbourhood, come up, like myself, to take their degrees. They were
for the most part accompanied by their parents, fine-looking ladies and
gentlemen with their pockets full of letters of introduction, one to the
Prefect, another to the Grand Vicar, and another to the head examiner.
These fortunate youths swaggered about with an air which said: “We are
cocksure of success.”
I who knew not a soul felt myself very small fry. All my hope lay in
Saint Baudile, the patron of Nîmes whose votive ribbon I had worn as a
child, and to whom I now addressed a fervent petition that he would
incline the hearts of the examiners towards me.
We were shut up in a big bare room of the Hôtel de Ville, and there an
old professor dictated to us in nasal tones some Latin verse. He
terminated with a pinch of snuff, and the announcement that we had an
hour in which to render the Latin into French.
Full of zeal we set to work. With the aid of the dictionary, the task
was accomplished, and at the termination of the hour our snuff-taker
collected the papers and dismissed us for the day.
The students dispersed all over the town and I found myself standing
there alone in the street, my small bundle under my arm and vine-stick
in hand. The first thing was to find a lodging, some inn not too ruinous
yet passably comfortable. As I had plenty of time on my hands, I made
the tour of Nîmes about ten times, scanning the hostelries and inns with
critical eye. But the hotels, with their black-coated flunkeys, who
looked me up and down long before I even approached them, and the airs
and graces of the fashionable folk of whom I saw passing glimpses, made
me coil up into my shell.
At last a sign-board caught my eye with the inscription, “Au
Petit-Saint-Jean.” Here was something familiar at last.
The name made me at once feel at home. Saint John was a special friend
with us, he it was who brought good harvests, also we grew the grass of
Saint John, ate the apples of Saint John, and celebrated his feast with
bonfires. I entered the little inn with confidence therefore, a
confidence which was amply justified.
In the courtyard were covered carts and trucks, while groups of
Provençales stood there laughing and gossiping. I stepped into the
dining-room and sat down at the table. The room was crowded and nearly
all the seats occupied by market-gardeners. They had come in from
Saint-Rémy, Château-Renard, Barbentane, for the weekly market, and were
all well acquainted. Their conversation related entirely to their
business:
“Well, Benezet,” said one, “how much did your mad-apples fetch to-day?”
“Bad luck; the market was glutted--I had to give them away.”
“And the leek-seed?” asked another.
“There is a fair prospect of a sale--if the rumour of war turns out true
they will use it for making powder, so they say.”
“And the onions?”
“They went off at once.”
“And the pumpkins?”
“Had to give them to the pigs.”
For an hour I listened to this on all sides, eating steadily without
saying a word. Then my opposite neighbour addressed me:
“And you, young man? If it is not indiscreet, may I ask if you are in
the gardening line?”
“I replied modestly that I had come to Nîmes for another purpose,
namely, to pass as bachelor.”
The company turned round and gazed at me with interest.
“What did he say,” they asked each other; “Bachelor? He must have said
‘battery’ hazarded one--it is a conscript, any one can see, and he
wishes to get into the battery.”
I laughed and tried to explain my position and the ordeal before me when
the learned professors would put me through my paces in Latin, Greek,
mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, philosophy, and every imaginable
branch of knowledge besides. “If we do well they allow us to become
lawyers, doctors, judges, even sub-prefects,” I concluded.
“And if you do badly?” inquired my audience eagerly.
“We are sent back to the asses’ bench,” I replied; “to-morrow I shall
know my fate.”
“Eh, but this is one of the right sort,” they cried in chorus. “Suppose
we all remain on another day to see whether he comes through all right
or whether he is left in the hole. Now, what are they going to ask you
to-morrow, for example?”
I told them it would be concerning all the battles that had ever been
fought since the world began, Jews, Romans, Saracens; and not only the
battles but the names of the generals who took part in them, the kings
and queens reigning at the time, together with their children and even
their bastards.
“But how then can the learned men occupy themselves with such trifles!”
cried my new friends. “It is very evident they have nothing better to
do. If they had to get up and hoe potatoes every morning they would not
waste time over the battles of the Saracens, who are dead and gone, or
the bastards of Herod. Well, what else do they ask you?”
I replied that I should be required also to know the names of all the
mountains and all the rivers in the world.
Here I was interrupted by a gardener from Saint-Rémy with a big guttural
voice, who inquired whether I knew where was the source of the Fountain
of Vaucluse, and if it were true that seven rivers, each of them big
enough to float a ship, sprang from that fountain. He had it on good
authority also--could I confirm it?--that a shepherd had let fall his
crook in the water at Vaucluse, and had found it again in a spring at
Saint-Rémy!
I had hardly time to think of a suitable and judicious answer before
another of the company posed me with the question as to why the sea was
salt.
Here I considered myself on safe ground, and was beginning to reel off
in airy fashion: “Because it contains sulphate of potassium, sulphate of
magnesia, chloride----”
“No, no, that’s all wrong,” interrupted my questioner. “It was a
fisherman who told me--he was from Martigne and should know. The sea is
salt owing to the many ships carrying cargoes of salt which have been
wrecked during past years.”
I discreetly gave way before this authority and hastened to enumerate
other subjects on which I was about to be examined by the professors,
such as the cause of thunder, lightning, frost and wind.
“Allow me to interrupt you, young man,” broke in the first speaker
again. “You should be able then to tell us from whence comes the
mistral, that accursed mischievous wind of our country. I have always
heard that it issues from a hole in a certain great rock, and that if
one could only cork up the hole, there would be an end of the mistral.
Now that would be an invention worth the making!”
“The Government would oppose it,” said another; “if it were not for the
mistral, Provence would be the garden of France! Nothing would hold us
back--we should become too rich to please the rest.”
“Finally,” I continued, “we have to know all about the number, size, and
distance of the stars--how many miles our earth is from the sun, &c.”
“That passes everything,” cried a native of Noves. “Who is going up
there to measure the distance? Cannot you see, young man, that the
professors are laughing at you? A pretty science indeed to measure the
miles between the sun and the moon; they will be teaching you next that
pigeons are suckled! Now if you would tell me at what quarter of the
moon to sow celery or to cure the pig-disease, I would say, ‘Here we
have a real useful science’--but all this boy prates of is pure
rubbish!”
The rest of the company, however, stood up for me loyally, declaring
that, however, questionable the subjects I had studied, it was certain I
must have a wonderful head to have stowed away such a lot inside.
Some of the girls whispered together, with kindly glances of sympathy in
my direction. “Poor little chap, how pale he is--one can see all that
reading has done him no good--if he had passed his time at the tail of
the plough he would have more colour in his cheeks--and what is the good
after all of knowing so much!”
“Well, comrades,” cried my first friend, “I vote we see him through to
the end, this lad from Maillane! If we were at a bull-fight we should
wait to see who got the prize, or at least the cockade.--Let us stay
over night that we may know if he passes as a bachelor, eh?”
“Good,” agreed the rest in chorus, “we will wait and see him through to
the end.”
The following morning, with my heart in my mouth, I returned to the
Hôtel de Ville, together with the other candidates, many of whom I
noticed wore a far less confident air than the day before. In a big
hall, seated before a long table piled with papers and books, were five
great and learned professors come expressly from Montpellier arrayed in
their ermine-bordered capes and black caps. They were members of the
Faculty of Letters, and among them, curiously enough, was Monsieur
Saint-René Taillandier, who, a few years later, was to become the warm
supporter of the Félibre movement. But at this time we were, of course,
strangers to each other, and nothing would have more surprised the
illustrious professor than had he known that the country lad who stood
stammering before him was one day to be numbered among his best friends.
I was wild with joy--I had passed! I went off down into the town as
though borne along by angels. It was broiling hot, and I remember I was
thirsty. As I passed the cafés, swinging my little vine-stick high in
the air, I panted at the sight of the glasses of foaming beer, but I was
such a novice in the ways of the world that I had never yet set foot
inside a café, and I dared not go in.
So I continued my triumphal march round the town, wearing an air of such
radiant happiness and satisfaction that the very passers-by nudged one
another and observed: “He has evidently got his degree--that one!”
When at last I came upon a drinking-fountain and quenched my thirst in
the fresh cool water, I would not have changed places with the ‘King of
Paris.’
But the finest thing of all was on my return to the “Petit-Saint-Jean,”
where my friends the gardeners awaited me impatiently. On seeing me,
glowing with joy enough to disperse a fog, they shouted: “He has
passed!”
Men, women, girls, came rushing out, and there followed a grand
handshaking and embracing all round. One would have said manna had
fallen from heaven.
Then my friend from Saint-Rémy took up the speech. His eyes were wet
with emotion.
“Maillanais!” he addressed me, “we are all pleased with you. You have
shown these little professor gentlemen that not only ants, but men, can
be born of the soil. Come, children, let us all have a turn at the
_farandole_.”
Then taking hands, there in the courtyard of the inn, we all farandoled
with a will. After that we dined with equal heartiness, eating, drinking
and singing, till the time came to start for home.
It is fifty-eight years ago. But I never visit Nîmes and see in the
distance the sign of the “Petit-Saint-Jean” without that scene of my
youth coming back to me fresh as yesterday, and a warm feeling arises in
my heart for those dear people who first made me experience the good
fellowship of my kind and the joys of popularity.