Three months had dragged by. It was a Friday; a hot, nauseating
smell of fried fish filled the refectory; a strong drought blew
cold about feet encased in wet boots; the walls dripped with
moisture, and outside the barred windows a fine rain was falling
from a grey sky. The boys, seated at marble-topped tables, were
making a hideous rattle with their forks and tin cups, while
one of their schoolfellows, seated at the desk in the middle of
the great room, was reading aloud, as the regulations direct,
a passage from Rollin's _Ancient History_.
Jean, at the head of a table, his nose in his ill-washed earthenware
plate, had cold feet and a sore heart. Something resembling rotten
wood formed a deposit at the bottom of his glass, while the servers
were handing round dishes of prunes with their thumbs washing in
the juice. Now and again, amid the rattle of plates, the rasping
voice of the reader, a lad of seventeen, reached the usher's ears.
He caught the name of Cleopatra and some scraps of sentences:
"_She was about to appear before Antony at an age when women
unite with the flower of their beauty every charm of wit and
intellect... her person more compelling than any magnificence
of adornment.... Her galley entered the Cydnus... the poop of
the vessel shone resplendent with gold, the sails were of Tyrian
purple, the oars of silver._"
Then the seductive names of _Nereids, flutes, perfumes_. The
hot blood flooded his cheeks. The woman who for him was the sole
and only incarnation of the whole race of womankind throughout the
ages rose before his mental sight with a surprising clearness;
every hair of his body stood on end in an agonizing spasm of
desire, and he dug his nails into the palms of his hands. The
vision caused him an unspeakable yet delicious pain--Gabrielle
in a loose _peignoir_ at a small, daintily ordered table gay
with flowers and glasses. He saw it all quite clearly; his gaze
searched every fold of the soft material that covered her bosom
and rose and fell at each breath she drew. Face and neck and
lively hands had a surprisingly brilliant yet so natural a sheen
that they exhaled amorous invitation as if they had been verily
of flesh and blood. The superb moulding of the lips, pouting
like a ripe mulberry, and the exquisite grain of the skin were
manifest--treasures such as men risk death and crime to win.
It was the actress, in fine, seen by the two eyes which of all
eyes in the whole world had learned to see her best. She was not
alone; a man was looking at her with a penetrating intensity as
he filled her glass. They were straining one towards the other.
Jean could not restrain his sobs. Suddenly he seemed to be falling
from the top of a high tower. The Superintendent of Studies was
standing in front of him and saying:
"Monsieur Servien, will you see about punishing that boy Laboriette,
who is emptying his leavings in his neighbour's pocket?"