The Superintendent, with his large, flat face and the sly ways
of a peasant turned monk, was a constant thorn in Jean's side.
"_Be firm, be firm, sir_," was his parable every day, and
he never missed an opportunity of doing the usher an ill turn
with the Director.
The early days of Jean's servitude had slipped by in an enervating
monotony. With his quiet ways, tactful temper and air of kindly
aloofness, he was popular with the more sensible boys, while
the others left him in peace, as he did them. But there was one
exception; Henri de Grizolles, a handsome young savage, proud
of his aristocratic name, which he scribbled in big letters on
his light trousers, and overjoyed at the chance of hurting an
inferior's feelings, had from the very first day declared war
against the poor usher. He used to empty ink-bottles into his
desk, stick cobbler's wax on his chair, and let off crackers
in the middle of school.
Hearing the disturbance, the Superintendent would march in with
the airs of a Police Inspector and bid Jean: "_Be firm, sir!
be firm!_"
Far from taking his advice, Jean affected an excessive easiness of
temper. One day he caught a boy in the act of drawing a caricature
of himself; he picked it up and glanced at it, then handed it
back to the artist with a shrug of the shoulders.
Such mildness was misconstrued and only weakened his authority.
The usher's miseries grew acute, and he lost the patience that
alleviated his sufferings. He could not put up with the lads'
restlessness, their happy laughter and light-hearted enjoyment
of life. He showed temper, venting his spite on mere acts of
thoughtlessness or simple ebullitions of high spirits. Then he would
fall into a sort of torpor. He had long fits of absentmindedness,
during which he was deaf to every noise. It became the fashion
to keep birds, plait nets, shoot arrows, and crow like a cock
in Monsieur Jean Servien's class-room. Even the boys from other
divisions would slip out of their own classrooms to peep in at
the windows of this one, about which such amazing stories were
told, and the ceiling of which was decorated with little figures
swinging at the end of a string stuck to the plaster with chewed
paper.
De Grizolles had installed a regular Roman catapult for shooting
kidney-beans at the usher's head.
Jean would drive the young gentleman out of the room. The
Superintendent of Studies would reinstate him, only to be turned
out again. And each time meant a fresh report to the Director.
The Abbé Bordier, who never found patience to hear the worthy
Superintendent out to the end, could only throw up his hands to
heaven and declare they would be the death of him between them.
But the impression became fixed in his mind that the Assistant
in charge of the _Remove_ was a source of trouble.