PARBLEU! but his luck was bad. 'Pas d'chance! pas d'chance!
Mo'sieu Henri.' As Monsieur Benoit recorded his feats, and
witnessed my unbounded admiration, his voice would grow more
and more sepulchral, till it dropped to a hoarse and scarcely
audible whisper.
I was a little bewildered one day when, having breathlessly
repeated some of his heroic deeds to the Marquise, she with a
quiet smile assured me that 'ce petit bon-homme,' as she
called him, had for a short time been a drummer in the
National Guard, but had never been a soldier. This was a
blow to me; moreover, I was troubled by the composure of the
Marquise. Monsieur Benoit had actually been telling me what
was not true. Was it, then, possible that grown-up people
acquired the privilege of fibbing with impunity? I wondered
whether this right would eventually become mine!
At Bourg-la-Reine there is, or was, a large school. Three
days in the week I had to join one of the classes there; on
the other three one of the ushers came up to Larue for a
couple of hours of private tuition. At the school itself I
did not learn very much, except that boys everywhere are
pretty similar, especially in the badness of their manners.
