At this point, from one corner of the parlour, a crow
of childish laughter went off like a rocket.
Monsieur Tudesco stopped short and smiled, his hair
flying, his eye moist, his arms thrown open as if
to embrace and bless; then he resumed:
“I say it: the laugh of innocence is the
ill-starred veteran’s joy. I see from where
I stand groups worthy of Correggio’s brush,
and I say: Happy the families that meet together
in peace in the heart of their fatherland! Ladies
and gentlemen, pardon me if I hold out to you the
casque of Belisarius. I am an old tree riven
by the levin-bolt.”
And he went from group to group holding out his peaked
felt hat, into which, amid an icy silence, fell coin
by coin a dribble of small silver.
But suddenly the Superintendent of Studies seized
the hat and pushed the old man outside.
“Give me back my hat,” bawled Monsieur
Tudesco to the Superintendent, who was doing his best
to restore the coins to the donors; “give back
the old man’s hat, the hat of one who has grown
grey in learned studies.”
The Superintendent, scarlet with rage, tossed the
felt into the court, shouting:
“Be off, or I will call the police.”
The Marquis Tudesco took to his heels with great agility.
The same evening the new Assistant was summoned to
the Director’s presence and received his dismissal.
“Unhappy boy! unhappy boy!” said the Abbe
Bordier, beating his brow; “you have been the
cause of an intolerable scandal, of a sort unheard
of in this house, and that just when I had so much
to do.”
And as he spoke, the scattered papers fluttered like
white birds on the Director’s table.
Making his way through the parlour, Jean saw the Mater
dolorosa as before, and read again the names of
Philippe-Guy Thiererche and the Countess Valentine.
“I hate them,” he muttered through clenched
teeth, “I hate them all.”
Meantime, the good priest felt a stir of pity.
Every day they had badgered him with reports against
Jean Servien. This time he had given way; he
had sacrificed the young usher; but he really could
make nothing of this tale about a beggar. He changed
his mind, ran to the door and called to the young
man to corne back.
Jean turned and faced him:
“No!” he cried, “no! I can
bear the life no longer; I am unhappy, I am full of
misery—and hate.”
“Poor lad!” sight the Director, letting
his arms drop by his side.
That evening he did not write a single line of his
Tragedy.
The kind-hearted bookbinder harassed his son with
no reproaches.
After dinner he went and sat at his shop-door, and
looked at the first star that peeped out in the evening
sky.
“My boy,” said he, “I am not a man
of learning like you; but I have a notion—and
you must not rob me of it, because it is a comfort
to me—that, when I have finished binding
books, I shall go to that star. The idea occurred
to me from what I have read in the paper that the
stars are all worlds. What is that star called?”
