The Martian: A Novel

The only event of any importance in Barty's life that year was his first communion, which he took with several others of about his own age. An event that did not seem to make much impression on him – nothing seemed to make much impression on Barty Josselin when he was very young. He was just a lively, irresponsible, irrepressible human animal – always in perfect health and exuberant spirits, with an immense appetite for food and fun and frolic; like a squirrel, a collie pup, or a kitten.

Père Bonamy, the priest who confirmed him, was fonder of the boy than of any one, boy or girl, that he had ever prepared for communion, and could hardly speak of him with decent gravity, on account of his extraordinary confessions – all of which were concocted in the depths of Barty's imagination for the sole purpose of making the kind old curé laugh; and the kind old curé was just as fond of laughing as was Barty of playing the fool, in and out of season. I wonder if he always thought himself bound to respect the secrets of the confessional in Barty's case!

And Barty would sing to him – even in the confessional:

"Stabat mater dolorosaJuxta crucem lachrymoseDum pendebat fllius" …

in a voice so sweet and innocent and pathetic that it would almost bring the tears to the good old curé's eyelash.

"Ah! ma chère Mamzelle Marceline!" he would say – "au moins s'ils étaient tous comme ce petit Josselin! çà irait comme sur des roulettes! Il est innocent comme un jeune veau, ce mioche anglais! Il a le bon Dieu dans le cœur!"

"Et une boussole dans l'estomac!" said Mlle. Marceline.

I don't think he was quite so innocent as all that, perhaps – but no young beast of the field was ever more harmless.

That year the examinations were good all round; even I did not disgrace myself, and Barty was brilliant. But there were no delightful holidays for me to record. Barty went to Yorkshire, and I remained in Paris with my mother.

There is only one thing more worth mentioning that year.

My father had inherited from his father a system of shorthand, which he called Blaze– I don't know why! His father had learnt it of a Dutch Jew.

It is, I think, the best kind of cipher ever invented (I have taken interest in these things and studied them). It is very difficult to learn, but I learnt it as a child – and it was of immense use to me at lectures we used to attend at the Sorbonne and Collège de France.

Barty was very anxious to know it, and after some trouble I obtained my father's permission to impart this calligraphic crypt to Barty, on condition he should swear on his honor never to reveal it: and this he did.

With his extraordinary quickness and the perseverance he always had when he wished a thing very much, he made himself a complete master of this occult science before he left school, two or three years later: it took me seven years – beginning when I was four! It does equally well for French or English, and it played an important part in Barty's career. My sister knew it, but imperfectly; my mother not at all – for all she tried so hard and was so persevering; it must be learnt young. As far as I am aware, no one else knows it in England or France – or even the world – although it is such a useful invention; quite a marvel of simple ingenuity when one has mastered the symbols, which certainly take a long time and a deal of hard work.

Barty and I got to talk it on our fingers as rapidly as ordinary speech and with the slightest possible gestures: this was his improvement.

Barty came back from his holidays full of Whitby, and its sailors and whalers, and fishermen and cobles and cliffs – all of which had evidently had an immense attraction for him. He was always fond of that class; possibly also some vague atavistic sympathy for the toilers of the sea lay dormant in his blood like an inherited memory.

And he brought back many tokens of these good people's regard – two formidable clasp‐knives (for each of which he had to pay the giver one farthing in current coin of the realm); spirit‐flasks, leather bottles, jet ornaments; woollen jerseys and comforters knitted for him by their wives and daughters; fossil ammonites and coprolites; a couple of young sea‐gulls to add to his menagerie; and many old English marine ditties, which he had to sing to M. Bonzig with his now cracked voice, and then translate into French. Indeed, Bonzig and Barty became inseparable companions during the Thursday promenade, on the strength of their common interest in ships and the sea; and Barty never wearied of describing the place he loved, nor Bonzig of listening and commenting.

"Ah! mon cher! ce que je donnerais, moi, pour voir le retour d'un baleinier à Ouittebé! Quelle 'marine' ça ferait! hein? avec la grande falaise, et la bonne petite église en haut, près de la Vieille Abbaye – et les toits rouges qui fument, et les trois jetées en pierre, et le vieux pont‐levis – et toute cette grouille de mariniers avec leurs femmes et leurs enfants – et ces braves filles qui attendent le retour du bien‐aimé! nom d'un nom! dire que vous avez vu tout ça, vous – qui n'avez pas encore seize ans … quelle chance!.. dites – qu'est‐ce que ça veut bien dire, ce

'Ouïle mé sekile rô!'

Chantez‐moi ça encore une fois!"

And Barty, whose voice was breaking, would raucously sing him the good old ditty for the sixth time:

"Weel may the keel row, the keel row, the keel row,Weel may the keel rowThat brings my laddie home!"

which he would find rather difficult to render literally into colloquial seafaring French!

He translated it thus:

"Vogue la carène,Vogue la carèneQui me ramèneMon bien aimé!"

"Ah! vous verrez," says Bonzig – "vous verrez, aux prochaines vacances de Pâques – je ferai un si joli tableau de tout ça! avec la brume du soir qui tombe, vous savez – et le soleil qui disparait – et la marée qui monte et la lune qui se lève à l'horizon! et les mouettes et les goëlands – et les bruyères lointaines – et le vieux manoir seigneurial de votre grand‐père … c'est bien ça, n'est‐ce pas?"

"Oui, oui, M'sieur Bonzig – vous y êtes, en plein!"

And the good usher in his excitement would light himself a cigarette of caporal, and inhale the smoke as if it were a sea‐breeze, and exhale it like a regular sou'‐wester! and sing:

"Ouïle – mé – sekile rô,Tat brinn my laddé ôme!"

Barty also brought back with him the complete poetical works of Byron and Thomas Moore, the gift of his noble grandfather, who adored these two bards to the exclusion of all other bards that ever wrote in English. And during that year we both got to know them, possibly as well as Lord Whitby himself. Especially "Don Juan," in which we grew to be as word‐perfect as in Polyeucte, Le Misanthrope, Athalie, Philoctète, Le Lutrin, the first six books of the Æneid and the Iliad, the Ars Poetica, and the Art Poétique (Boileau).

Every line of these has gone out of my head – long ago, alas! But I could still stand a pretty severe examination in the now all‐but‐forgotten English epic – from Dan to Beersheba – I mean from "I want a hero" to "The phantom of her frolic grace, Fitz‐Fulke!"

Barty, however, remembered everything – what he ought to, and what he ought not! He had the most astounding memory: wax to receive and marble to retain; also a wonderful facility for writing verse, mostly comic, both in English and French. Greek and Latin verse were not taught us at Brossard's, for good French reasons, into which I will not enter now.

We also grew very fond of Lamartine and Victor Hugo, quite openly – and of De Musset under the rose.

"C'était dans la nuit bruneSur le clocher jauni,La lune,Comme un point sur son i!"

(not for the young person).

I have a vague but pleasant impression of that year. Its weathers, its changing seasons, its severe frosts, with Sunday skatings on the dangerous canals, St.‐Ouen and De l'Ourcq; its genial spring, all convolvulus and gobéas, and early almond blossom and later horse‐chestnut spikes, and more lime and syringa than ever; its warm soft summer and the ever‐delightful school of natation by the Isle of Swans.

This particular temptation led us into trouble. We would rise before dawn, Barty and Jolivet and I, and let ourselves over the wall and run the two miles, and get a heavenly swim and a promise of silence for a franc apiece; and run back again and jump into bed a few minutes before the five‐o'clock bell rang the réveillé.

But we did this once too often – for M. Dumollard had been looking at Venus with his telescope (I think it was Venus) one morning before sunrise, and spied us out en flagrant délit; perhaps with that very telescope. Anyhow, he pounced on us when we came back. And our punishment would have been extremely harsh but for Barty, who turned it all into a joke.

After breakfast M. Mérovée pronounced a very severe sentence on us under the acacia. I forget what it was – but his manner was very short and dignified, and he walked away very stiffly towards the door of the étude. Barty ran after him without noise, and just touching his shoulders with the tips of his fingers, cleared him at a bound from behind, as one clears a post.

M. Mérovée, in a real rage this time, forgot his dignity, and pursued him all over the school – through open windows and back again – into his own garden (Tusculum) – over trellis railings – all along the top of a wall – and finally, quite blown out, sat down on the edge of the tank: the whole school was in fits by this time, even M. Dumollard – and at last Mérovée began to laugh too. So the thing had to be forgiven – but only that once!

Once also, that year, but in the winter, a great compliment was paid to la perfide Albion in the persons of MM. Josselin et Maurice, which I cannot help recording with a little complacency.

On a Thursday walk in the Bois de Boulogne a boy called out "À bas Dumollard!" in a falsetto squeak. Dumollard, who was on duty that walk, was furious, of course – but he couldn't identify the boy by the sound of his voice. He made his complaint to M. Mérovée – and next morning, after prayers, Mérovée came into the school‐room, and told us he should go the round of the boys there and then, and ask each boy separately to own up if it were he who had uttered the seditious cry.

"And mind you!" he said – "you are all and each of you on your 'word of honor' —l'étude entière!"

So round he went, from boy to boy, deliberately fixing each boy with his eye, and severely asking – "Est‐ce toi?" "Est‐ce toi?" "Est‐ce toi?" etc., and waiting very deliberately indeed for the answer, and even asking for it again if it were not given in a firm and audible voice. And the answer was always, "Non, m'sieur, ce n'est pas moi!"

But when he came to each of us (Josselin and me) he just mumbled his "Est‐ce toi?" in a quite perfunctory voice, and didn't even wait for the answer!

When he got to the last boy of all, who said "Non, m'sieur," like all the rest, he left the room, saying, tragically (and, as I thought, rather theatrically for him):

"Je m'en vais le cœur navré – il y a un lâche parmi vous!" (My heart is harrowed – there's a coward among you.)

There was an awkward silence for a few moments.

Presently Rapaud got up and went out. We all knew that Rapaud was the delinquent – he had bragged about it so – overnight in the dormitory. He went straight to M. Mérovée and confessed, stating that he did not like to be put on his word of honor before the whole school. I forget whether he was punished or not, or how. He had to make his apologies to M. Dumollard, of course.

To put the whole school on its word of honor was thought a very severe measure, coming as it did from the head master in person. "La parole d'honneur" was held to be very sacred between boy and boy, and even between boy and head master. The boy who broke it was always "mis à la quarantaine" (sent to Coventry) by the rest of the school.

"I wonder why he let off Josselin and Maurice so easily?" said Jolivet, at breakfast.

"Parce qu'il aime les Anglais, ma foi!" said M. Dumollard – "affaire de goût!"

"Ma foi, il n'a pas tort!" said M. Bonzig.

Dumollard looked askance at Bonzig (between whom and himself not much love was lost) and walked off, jauntily twirling his mustache, and whistling a few bars of a very ungainly melody, to which the words ran:

"Non! jamais en France,Jamais Anglais ne règnera!"

As if we wanted to, good heavens!

(By‐the‐way, I suddenly remember that both Berquin and d'Orthez were let off as easily as Josselin and I. But they were eighteen or nineteen, and "en Philosophie," the highest class in the school – and very first‐rate boys indeed. It's only fair that I should add this.)

By‐the‐way, also, M. Dumollard took it into his head to persecute me because once I refused to fetch and carry for him and be his "moricaud," or black slave (as du Tertre‐Jouan called it): a mean and petty persecution which lasted two years, and somewhat embitters my memory of those happy days. It was always "Maurice au piquet pour une heure!"… "Maurice à la retenue!"… "Maurice privé de bain!"… "Maurice consigné dimanche prochain!" … for the slightest possible offence. But I forgive him freely.

First, because he is probably dead, and "de mortibus nil desperandum!" as Rapaud once said – and for saying which he received a "twisted pinch" from Mérovée Brossard himself.

Secondly, because he made chemistry, cosmography, and physics so pleasant – and even reconciled me at last to the differential and integral calculus (but never Barty!).

He could be rather snobbish at times, which was not a common French fault in the forties – we didn't even know what to call it.

For instance, he was fond of bragging to us boys about the golden splendors of his Sunday dissipation, and his grand acquaintances, even in class. He would even interrupt himself in the middle of an equation at the blackboard to do so.

"You mustn't imagine to yourselves, messieurs, that because I teach you boys science at the Pension Brossard, and take you out walking on Thursday afternoons, and all that, that I do not associate avec des gens du monde! Last night, for example, I was dining at the Café de Paris with a very intimate friend of mine – he's a marquis – and when the bill was brought, what do you think it came to? you give it up?" (vous donnez votre langue aux chats?). "Well, it came to fifty‐seven francs, fifty centimes! We tossed up who should pay – et, ma foi, le sort a favorisé M. le Marquis!"

To this there was nothing to say; so none of us said anything, except du Tertre‐Jouan, our marquis (No. 2), who said, in his sulky, insolent, peasantlike manner:

"Et comment q'ça s'appelle, vot' marquis?" (What does it call itself, your marquis?)

Upon which M. Dumollard turns very red ("pique un soleil"), and says:

"Monsieur le Marquis Paul – François – Victor du Tertre‐Jouan de Haultcastel de St.‐Paterne, vous êtes un paltoquet et un rustre!.."

And goes back to his equations.

Du Tertre‐Jouan was nearly six feet high, and afraid of nobody – a kind of clodhopping young rustic Hercules, and had proved his mettle quite recently – when a brutal usher, whom I will call Monsieur Boulot (though his real name was Patachou), a Méridional with a horrible divergent squint, made poor Rapaud go down on his knees in the classe de géographie ancienne, and slapped him violently on the face twice running – a way he had with Rapaud.

It happened like this. It was a kind of penitential class for dunces during play‐time. M. Boulot drew in chalk an outline of ancient Greece on the blackboard, and under it he wrote —

"Timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes!"

"Rapaud, translate me that line of Virgil!" says Boulot.

"J'estime les Danois et leurs dents de fer!" says poor Rapaud (I esteem the Danish and their iron teeth). And we all laughed. For which he underwent the brutal slapping.

The window was ajar, and outside I saw du Tertre‐Jouan, Jolivet, and Berquin, listening and peeping through. Suddenly the window bursts wide open, and du Tertre‐Jouan vaults the sill, gets between Boulot and his victim, and says:

"Le troisième coup fait feu, vous savez! touchez‐y encore, à ce moutard, et j'vous assomme sur place!" (Touch him again, that kid, and I'll break your head where you stand!).

There was an awful row, of course – and du Tertre‐Jouan had to make a public apology to M. Boulot, who disappeared from the school the very same day; and Tertre‐Jouan would have been canonized by us all, but that he was so deplorably dull and narrow‐minded, and suspected of being a royalist in disguise. He was an orphan and very rich, and didn't fash himself about examinations. He left school that year without taking any degree – and I don't know what became of him.

This year also Barty conceived a tender passion for Mlle. Marceline.

It was after the mumps, which we both had together in a double‐bedded infirmerie next to the lingerie – a place where it was a pleasure to be ill; for she was in and out all day, and told us all that was going on, and gave us nice drinks and tisanes of her own making – and laughed at all Barty's jokes, and some of mine! and wore the most coquettish caps ever seen.

Besides, she was an uncommonly good‐looking woman – a tall blonde with beautiful teeth, and wonderfully genial, good‐humored, and lively – an ideal nurse, but a terrible postponer of cures! Lord Archibald quite fell in love with her.

"C'est moi qui voudrais bien avoir les oreillons ici!" he said to her. "Je retarderais ma convalescence autant que possible!"

"Comme il sait bien le français, votre oncle – et comme il est poli!" said Marceline to the convalescent Barty, who was in no hurry to get well either!

When we did get well again, Barty would spend much of his play‐time fetching and carrying for Mlle. Marceline – even getting Dumollard's socks for her to darn – and talking to her by the hour as he sat by her pleasant window, out of which one could see the Arch of Triumph, which so triumphantly dominated Paris and its suburbs, and does so still – no Eiffel Tower can kill that arch!

I, being less precocious, did not begin my passion for Mlle. Marceline till next year, just as Bonneville and Jolivet trois were getting over theirs. Nous avons tous passé par là!

What a fresh and kind and jolly woman she was, to be sure! I wonder none of the masters married her. Perhaps they did! Let us hope it wasn't M. Dumollard!

It is such a pleasure to recall every incident of this epoch of my life and Barty's that I should like to go through our joint lives day by day, hour by hour, microscopically – to describe every book we read, every game we played, every pensum (i. e., imposition) we performed; every lark we were punished for – every meal we ate. But space forbids this self‐indulgence, and other considerations make it unadvisable – so I will resist the temptation.

La pension Brossard! How often have we both talked of it, Barty and I, as middle‐aged men; in the billiard‐room of the Marathoneum, let us say, sitting together on a comfortable couch, with tea and cigarettes – and always in French whispers! we could only talk of Brossard's in French.

"Te rappelles‐tu l'habit neuf de Berquin, et son chapeau haute‐forme?"

"Te souviens‐tu de la vieille chatte angora du père Jaurion?" etc., etc., etc.

Idiotic reminiscences! as charming to revive as any old song with words of little meaning that meant so much when one was four – five – six years old! before one knew even how to spell them!

"Paille à Dine – paille à Chine —Paille à Suzette et Martine —Bon lit à la Dumaine!"

Céline, my nurse, used to sing this – and I never knew what it meant; nor do I now! But it was charming indeed.

Even now I dream that I go back to school, to get coached by Dumollard in a little more algebra. I wander about the playground; but all the boys are new, and don't even know my name; and silent, sad, and ugly, every one! Again Dumollard persecutes me. And in the middle of it I reflect that, after all, he is a person of no importance whatever, and that I am a member of the British Parliament – a baronet – a millionaire – and one of her Majesty's Privy Councillors! and that M. Dumollard must be singularly "out of it," even for a Frenchman, not to be aware of this.

"If he only knew!" says I to myself, says I – in my dream.

Besides, can't the man see with his own eyes that I'm grown up, and big enough to tuck him under my left arm, and spank him just as if he were a little naughty boy – confound the brute!

Then, suddenly:

"Maurice, au piquet pour une heure!"

"Moi, m'sieur?"

"Oui, vous!"

"Pourquoi, m'sieur!"

"Parce que ça me plaît!"

And I wake – and could almost weep to find how old I am!

And Barty Josselin is no more – oh! my God!.. and his dear wife survived him just twenty‐four hours!

Behold us both "en Philosophie!"

And Barty the head boy of the school, though not the oldest – and the brilliant show‐boy of the class.

Just before Easter (1851) he and I and Rapaud and Laferté and Jolivet trois (who was nineteen) and Palaiseau and Bussy‐Rabutin went up for our "bachot" at the Sorbonne.

We sat in a kind of big musty school‐room with about thirty other boys from other schools and colleges. There we sat side by side from ten till twelve at long desks, and had a long piece of Latin dictated to us, with the punctuation in French: "un point – point et virgule – deux points – point d'exclamation – guillemets – ouvrez la parenthèse," etc., etc. – monotonous details that enervate one at such a moment!

Then we set to work with our dictionaries and wrote out a translation according to our lights – a pion walking about and watching us narrowly for cribs, in case we should happen to have one for this particular extract, which was most unlikely.

Barty's nose bled, I remember – and this made him nervous.

Then we went and lunched at the Café de l'Odéon, on the best omelet we had ever tasted.

"Te rappelles‐tu cette omelette?" said poor Barty to me only last Christmas as ever was!

Then we went back with our hearts in our mouths to find if we had qualified ourselves by our "version écrite" for the oral examination that comes after, and which is so easy to pass – the examiners having lunched themselves into good‐nature.

There we stood panting, some fifty boys and masters, in a small, whitewashed room like a prison. An official comes in and puts the list of candidates in a frame on the wall, and we crane our necks over each other's shoulders.

And, lo! Barty is plucked —collé! and I have passed, and actually Rapaud – and no one else from Brossard's!

An old man – a parent or grandparent probably of some unsuccessful candidate – bursts into tears and exclaims,

"Oh! qué malheur – qué malheur!"

A shabby, tall, pallid youth, in the uniform of the Collège Ste.‐Barbe, rushes down the stone stair's shrieking,

"Ça pue l'injustice, ici!"

One hears him all over the place: terrible heartburns and tragic disappointments in the beginning of life resulted from failure in this first step – a failure which disqualified one for all the little government appointments so dear to the heart of the frugal French parent. "Mille francs par an! c'est le Pactole!"

Barty took his defeat pretty easily – he put it all down to his nose bleeding – and seemed so pleased at my success, and my dear mother's delight in it, that he was soon quite consoled; he was always like that.

To M. Mérovée, Barty's failure was as great a disappointment as it was a painful surprise.

"Try again Josselin! Don't leave here till you have passed. If you are content to fail in this, at the very outset of your career, you will never succeed in anything through life! Stay with us as my guest till you can go up again, and again if necessary. Do, my dear child – it will make me so happy! I shall feel it as a proof that you reciprocate in some degree the warm friendship I have always borne you – in common with everybody in the school! Je t'en prie, mon garçon!"

Then he went to the Rohans and tried to persuade them. But Lord Archibald didn't care much about Bachots, nor his wife either. They were going back to live in England, besides; and Barty was going into the Guards.