Chapter III: The Schoolboy: Saint-Léons

With his seventh year the time came for him to go to school. The schoolmaster of Saint-Léons was the child’s godfather. Everything pointed to him as the child’s first teacher. So Jean-Henri left the ancestral home at Malaval to return to his father’s house at Saint-Léons and attend the local school, which was kept by his godfather, Pierre Ricard. He could not have done better as a start in life. Let us leave him to paint one picture of this second phase of his life. He begins with a description of the school:

What shall I call the room in which I was to become acquainted with
the alphabet? It would be difficult to find the exact word, because
the room served for every purpose. It was at once a school, a
kitchen, a bedroom, a dining-room, and, at times, a chicken-house
and a piggery. Palatial schools were not dreamt of in those days;
any wretched hovel was thought good enough.

A broad fixed ladder led to the floor above. Under the ladder stood
a big bed in a boarded recess. What was there upstairs? I never
quite knew. I would see the master sometimes bring down an armful
of hay for the ass, sometimes a basket of potatoes which the
housewife emptied into the pot in which the little porker’s food
was cooked. It must have been a loft of sorts, a store-house of
provisions for man and beast. Those two apartments composed the
whole building.

To return to the lower one, the schoolroom: a window faces south,
the only window in the house, a long, narrow window whose frame you
can touch at the same time with your head and both your shoulders.
This sunny aperture is the only lively spot in the dwelling; it
overlooks the greater part of the village, which straggles along
the slopes of a tapering valley. In the window-recess is the
master’s little table.

The opposite wall contains a niche in which stands a gleaming
copper pail full of water. Here the parched children can relieve
their thirst when they please, with a cup left within their reach.
At the top of the niche are a few shelves bright with pewter
plates, dishes, and drinking-vessels, which are taken down from
their sanctuary on great occasions only.

More or less everywhere, at any spot which the light touches, are
crudely-coloured pictures, pasted on the walls. Here is Our Lady of
the Seven Dolours, the disconsolate Mother of God, opening her blue
cloak to show her heart pierced with seven daggers. Between the sun
and moon, which stare at you with their great, round eyes, is the
Eternal Father, Whose robe swells as though puffed out with the
storm. To the right of the window, in the embrasure, is the
Wandering Jew. He wears a three-cornered hat, a large, white,
leather apron, hobnailed shoes, and carries a stout stick. “Never
was such a bearded man seen before or after,” says the legend that
surrounds the picture. The draughtsman has not forgotten this
detail; the old man’s beard spreads in a snowy avalanche over the
apron and comes down to his knees. On the left is Geneviève of
Brabant, accompanied by the roe; with cruel Golo hiding in the
bushes, sword in hand. Above hangs The Death of Mr. Credit, slain
by defaulters at the door of his inn; and so on and so on, in every
variety of subject, at all the unoccupied spots of the four walls.

I was filled with admiration of this picture-gallery, which held
one’s eyes with its great patches of red, blue, green, and yellow.
The master, however, had not set up his collection with a view to
training our minds and hearts. That was the last and least of the
worthy man’s ambitions. An artist in his fashion, he had adorned
his house according to his taste; and we benefited by the scheme of
decoration.

While the gallery of halfpenny pictures made me happy all the year
round, there was another entertainment which I found particularly
attractive in winter, in frosty weather, when the snow lay long on
the ground. Against the far wall stands the fire-place, as
monumental in size as at my grandmother’s. Its arched cornice
occupies the whole width of the room, for the enormous redoubt
fulfils more than one purpose. In the middle is the hearth, but on
the right and the left are two breast-high recesses, half wood and
half stone. Each of them is a bed, with a mattress stuffed with
husks of winnowed corn. Two sliding boards serve as shutters and
close the chest if the sleeper would be alone. This dormitory,
sheltered under the chimney breast, supplies couches for the
favoured ones of the house, the boarders. They must lie snug in
them at night, when the north wind howls at the mouth of the dark
valley and sends the snow awhirl. The rest is occupied by the
hearth and its accessories: the three-legged stools; the salt-box,
hanging against the wall to keep its contents dry; the heavy shovel
which it takes two hands to wield; lastly, the bellows, similar to
those with which I used to blow out my cheeks in grandfather’s
house. They consist of a big branch of pine, hollowed throughout
its length with a red-hot iron. By means of this channel one’s
breath is applied, from a convenient distance, to the spot which is
to be revived. With a couple of stones for supports, the master’s
bundle of sticks and our own logs blaze and flicker, for each of us
has to bring a log of wood in the morning, if he would share in the
treat.

Nevertheless, the fire was not exactly lit for us, but, most of
all, to warm a row of three pots in which simmered the pigs’ food,
a mixture of potatoes and bran. That, despite the tribute of a log,
was the real object of the brushwood fire. The two boarders, on
their stools, in the best places, and we others, sitting on our
heels, formed a semicircle around those big cauldrons full to the
brim and giving off little jets of steam, with puff-puff-puffing
sounds. The bolder among us, when the master’s eyes were engaged
elsewhere, would dig a knife into a well-cooked potato and add it
to their bit of bread; for I must say that, if we did little work
at my school, at least we did a deal of eating. It was the regular
custom to crack a few nuts and nibble at a crust while writing our
page or setting out our rows of figures.

We, the smaller ones, in addition to the comfort of studying with
our mouths full, had every now and then two other delights, which
were quite as good as cracking nuts. The back-door communicated
with the yard where the hen, surrounded by her brood of chicks,
scratched at the dung-hill, while the little porkers, of whom there
were a dozen, wallowed in their stone trough. This door would open
sometimes to let one of us out, a privilege which we abused, for
the sly ones among us were careful not to close it on returning.
Forthwith the porkers would come running in, one after the other,
attracted by the smell of the boiled potatoes. My bench, the one
where the youngsters sat, stood against the wall, under the copper
pail to which we used to go for water when the nuts had made us
thirsty, and was right in the way of the pigs. Up they came
trotting and grunting, curling their little tails; they rubbed
against our legs; they poked their cold, pink snouts into our hands
in search of a scrap of crust; they questioned us with their sharp
little eyes to learn if we happened to have a dry chestnut for them
in our pockets. When they had gone the round, some this way and
some that, they went back to the farmyard, driven away by a
friendly flick of the master’s handkerchief. Next came the visit of
the hen, bringing her velvet-coated chicks to see us. All of us
eagerly crumbled a little bread for our pretty visitors. We vied
with one another in calling them to us and tickling with our
fingers their soft and downy backs. No, there was certainly no lack
of distraction. [14]

Now we know the school, with all its amenities, and our curiosity, aroused to the highest pitch, inquires, not without some alarm, what was taught in such a place and in such company. After the description of the class-room, we have the programme of studies:

Let us first speak of the young ones, of whom I was one. Each of us
had, or rather was supposed to have, in his hands a little penny
book, the alphabet, printed on grey paper. It began, on the cover,
with a pigeon or something like it. Next came a cross, followed by
the letters in their order. When we turned over, our eyes
encountered the terrible ba, be, bi, bo, bu, the stumbling-block of
most of us. When we had mastered that formidable page we were
considered to know how to read and were admitted among the big
ones. But if the little book was to be of any use, the least that
was required was that the master should interest himself in us to
some extent and show us how to set about things. For this the
worthy man, too much taken up with the big boys, had not the time.
The famous alphabet with the pigeon was thrust upon us only to give
us the air of scholars. We were to contemplate it on our bench, to
decipher it with the help of our next neighbours, in case he might
know one or two of the letters. Our contemplation came to nothing,
being every moment disturbed by a visit to the potatoes in the
stewpots, a quarrel among playmates about a marble, the grunting
invasion of the porkers, or the arrival of the chicks. With the aid
of these diversions we would wait patiently until it was time for
us to go home. That was our most serious work.

The big ones used to write. They had the benefit of the small
amount of light in the room, by the narrow window where the
Wandering Jew and ruthless Golo faced each other, and of the large
and only table with its circle of seats. The school supplied
nothing, not even a drop of ink; every one had to come with a full
set of utensils. The ink-horn of those days, a relic of the ancient
pen-case of which Rabelais speaks, was a long cardboard box divided
into two stages. The upper compartment held the pens, made of
goose-quill trimmed with a penknife; the lower contained, in a tiny
well, ink made of soot mixed with vinegar.

The master’s great business was to mend the pens—a delicate task,
not without danger for inexperienced fingers—and then to trace at
the head of the white page a line of strokes, single letters, or
words according to the scholar’s capabilities. When that is over,
keep an eye on the work of art which is coming to adorn the copy!
With what undulating movements of the wrist does the hand, resting
on the little finger, prepare and plan its flight! All at once the
hand starts off, flies, whirls; and lo and behold, under the line
of writing is unfurled a garland of circles, spirals, and
flourishes, framing a bird with outspread wings; the whole, if you
please, in red ink, the only kind worthy of such a pen. Large and
small, we stood awestruck in the presence of such marvels. The
family, in the evening, after supper, would pass from hand to hand
the masterpiece brought back from school:—

“What a man!” was the comment. “What a man, to draw you a Holy
Ghost with one stroke of the pen!”

What was read at my school? At most, in French, a few selections
from sacred history. Latin recurred oftener, to teach us to sing
vespers properly. The more advanced pupils tried to decipher
manuscript, a deed of sale, the hieroglyphics of some scrivener.

And history, geography? No one ever heard of them. What difference
did it make to us whether the earth was round or square! In either
case, it was just as hard to make it bring forth anything.

And grammar? The master troubled his head very little about that,
and we still less. We should have been greatly surprised by the
novelty and the forbidding look of such words in the grammatical
jargon as substantive, indicative, and subjunctive. Accuracy of
language, whether of speech or writing, must be learnt by practice.
And none of us was troubled by scruples in this respect. What was
the use of all these subtleties, when, on coming out of school, a
lad went back to his flock of sheep!

And arithmetic? Yes, we did a little of this, but not under that
learned name. We called it sums. To put down rows of figures, not
too long, add them and subtract them one from the other was more or
less familiar work. On Saturday evenings, to finish up the week,
there was a general orgy of sums. The top boy stood up and, in a
loud voice, recited the multiplication table up to twelve times. I
say twelve times, for, in those days, because of our old duodecimal
measures, it was the custom to count as far as the twelve-times
table, instead of the ten-times of the metric system. When this
recital was over, the whole class, the little ones included,
shouted it in chorus, creating such an uproar that chicks and
porkers took to flight if they happened to be there. And this went
on to twelve times twelve, the first in the row starting the next
table and the whole class repeating it as loud as it could yell. Of
all that we were taught in school, the multiplication table was
what we knew best, for this noisy method ended by dinning the
different numbers into our ears. This does not mean that we became
skilful reckoners. The cleverest of us easily got muddled with the
figures to be carried in a multiplication sum. As for division,
rare indeed were they who reached such heights. In short, the
moment a problem, however insignificant, had to be solved, we had
recourse to mental gymnastics much rather than to the learned aid
of arithmetic.

This account cannot be suspected of any malicious exaggeration: the narrator is too full of sympathy for his old master to do him anything less than justice. In any case he bears him no grudge in respect of the deficiencies of his teaching:

When all is said, our master was an excellent man who could have
kept school very well but for his lack of one thing: and that was
time. He devoted to us all the little leisure which his numerous
functions left him. And first of all, he managed the property of an
absentee landowner, who only occasionally set foot in the village.
He had under his care an old castle with four towers, which had
become so many pigeon-houses; he directed the getting-in of the
hay, the walnuts, the apples, and the oats. We used to help him
during the summer, when the school, which was well attended in
winter, was almost deserted. The few who remained, because they
were not yet big enough to work in the fields, were small children,
including him who was one day to set down these memorable facts.
Lessons were less dull at that time of year. They were often given
on the hay or the straw; oftener still, lesson-time was spent in
cleaning out the dovecot or stamping on the snails that had sallied
in rainy weather from their ramparts, the tall box borders of the
garden belonging to the castle.

Our master was a barber. With his light hand, which was so clever
at beautifying our copies with curlicue birds, he shaved the
notabilities of the place: the mayor, the parish priest, the
notary. Our master was a bell-ringer. A wedding or a christening
interrupted the lessons; he had to ring a peal. A gathering storm
gave us a holiday: the great bell must be tolled to ward off the
lightning and the hail. Our master was a choir-singer. With his
mighty voice he filled the church where he led the Magnificat at
vespers. Our master wound up the village clock. This was his
proudest function. Giving a glance at the sun, to ascertain the
time more or less nearly, he would climb to the top of the steeple,
open a huge cage of rafters, and find himself in a maze of wheels
and springs whereof the secret was known to him alone.

In this picture of the schoolmaster and the school we have lost sight for a time of our little Jean-Henri. What becomes of him? What does he do in such a school, under such a master? To begin with, no one takes a greater interest in the visits of hens and piglings, no one appreciates more keenly the delights of school in the open air. In the meanwhile, his love of plants and animals finds expression in all directions, even on the cover of his penny spelling-book:

Embellished with a crude picture of a pigeon which I study and
contemplate much more zealously than the A, B, C. Its round eye,
with its circlet of dots, seems to smile upon me. Its wing, of
which I count the feathers one by one, tells me of flights on high,
among the beautiful clouds; it carries me to the beeches, raising
their smooth trunks above a mossy carpet studded with white
mushrooms that look like eggs dropped by some vagrant hen; it takes
me to the snow-clad peaks where the birds leave the starry print of
their red feet. He is a fine fellow, my pigeon-friend: he consoles
me for the woes hidden behind the cover of my book. Thanks to him,
I sit quietly on my bench and wait more or less till school is
over.

School out of doors has other charms. When the master takes us to
kill the snails in the box borders, I do not always scrupulously
fulfil my office as exterminator. My heel sometimes hesitates
before coming down upon the handful which I have gathered. They are
so pretty! Just think, there are yellow ones and pink, white ones
and brown, all with dark spiral streaks. I fill my pockets with the
handsomest so as to feast my eyes upon them at my leisure.

On haymaking days in the master’s field, I strike up an
acquaintance with the Frog. Flayed and stuck at the end of a split
stick, he serves as live bait to tempt the Crayfish from his
retreat by the edge of the brook. On the alder-tree I catch the
Hoplia, the splendid Beetle who pales the azure of the heavens. I
pick the narcissus and learn to gather, with the tip of my tongue,
the tiny drops of honey that lie right at the bottom of the cleft
corolla. I also learn that too-long indulgence in this quest always
brings a headache; but this discomfort in no way impairs my
admiration for the glorious white flower, which wears a narrow red
collar at the throat of its funnel. When we go to beat the
walnut-trees, the barren grass-plots provide me with Locusts,
spreading their wings, some into a blue fan, others into a red.

And thus the rustic school, even in the heart of winter, furnished
continuous food for my interest in things.

But while the love of plants and animals developed automatically, without guide or example, in the child predestined to entomology, there was one respect in which he did not make progress: the knowledge of the alphabet, which was indeed neglected for the pigeon. Consequently neither the schoolmaster nor the spelling-book had much to do with the earliest stage of his education. He tells us how he learned to read, not at Master Ricard’s, but, thanks to his father, in the school of the animals and nature:

I was still at the same stage, hopelessly behind-hand with the
intractable alphabet, when my father, by a chance inspiration,
brought me home from the town what was destined to give me a start
along the road of reading. Despite the not insignificant part which
it played in my intellectual awakening, the purchase was by no
means a ruinous one. It was a large print, price six farthings,
coloured and divided into compartments in which animals of all
sorts taught the A, B, C by means of the first letters of their
names.

I made such rapid progress that, in a few days, I was able to turn
in good earnest to the pages of my little pigeon-book, hitherto so
undecipherable. I was initiated; I knew how to spell. My parents
marvelled. I can explain this unexpected progress to-day. Those
speaking pictures, which brought me among my friends the beasts,
were in harmony with my instincts. If the animal has not fulfilled
all that it promised in so far as I am concerned, I have at least
to thank it for teaching me to read. I should have succeeded by
other means, I do not doubt, but not so quickly or pleasantly.
Animals for ever!

Luck favoured me a second time. As a reward for my prowess I was
given La Fontaine’s Fables, in a popular, cheap edition, crammed
with pictures, small, I admit, and very inaccurate, but still
delightful. Here were the crow, the fox, the wolf, the magpie, the
frog, the rabbit, the ass, the dog, the cat; all persons of my
acquaintance. The glorious book was immensely to my taste, with its
skimpy illustrations in which the animal walked and talked. As to
understanding what it said, that was another story. Never mind, my
lad! Put together syllables that say nothing to you yet; they will
speak to you later and La Fontaine will always remain your friend.
[15]