CHAPTER XLIX.
We left the mountains at the beginning of October, but my home-coming
was marked by a very painful circumstance--I was sent to school! I
went, of course, only as a day scholar; and it goes without saying
that I was never allowed to go and come alone lest I should get into
bad company. The four years that I spent at the university, as a day
scholar, were as strange and as full of odd experiences as any of my
life. But, notwithstanding, from that fatal day my history becomes
much less interesting as a narrative.
I was taken to school for the first time, at two o'clock in the
afternoon, upon one of those glorious October days, so sunny and
peaceful, that is like a reluctant and sad leave-taking of the summer-
time. Ah! how beautiful it had been in the mountains, in the leafless
forests and among the autumn-tinted vines!
With a crowd of children, all talking at the same time, I entered the
torture chamber. My first impression was one of astonished disgust
because of the hideousness of the ink-stained walls, and of the old
benches of shiny wood defaced by the penknife carvings of countless
school-boys who had been so inexpressibly miserable in this place.
Although I was a stranger to my new companions they treated me with
the greatest familiarity (they used thee and thou in addressing me)
and gave themselves patronizing airs that were almost impertinent.
Although I observed my school-mates timidly and furtively I thought
them, for the most part, exceedingly ill-mannered and untidy.
As I was twelve and a half I entered the third class; my tutor
considered me advanced enough to keep up with it if I chose to do so,
although I myself felt that I was scarcely equal to the task. The
first day, for the purpose of qualifying, we had to write Latin
exercises, and I remember that my father awaited, with some anxiety,
the outcome of the examination. When I told him I was second among
fifteen I was surprised that he attached so much importance to a
matter of so little interest to me. It was all one to me! Broken
hearted as I felt, how could I be affected by such a trifle?
Later, indeed, at no time, did I feel the impetus that the desire to
excel brings with it. To be at the foot of the class always seemed to
me the least of the ills that a school-boy is called upon to endure.
The weeks following my entrance were extremely painful to me. I felt
my intellect cramping rather than expanding under the multiplicity of
the lessons and the tasks imposed; even the realm of my young dreams
seemed closing against me little by little. The first dismal, foggy
weather, and the first gray days added a greater desolation and
sadness to my already overwrought feelings. The uncouth chimney-sweeps
had returned, and their yearly autumn cry was again heard in the
streets. Theirs was a cry that in my earlier years wrung my heart and
caused my tears to flow. When one is a child the approach of winter,
with its killing gloom and cold, seems to awake in him inexplicable
forebodings bespeaking the end of all bright and beautiful things;
time goes so slowly in childhood that we appear not to be able to
anticipate the inevitable reawakening that comes in the spring to all
things.
No, it is only when we are older, and would seem, therefore, to be
more impressionable to the changes of the seasons, that we regard
winter merely as an incident having its rightful place among the other
incidents of life.
I had a calendar and I marked off upon it the slowly passing days. At
the commencement of my first year of college life I was oppressed by
the thought of the months of study stretching before me, and by the
prospect of the interminable months that must come and go before we
reached the Easter vacation that was to give us a respite of eight or
ten days from the dreadful schoolroom grind and ennui; I seemed to
lose all my courage, and at times I was almost overwhelmed with
despair at the prospect of the long and dreary days that went so
slowly.
In the meantime cold weather, really cold weather set in and
aggravated my sorrows. Oh! the daily journey to school upon those
frigid December mornings, where for two deadly hours the only warmth
we obtained came from the inadequate coal fire, and before me the
torture of returning to my home in the face of the icy winter wind!
The other children frolicked and ran and pushed each other, and they
slid upon the ice when it chanced that the water in the gutters was
frozen over. As for me I did not know how to slide, and, besides,
sports such as the other boys indulged in, I considered highly
undignified. I was always escorted to and from school very sedately,
and I felt the humiliation of being conducted. I was sometimes laughed
at by my school-mates with whom I was not at all popular; and I had a
disdain for those who, like myself, were in bondage. I had scarcely an
idea in common with them.
Even Thursdays I had to give to the preparation of lessons that took
the entire day. The written tasks, absurd exercises, I scrawled off in
the most careless and illegible handwriting.
And my disgust for life was so great that I no longer took the least
bit of pains with myself; often now I was scolded for looking so
unkempt, and for having dirty, ink-stained hands. . . . But if I
continue in this strain I will succeed in making my recital as tedious
as were the school-days of my youth.
