In three months I had attained to Oblet's standard, and if I were not afraid of offending his pride, I should say that, in some points, I had even surpassed him.
My progress in writing gave my mother some pleasure, though she would much rather it had been in arithmetic.
"Writing, writing!" she would say; "it is something to be proud of, I must say, to write well. Why, any duffer can write well. But look at Bonaparte, you have a score of his letters addressed to your father; can you make out a single one of them?"
"But, madame, M. Bonaparté is now at the island of Elba," Oblet would reply gravely.
Oblet was a hot Royalist, so he always pronounced the name Bonaparté, and gave the ex-Emperor the title of monsieur.
The same honour or the same insult that Oblet offered to Bonaparte was offered me in the Chamber of 1847.
"Do you mean to say," my mother replied, "that he is at Elba because he didn't know how to write?"
"Why should I not say so? It is an argument that may be maintained, madame. They say that M. Bonaparté was betrayed by his marshals; but I say 'Providence willed this usurper should not be able to write clearly so that his orders should be illegible, and therefore they were not able to be carried out.' 'His marshals betrayed him! 'Nothing of the kind, madame; they read his orders wrongly, so they acted contrary to what he had ordered them. Hence have arisen our reverses and our defeats, and the taking of Paris and the exile to the isle of Elba."
"Well, we will drop Bonaparte now, M. Oblet."