Ah! why had he not remained there? And as this occurred to him, he said to himself, that perhaps they would not have him here either. He looked toward the table. There by the big register the husband and wife were busy whispering with Madame Constant. They looked at him, and he caught a word now and then. The little woman sighed, and twice Jack heard her say, as did the priest,—“Poor child!”
She also pitied him. And why? What was he, then, that they pitied him? Jack asked himself.
This compassion that others felt for him weighed sorely on his little heart. He could have wept with shame, for in his childish mind he attributed this disdainful compassion to some peculiarity of costume, his bare legs, or his long curls.
But he thought of his mother’s despair. Should he meet with another refusal? Suddenly he saw Constant draw her purse and hand to the principal some notes and gold pieces. Yes, they were going to keep him. He was delighted, poor child, for he little knew that the great misfortune of his life was now inaugurated there in that room.
At this moment a tremendous bass voice came up from the garden below, singing the chorus of an old song. The windows of the room had not recovered from the shock, when a stout, short man, in a velvet coat, close-cut hair, and heavy beard, burst into the room.
“Hallo!” he cried, in a tone of comic astonishment, “a fire in the parlor? What a luxury!” and he drew a long breath. In fact, the new-comer was in the habit of drawing long breaths at the end of each sentence, a habit he had acquired in singing; and these breaths were almost like the roaring of a wild beast. Catching sight of the strangers and the pile of money, he stopped short with the words on his lips. Delight and surprise succeeded each other on his countenance, whose muscles seemed habituated to all facial contortions.
Moronval turned gravely toward the waiting woman. “M. Labassandre, of the Imperial Academy of Music, our Professor of Music.” Labassandre bowed once, twice, three times, and then, by way of restoring his self-possession, and putting matters at once on a pleasant footing for all parties, administered a kick to the black boy, who did not seem at all astonished, but picked himself up and disappeared from the room.
The door again opened, and two persons entered. One was very ugly—a mean face without a beard, huge spectacles with convex glasses, and wearing an overcoat buttoned to the chin, which bore all up and down the front too visible indications of-the awkwardness of a near-sighted man. This was Dr. Hirsch, Professor of Mathematics and of Natural Sciences. He exhaled a strong odor of alkalies, and, thanks to his chemical manipulations, his fingers were every color of the rainbow. The last comer was very different. Imagine a handsome man, dressed with the greatest care, scrupulously gloved and shod, his hair thrown back from a forehead already unnaturally high. He had a haughty, aggressive air; his heavy blonde moustache, much twisted at the ends, and a large, pale face, gave him the look of a sick soldier.
Moronval presented him as “our great poet, Amaury d’Argenton, Professor of Literature.”
He, too, looked as astonished, when he caught sight of the gold pieces, as did Dr. Hirsch and the singer Labassandre. His cold eyes had a gleam of light, but it disappeared as he glanced from the child to his nurse.