"I say it: the laugh of innocence is the ill-starred veteran's joy. I see from where I stand groups worthy of Correggio's brush, and I say: Happy the families that meet together in peace in the heart of their fatherland! Ladies and gentlemen, pardon me if I hold out to you the casque of Belisarius. I am an old tree riven by the levin-bolt."
And he went from group to group holding out his peaked felt hat, into which, amid an icy silence, fell coin by coin a dribble of small silver.
But suddenly the Superintendent of Studies seized the hat and pushed the old man outside.
"Give me back my hat," bawled Monsieur Tudesco to the Superintendent, who was doing his best to restore the coins to the donors; "give back the old man's hat, the hat of one who has grown grey in learned studies."
The Superintendent, scarlet with rage, tossed the felt into the court, shouting:
"Be off, or I will call the police."
The Marquis Tudesco took to his heels with great agility.
The same evening the new Assistant was summoned to the Director's presence and received his dismissal.
"Unhappy boy! unhappy boy!" said the Abbé Bordier, beating his brow; "you have been the cause of an intolerable scandal, of a sort unheard of in this house, and that just when I had so much to do."
And as he spoke, the scattered papers fluttered like white birds on the Director's table.