“And you, young man? If it is not indiscreet, may I ask if you are in the gardening line?”
“I replied modestly that I had come to Nîmes for another purpose, namely, to pass as bachelor.”
The company turned round and gazed at me with interest.
“What did he say,” they asked each other; “Bachelor? He must have said ‘battery’ hazarded one—it is a conscript, any one can see, and he wishes to get into the battery.”
I laughed and tried to explain my position and the ordeal before me when the learned professors would put me through my paces in Latin, Greek, mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, philosophy, and every imaginable branch of knowledge besides. “If we do well they allow us to become lawyers, doctors, judges, even sub-prefects,” I concluded.
“And if you do badly?” inquired my audience eagerly.
“We are sent back to the asses’ bench,” I replied; “to-morrow I shall know my fate.”
“Eh, but this is one of the right sort,” they cried in chorus. “Suppose we all remain on another day to see whether he comes through all right or whether he is left in the hole. Now, what are they going to ask you to-morrow, for example?”
I told them it would be concerning all the battles that had ever been fought since the world began, Jews, Romans, Saracens; and not only the battles but the names of the generals who took part in them, the kings and queens reigning at the time, together with their children and even their bastards.
“But how then can the learned men occupy themselves with such trifles!” cried my new friends. “It is very evident they have nothing better to do. If they had to get up and hoe potatoes every morning they would not waste time over the battles of the Saracens, who are dead and gone, or the bastards of Herod. Well, what else do they ask you?”