'Who is responsible for this?' he asked, 'c'est une bassesse! Mlle. Zélie, what does this signify? Were you not told the fruit was to be respected?'
Poor Mlle. Zélie stood there quivering with terror.
'Unhappily,' she said, 'Madame's letter arrived too late: without bad intention, these young girls imagined themselves free to eat gooseberries: from the moment it was known that it was forbidden, I am sure there was no infraction of the rule: but alas! what was done, was done. I regret it profoundly: and so I am sure do you, is it not so, my children?' she asked, turning to Marie Hazard and myself:—there was a clear and empty space around us—every other girl had somehow vanished.
'Yes, Mademoiselle, we are very sorry,' both of us answered at once.
M. Heger swooped round upon us in his wrath.
'And so,' he said, 'it is you, is it; you two who have so much pride, both of you; who are so little sensitive to the counsels of your teachers, you, who are so superior in your own esteem, who are the guilty ones? It is you two, and you alone in the entire Pension, who have been capable of this indignity? And see what ruin you have made! Are you not ashamed—what gluttony!'
'Mais non, Monsieur, non,' pleaded Mademoiselle Zélie, 'these young girls are not alone responsible; many others also took the fruit; you must not blame them for everything.'
'Is that so, Mademoiselle Hazard? Is that so, Mees?'
'Il ne faut pas nous demander cela,' said I, with my usual bad accent in agitated moments. 'C'est aux autres qu'il faut le demander.'
'Mais oui,' he said, 'and this is what I intend to do; Mlle. Zélie, do me this pleasure: fetch me the élèves who were here just now: call them together. I must get to the bottom of this. Je dois approfondir cela.'