I saw many hundred performances in these first years of my youth at the Théâtre Français, which was then at its zenith. There, if anywhere, I felt the silent march of the French muses through Time and Space.
V.
A capable journalist named Grégoire, a sickly, prematurely aged, limping fellow, with alert wits, an Alsatian, who knew Danish and regularly read Bille's Daily Paper, had in many ways taken me up almost from the first day of my sojourn on French soil. This man recommended me, on my expressing a wish to meet with a competent teacher, to take instruction in the language from a young girl, a friend of his sister, who was an orphan and lived with her aunt. She was of good family, the daughter of a colonel and the granddaughter of an admiral, but her own and her aunt's circumstances were narrow, and she was anxious to give lessons.
When I objected that such lessons could hardly be really instructive, I was told that she was not only in every way a nice but a very gifted and painstaking young girl.
The first time I entered the house, as a future pupil, I found the young lady, dressed in a plain black silk dress, surrounded by a circle of toddlers of both sexes, for whom she had a sort of school, and whom on my arrival she sent away. She had a pretty figure, a face that was attractive without being beautiful, a large mouth with good teeth, and dark brown hair. Her features were a little indefinite, her face rather broad than oval, her eyes brown and affectionate. She had at any rate the beauty that twenty years lends. We arranged for four lessons a week, to begin with.
The first dragged considerably. My teacher was to correct any mistakes in pronunciation and grammar that I made in conversation. But we could not get up any proper conversation. She was evidently bored by the lessons, which she had only undertaken for the sake of the fees. If I began to tell her anything, she only half listened, and yawned with all her might very often and very loudly, although she politely put her hand in front of her large mouth. There only came a little animation into her expression when I either pronounced as badly as I had been taught by my French master at school, or made some particularly ludicrous mistake, such as c'est tout égal for bien égal. At other times she was distracted, sleepy, her thoughts elsewhere.
After having tried vainly for a few times to interest the young lady by my communications, I grew tired of the lessons. Moreover, they were of very little advantage to me, for the simple reason that my youthful teacher had not the very slightest scientific or even grammatical knowledge of her own tongue, and consequently could never answer my questions as to why you had to pronounce in such and such a way, or by virtue of what rule you expressed yourself in such and such a manner. I began to neglect my lessons, sometimes made an excuse, but oftener remained away without offering any explanation.
On my arrival one afternoon, after having repeatedly stayed away, the young lady met me with some temper, and asked the reason of my failures to come, plainly enough irritated and alarmed at my indifference, which after all was only the reflection of her own. I promised politely to be more regular in future. To insure this, she involuntarily became more attentive.
She yawned no more. I did not stay away again.
She began to take an interest herself in this eldest pupil of hers, who at 24 years of age looked 20 and who was acquainted with all sorts of things about conditions, countries, and people of which she knew nothing.