The Martian: A Novel

by George Du Maurier

Then we went and lunched at the Café de l'Odéon, on the best omelet we had ever tasted.

"Te rappelles‑tu cette omelette?" said poor Barty to me only last Christmas as ever was!

Then we went back with our hearts in our mouths to find if we had qualified ourselves by our "version écrite" for the oral examination that comes after, and which is so easy to pass—the examiners having lunched themselves into good‑nature.

There we stood panting, some fifty boys and masters, in a small, whitewashed room like a prison. An official comes in and puts the list of candidates in a frame on the wall, and we crane our necks over each other's shoulders.

And, lo! Barty is plucked—collé! and I have passed, and actually Rapaud—and no one else from Brossard's!

An old man—a parent or grandparent probably of some unsuccessful candidate—bursts into tears and exclaims,

"Oh! qué malheur—qué malheur!"

A shabby, tall, pallid youth, in the uniform of the Collège Ste.‑Barbe, rushes down the stone stair's shrieking,

"Ça pue l'injustice, ici!"

One hears him all over the place: terrible heartburns and tragic disappointments in the beginning of life resulted from failure in this first step—a failure which disqualified one for all the little government appointments so dear to the heart of the frugal French parent. "Mille francs par an! c'est le Pactole!"