Ah! s'asseoir was a hard one—he had always found that that was difficult. He turned over the page:
J'eu, tu eus, il eut—that looked wrong.. .
Again, here was Simpson Minor—“Je fus, tu fus, il fut”—surely that was confused in some way.
The papers at the bottom slipped: he bent to prevent them falling, and all of them tipped over. They rose in a cloud about him, a white cloud, flying into the air, sailing to the other end of the room, diving under the table and into the fireplace, and a great white pile lay-scattered wildly on the floor.
The silly papers stared at him:
“Je dors tous...”
“Il faut que...”
“I used to love my mother, but now I love my aunt...”
“Rule for the conjunctive and disjunctive pronouns...”
And then, Simpson Minor: “Je fus, tu fus...”