Every day there arose from an adjoining courtyard merry shouts and laughter, which would be followed by a silence, and then by a monotonous chanting. It was a class of little boys who were reciting the Alphabet, for a school was being taught there.
Under shady trees, on turf covered here and there with small carpets, a number of children with red caps romped and played, when the Master was not there. As soon as he appeared all was silence, and he seated himself upon a larger rug, under an old tree.
On the trunk of the tree was fastened a white Tablet, on which he wrote with a red pencil.
I looked and listened, at first without much interest, noticing chiefly the mischievous antics of the children, who made faces at me, and glanced over with all sorts of grimaces—exploding suddenly with laughter for which no cause was apparent.... Punishments rained! Tears succeeded laughter! And I, who felt myself somewhat the cause of the disturbance, no longer ventured to show myself. But my curiosity was awakened. The idea of trying to learn what was being taught to the small men became fixed in my mind.
I could not speak—but who knows?—I might learn to write!
Concealed in the foliage from the eyes of the frolicsome little urchins, I gave an extreme attention to the lessons—sometimes making such violent efforts to understand that I trembled from head to foot.
All that was required was simply to pronounce the letters of the Alphabet, one after another, and trace them on the white Tablet.
At night now, instead of sleeping, I exercised my memory; and when in spite of my endeavors I could not recall the form or the sound of a letter, I uttered such cries of despair that my guardians were aroused.
One day there stood before the Tablet a boy who was quite large, but extremely stupid. He had stood for some minutes with his head hanging down, his finger in his mouth, shifting himself from one foot to the other in a sulky manner—He did not know!
All at once an impulse seized me. I extended my trunk over the wall, and taking the pencil gently, with the tip of my trunk, from the hand of the little dunce (somewhat excited by my own audacity), I traced on the white Tablet a gigantic "E"!!!!