Bruno relented visibly. “Course he knows no better, if he’s Flench! Flenchmen never can speak English so goodly as us!” And Sylvie led him away, a willing captive.
“Nice children!” said the old man, taking off his spectacles and rubbing them carefully. Then he put them on again, and watched with an approving smile, while the children tossed over the heap of music, and we just caught Sylvie’s reproving words, “We’re not making hay, Bruno!”
“This has been a long interruption to our conversation,” I said. “Pray let us go on!”
“Willingly!” replied the gentle old man.
“I was much interested in what you——” He paused a moment, and passed his hand uneasily across his brow. “One forgets,” he murmured. “What was I saying? Oh! Something you were to tell me. Yes. Which of your teachers do you value the most highly, those whose words are easily understood, or those who puzzle you at every turn?”
I felt obliged to admit that we generally admired most the teachers we couldn’t quite understand.
“Just so,” said Mein Herr. “That’s the way it begins. Well, we were at that stage some eighty years ago—or was it ninety? Our favourite teacher got more obscure every year; and every year we admired him more—just as your Art-fanciers call mist the fairest feature in a landscape, and admire a view with frantic delight when they can see nothing! Now I’ll tell you how it ended. It was Moral Philosophy that our idol lectured on. Well, his pupils couldn’t make head or tail of it, but they got it all by heart; and, when Examination-time came, they wrote it down; and the Examiners said ‘Beautiful! What depth!’”
“But what good was it to the young men afterwards?”
“Why, don’t you see?” replied Mein Herr. “They became teachers in their turn, and they said all these things over again; and their pupils wrote it all down; and the Examiners accepted it; and nobody had the ghost of an idea what it all meant!”
“And how did it end?”