"No remarks, monsieur," said Monsieur de la Pincerie, rising from his chair as if he proposed to chastise the scholar; "you have been told that your poem is good for nothing. I am inclined to think that you are not here to lay down the law, monsieur!"
Férulus dropped back on his chair, crumpled the paper in his hands and threw it under the table; and, stuffing three macaroons into his mouth at once in his wrath, he narrowly escaped swallowing his tongue. Uncle Mignon, who had drunk more than usual, and had been moving about uneasily on his chair for half an hour, began to laugh.
"I, too, have made up a little ballad for my niece," he said. "It came into my head at the dinner-table. It’s an impromptu."
"Let us hear Mignon’s ballad," said Monsieur de la Pincerie. "The devil! I didn’t know that he wrote poetry.—Sing, Mignon."
Everybody was silent, and Mignon sang, playing with his napkin the while:
"Sois heureuse, ma nièce,
C’est du meilleur de mon âme;
Lorsque j’admire tes yeux,
Turc lure!
Il me semble être à la noce!
Robin turelure lure!"
"Bravo! very good!" cried the marquis; and everybody applauded, laughed and called for an encore. Mignon repeated his verses, and Monsieur de la Pincerie observed:
"There you have the genuine French ballad—after the style of our fathers. They are blank verses, to be sure, but they are none the less agreeable."
Férulus, his discomfiture completed by the success of Monsieur Mignon’s ballad, muttered between his teeth:
"If one of my scholars had written that thing, he would have been whipped every day for a fortnight!"