L’un d’eux s’ennuyant au logis....”
“Louder, my child, louder,” said a little man with curly white hair, in a kindly tone. This was Samson. I stopped again, confused and frightened, seized suddenly with such a foolish fit of nervousness that I could have shouted or howled. Samson saw this, and said to me: “Come, come, we are not ogres!” He had just been talking in a low voice with Auber.
“Come, now, begin again,” he said, “and speak up.”
“Ah, no,” put in Augustine Brohan, “if she is to begin again, it will be longer than a scene!” This speech made all the table laugh, and that gave me time to recover myself. I thought all these people unkind to laugh like this at the expense of a poor, little, trembling creature who had been delivered over to them, bound hand and foot.
I felt, without exactly defining it, a slight contempt for these pitiless judges. Since then I have very often thought of that trial of mine, and I have come to the conclusion that individuals who are kind, intelligent, and compassionate become less estimable when they are together. The feeling of personal irresponsibility encourages their evil instincts, and the fear of ridicule chases away their good ones.
When I had recovered my will power I began my fable again, determined not to mind what happened. My voice was more liquid on account of emotion, and the desire to make myself heard caused it to be more resonant. There was silence, and before I had finished my fable the little bell rang. I bowed, and came down the few steps from the platform thoroughly exhausted. M. Auber stopped me as I was passing by the table.
“Well, little girl,” he said, “that was very good indeed. M. Provost and M. Beauvallet both want you in their class.”
I recoiled slightly when he told me which was M. Beauvallet, for he was the “ventriloquist” who had given me such a fright.
“Well, which of these two gentlemen should you prefer?” he asked.
I did not utter a word, but pointed to M. Provost.