The attention follows the lead of the emotions.
25. Then he took a grammar and read us our lesson. I was astonished to see how readily I understood! Everything he said seemed to me so easy—so very easy. I believe that never before had I listened so attentively, and that he, in turn, had never explained things with such So does the teacher’s skill. infinite patience. It almost seemed as though the poor fellow wished to impart all his knowledge to us before he left us—to drive it all into our heads with one blow.
26. The lesson ended, we went on to the exercises in penmanship. For that day Master Hamel had gotten ready some entirely new copies on which he had written in a neat, round hand: “France, Alsace, France, Alsace.”A proof of unusual absorption. The slips of paper looked like tiny flags, waving all about the room and hanging from the rods of our desks. You should have seen how diligently everyone worked, and how quiet it was! Only the scratching of the pens over the paper could be heard. Once some beetles flew in, but nobody paid any attention to them—not even the very smallest chaps, who were struggling to draw their oblique lines with a will and an application as sincere as though even the lines themselves were French....Note the pathos of the appeal. Pigeons cooed in low tones on the roof of the schoolhouse, and as I listened to them I thought to myself:
27. “I wonder if they are going to make them coo in German too!”
A picture. All of these contributory pictures stand in lieu of contributory incidents. The whole is highly unified.
28. Now and then, as I lifted my eyes from my task, I saw Master Hamel seated motionless in his chair, and staring at things about him as though in that look he would carry away with him the whole of his little schoolhouse. Think of it! For forty years he had occupied that same place, his yard in front of him, and his school always unchanged. Only the benches and desks were rubbed by use until they were polished; the walnuts in the yard had grown large, and the hop-vine he himself had planted now hung in festoons from The lad reasons as a lad—to him the pathos is not for himself but for the old man. the windows clear to the roof. How heartbreaking it must have been for that poor man to leave all this—to hear his sister moving to and fro in the room overhead as she packed their trunks! Next day they were going away—to leave the fatherland forever.
29. All the same, he had the courage to keep the school to the very closing minute. The writing over, we had our lesson in history. Then the little ones sang in unison their ba, be, bi, bo, bu. Yonder, at the back of the room, old Father Hauser was holding his spelling-book with both hands, and with the aid of his great spectacles he spelled out the letters—one could see that even he too was applying himself. Emotion shook his voice, and to hear him was so droll that we all wanted to laugh—and to cry. Ah! I shall always remember that last class.
Preparation for Climax.
Formal Crisis—the end approaches.
Note the force of this.
Moral qualities affect the physical.
30. Suddenly the church clock sounded twelve. Then the Angelus. At the same instant were heard under our very windows the trumpets of the Prussians returning from drill. Pale as death, Master Hamel rose from his chair. Never had he seemed so large.
31. “My friends,” he began; “my friends, I—I—”