This hero was rightly nicknamed Met-à-Mort.
I knew what his blows were like, having been the involuntary recipient of some of them. Some, do I say? I had received more than a dilatory donkey on the road to the fair!
And Georgette had only laughed!
Obviously, it was absurd to think of employing physical force against my redoubtable rival, and intellectual superiority in this case availed me nothing. I determined, therefore, to annihilate Met-à-Mort by my overpowering magnificence.
Naturally, our parents did not send us to school attired in our best clothes. On the contrary, most of us wore there our oldest and shabbiest garments. Consequently, I opined that it would be no difficult achievement to outshine all my schoolfellows.
I should have to coax my parents into loosening their purse-strings, and get them to buy me a beautiful new jacket.
It took me a very long time to decide what colour this jacket should be. I mentally reviewed all the colours of the rainbow. Red tempted me; but I doubted whether a jacket of that colour would be attainable. Should it be blue, green, indigo, violet? No! Not one of these colours was sufficiently striking.
I paused at yellow. That might do. It is a rich colour; there is something sumptuous and royal about it. Summer was approaching. I decided finally upon a jacket of nankeen.
Without delay, I set to work on my school garments. It was a work of destruction, for I wanted to make them appear as disreputable as possible. I slyly enlarged the holes, wrenched off the buttons, and decorated my person lavishly with spots and stains of all kinds. Day by day I watched, with a secret joy, the rapid progress of this work of dilapidation.
In what I judged to be an opportune moment, I timidly expressed my desire.