The Aspirations of Jean Servien | Page 6

and wept.
He was most favourably impressed by the curé's homily, in which a
young man without faith was compared to an unbridled charger that
plunges over precipices. The simile struck his fancy, and he would

quote it years after with approbation. He made up his mind to read the
Bible, as he had read Voltaire, "to get the hang of things."
Jean withdrew from the houselling cloth, wondering to be just the same
as ever and already disillusioned. He was never again to recover the
first fervent rapture.

VII
The holidays were near. An noon of a blazing hot day Jean was seated
in the shade on the dwarf-wall that bounded the school count towards
the headmaster's garden, He was playing languidly at shovel-board with
a schoolfellow, a lad as pretty as a girl with his curls and his jacket of
white duck.
"Ewans," said Jean, as he pushed a pebble along one of the lines drawn
in charcoal on the stone coping, "Ewans, you must find it tiresome to
be a boarder?"
"Mother cannot have me with her at home," replied the boy.
Servien asked why.
"Oh! Because----" stammered Ewans.
He stared a long time at the white pebble he held in his hand ready to
play, before he added:
"My mother goes travelling."
"And your father?"
"He is in America. I have never seen him. You've lost. Let's begin
again."
Servien, who felt interested in Madame Ewans because of the superb
boxes of chocolates she used to bring to school for her boy, put another

question:
"You love her very much, your mother I mean?"
"Of course I do!" cried the other, adding presently:
"You must come and see me one day in the holidays at home. You'll
find our house is very pretty, there's sofas and cushions no end. But you
must not put off, for we shall be off to the seaside soon."
At this moment a servant, a tall, thin man, appeared in the playground
and called out something which the shrill cries of their companions at
play prevented the two seated on the wall from hearing. A fat boy,
standing by himself with his face to the wall with the unconcern born
of long familiarity with this form of punishment, clapped his two hands
to his mouth trumpetwise and shrieked:
"Ewans, you're wanted in the parlour."
The usher marched up:
"Garneret," he ordered, "you will stand half an hour this evening at
preparation speaking when you were forbidden to. Ewans, go to the
parlour."
The latter clapped his hands and danced for joy, telling his friend:
"It's my mother! I'll tell her you are coming to our house."
Servien reddened with pleasure, and stammered out that he would ask
his father's leave. But Ewans had already scampered across the yard,
leaving a dusty furrow behind him.
Leave was readily granted by Monsieur Servien, who was fully
persuaded that all boys admitted to so expensive a school born of
well-to-do parents, whose society could not but prove advantageous to
his son's manners and morals and to his future success in life.
Such information as Jean could give him about Madame Ewans was

extremely vague, but the bookbinder was well used to contemplating
the ways of rich folks through a veil of impenetrable mystery.
Aunt Servien indulged in sundry observations on the occasion of a very
general kind touching people who ride in carriages. Then she repeated a
story about a great lady who, just like Madame Ewans, had put her son
to boarding-school, and who was mixed up in a case of illicit
commissions, in the time of Louis-Philippe.
She added, to clinch the matter, that the cowl does not make the monk,
that she thought herself, for all she did not wear flowers in her hat, a
more honest woman than your society ladies, false jades everyone,
concluding with her pet proverb: Better a good name than a gilt girdle!
Jean had never seen a gilt girdle, but he thought in a vague way he
would very much like to have one.
The holidays came, and one Thursday after breakfast his aunt produced
a white waistcoat from the wardrobe, and Jean, dressed in his Sunday
best, climbed on an omnibus which took him to the Rue de Rivoli. He
mounted four flights of a staircase, the carpet and polished brass
stair-rods of which filled him with surprise and admiration.
On reaching the landing, he could hear the tinkling of a piano. He rang
the bell, blushed hotly and was sorry he had rung. He would have given
worlds to run away. A maid-servant opened the door, and behind her
stood Edgar Ewans, wearing a brown holland suit, in which he looked
entirely at his ease.
"Come along," he cried, and dragged him into a drawing-room,