The visit was not long. Standing, about to depart, the visitor seemed still, as at the first, a man of many reservations under his polite smiles. But just then he dropped a phrase that the teacher recognized as an indirect quotation, and Bonaventure cried, with greedy eyes:-- "You have read Victor Hugo?" "Yes." "Oh, sir, that grea-a-at man! That father of libbutty! Other patriots are the sons, but he the father! Is it not thus?" The priest shrugged and made a mouth. The young schoolmaster's face dropped. "Sir, I must ask you--is he not the frien' of the poor and downtrod?" The visitor's smile quite disappeared. He said:-- "Oh!"--and waved a hand impatiently; "Victor Hugo"--another mouth--"Victor Hugo"--replying in French to the schoolmaster's English--"is not of my party." And then he laughed unpleasantly and said good-day. The State Superintendent did not come, but every day--"It is perhaps he shall come to-mo'w, chil'run; have yo' lessons well!" The whole tiny army of long, blue, ankle-hiding cottonade pantalettes and pantaloons tried to fulfil the injunction. Not one but had a warm place in the teacher's heart. But Toutou, Claude, Sidonie, anybody who glanced into that heart could see sitting there enthroned. And some did that kind of reconnoitring. Catou, 'Mian's older brother, was much concerned. He saw no harm in a little education, but took no satisfaction in the introduction of English speech; and speaking to 'Mian of that reminded him to say he believed the schoolmaster himself was aware of the three children's pre-eminence in his heart. But 'Mian only said:-- "_Ah bien, c'est_ all right, _alors_!" (Well, then, it's all right.) Whether all right or not, Bonaventure was aware of it, and tried to hide it under special kindnesses to others, and particularly to the dullard of the school, grandson of Catou and nicknamed _Crebiche_[4]. The child loved him; and when Claude rang the chapel bell, and before its last tap had thrilled dreamily on the morning air, when the urchins playing about the schoolhouse espied another group coming slowly across the common with Bonaventure in the midst of them, his coat on his arm and the children's hands in his, there among them came Crebiche, now on one side, now running round to the other, hoping so to get a little nearer to the master. [4] _Ecrevisse_, crawfish. "None shall have such kindness to-day as thou," Bonaventure would silently resolve as he went in through a gap in the _pieux_. And the children could not see but he treated them all alike. They saw no unjust inequality even when, Crebiche having three times spelt "earth" with an _u_, the master paced to and fro on the bare ground among the unmatched desks and break-back benches, running his hands through his hair and crying:-- "Well! well aht thou name' the crawfish; with such rapiditive celeritude dost thou progress backwardly!"