Or else, again--a new usher, Monsieur Goupillon (from Gascony) is on duty in the school-room during afternoon school. He has a peculiar way of saying "_oê, vô!_" instead of "_oui, vous!_" to any boy who says "moi, m'sieur?" on being found fault with; and perceiving this, Barty manages to be found fault with every five minutes, and always says "moi, m'sieur?" so as to elicit the "_oê, vô!_" that gives him such delight. At length M. Goupillon says, "Josselin, if you force me to say '_oê, vô!_' to you once more, you shall be _à la retenue_ for a week!" "Moi, m'sieur?" says Josselin, quite innocently. "_Oê, vô!_" shouts M. Goupillon, glaring with all his might, but quite unconscious that Barty has earned the threatened punishment! And again Barty is happy for a week. And so are we. Such was Barty's humor, as a boy--mere drivel--but of such a kind that even his butts were fond of him. He would make M. Bonzig laugh in the middle of his severest penal sentences, and thus demoralize the whole school-room and set a shocking example, and be ordered _à la porte_ of the salle d'études--an exile which was quite to his taste; for he would go straight off to the lingerie and entertain Mlle. Marceline and Constance and Félicité (who all three adored him) with comic songs and break-downs of his own invention, and imitations of everybody in the school. He was a born histrion--a kind of French Arthur Roberts--but very beautiful to the female eye, and also always dear to the female heart--a most delightful gift of God! Then he was constantly being sent for when boys' friends and parents came to see them, that he might sing and play the fool and show off his tricks, and so forth. It was one of M. Mérovée's greatest delights to put him through his paces. The message "on demande Monsieur Josselin au parloir" would be brought down once or twice a week, sometimes even in class or school room, and became quite a by-word in the school; and many of the masters thought it a mistake and a pity. But Barty by no means disliked being made much of and showing off in this genial manner. He could turn le père Brossard round his little finger, and Mérovée too. Whenever an extra holiday was to be begged for, or a favor obtained for any one, or the severity of a _pensum_ mitigated, Barty was the messenger, and seldom failed. His constitution, inherited from a long line of frugal seafaring Norman ancestors (not to mention another long line of well-fed, well-bred Yorkshire Squires), was magnificent. His spirits never failed. He could see the satellites of Jupiter with the naked eye; this was often tested by M. Dumollard, maître de mathématiques (et de cosmographie), who had a telescope, which, with a little good-will on the gazer's part, made Jupiter look as big as the moon, and its moons like stars of the first magnitude.