Spartacus

Urbain Gohier

COLLEGE TUTORS

gleaming, which the head supervisor, in the middle of the recreation courtyard, regardless of the temperature, never covered with any hat, fearing to disturb their harmonious arrangement.

Filon — thus was named the important and desolate functionary — immediately took Yves for his confidant, and Yves did not take long to observe how already this adolescent — blond and plump — was embittered and disappointed, contemptuous and vain — resentful and slanderous. He was aware that the headmaster exploited him, that the University exploited him, that the students detested him, that the professors forgot him, that his colleagues envied him. He found nothing but occasion to complain, to grind his teeth, to “eye the mirror — and the little women!”

— Would you not have been happier in primary education? Yves would ask. Or why don’t you try for the elementary professor’s certificate?

Filon moistened his fine lips with the tip of his tongue, and with his fine clear and pure eyes, looked at Yves while declaring:

— One gets nowhere in primary education. It’s a trade to starve in; and for the certificate, I haven’t time to study!

The two other tutors were also two young men. One, already old in the trade, was nearly thirty. His name was Corard: small, dark, very bearded, very merry, a great smoker of pipes, a great drinker of beer or plain plonk, very fond of laundresses or ironing women, of the fair sex in general, of which his monastic functions were not supposed to permit him the abuse. He lived his life without grumbling, snickering, and without hope. He rather thought that — damn it! — it would end one day or another — and that he would then sleep elsewhere than among twenty-five or thirty featherless bipeds; but he did not seem to make the happiness of his life depend on it.

The other, Piray, had barely left the college where he had done his studies. He was not yet twenty; and, a bachelor, he was preparing examinations to enter the Ponts-et-Chaussees. Tall, blond, robust, without a hair of beard, without the shadow of a mustache, he had the look of a fine schoolboy, and Yves actually took him for some days for a “senior” in Philosophy or Elementary Mathematics.

Yves talked much with them about the trade, about what it was, about what it could be. They showed him their room. On the first floor, in a corner of the large farmhouse, two cells, one after the other, communicating; a window to one, overlooking the street, and a window to the other, overlooking the branches of the lime trees in the students’ courtyard: the two windows and the communicating door in a line. The arrival room was larger, it was provided with a fireplace: it was shared by the two tutors. The other, smaller, was rather bare, but neatly arranged, with an iron cot, in an indienne curtain, a square table and some shelves with books. This one belonged to Monsieur the head supervisor.

It offered a perfect contrast with the “den” of the two tutors, paved with bricks, where the other was floored, and without a bed or curtain, papered with illustrated newspapers, with yellowing engravings, on a ragged wallpaper. The table was a heap of books of all formats, especially paperback and dirty — of pipes, bicycle accessories, apples, bread crusts and candles, and the floor was cluttered with boots, slippers, rags, bread, and an old rusted bicycle. The windowpanes were black and green, and the ceiling hung with cobwebs. The fireplace, plastered and crumbling, facing the entrance door opening onto a corridor, was blocked by an ugly little cast-iron stove, drooling and tricolored, hobbling among lumps of coke.

They explained to Yves, no doubt by way of excuse, that having only their four hours of freedom per twenty-four hours, they could scarcely look after themselves or the den, that the servant couldn’t care less, and that the schoolboys had so many times knocked down their door, forced the lock, that they came freely to smoke cigarettes during their hours of service, that they themselves were forced to pilfer lamp oil for their brass lamp when they were free in the evenings, on holidays, or on the Sundays and Thursdays of combined study periods; that the boss refused to fix their lock yet again; that finally they had to buy themselves cheese, ham, jam, to supplement the ordinary food that was served them, on their salary of forty-five francs for the youngest, of seventy-one francs for the senior.

They said all this almost laughing, without ulterior motive, without indignation, like bohemians amused by their poverty. Yves was stupefied. He wondered what he would have become if he had found himself in such a situation; the life of the lycee tutor, the one he had lived and from which he had nevertheless so bitterly suffered, seemed like the existence of a comfortable bourgeois, compared to this one. He looked at these miserable hovels, these two young men full of strength and gaiety, and did not know whether they were not admirable stoics.

No. Their good humor, however honest it was, was not admirable. He blamed them inwardly. They should not have tolerated such a state of things; they owed it to their character as human beings, as educated and free individuals, to be indignant, to revolt, to have their rights respected — did they even know the decrees of 1891? Were they not applicable to college tutors as well as to their lycee colleagues? Why didn’t they protest? Why didn’t they report to inspectors, to rectors, the abuses of which they were victims? Why didn’t they shout it from the rooftops? It was good to laugh, no doubt, but laughter is cowardly that consoles for iniquities; laughter is selfish and stupid that makes one forget rights, justice. If you have a high, carefree and serene soul, at least let it be at the risk of your bread, in revolting, not because you eat it in