Fermina Marquez (1911) Read Online Free PDF

obstacle stem if not from his own timidity? And yet he did not lack pluck. The essential point was to make a start; and this was bound to be simple; even amongst the classical writers, their lovers appeared to feel no embarrassment in declaring their love. Moreover, Santos and Ortega and other pupils in the upper forms would frequently visit the linen room to steal kisses off the young linen maids one after another. To be sure, this only involved linen maids. But one morning, in the dining hall, Pablo boasted that he had slipped love letters into the hands of their young female guests at the time of last Saint Charlemagne's day, yes love letters, and under the noses of their parents. And one of them had even replied — what more could a gallant man say?
She had replied.
"So why should I waver?" said Leniot to himself.

IX
    He waited for evening prep, for the end of his working day to go back over it all, to organize his ideas and test the constancy of his  resolve.   It was precisely on  that evening  that  the supervision of prep had been entrusted for the first time to a young tutor, Mr Lebrun, who had entered the school's service a week previously. It is difficult to imagine the anxiety and irritation of a young tutor who is just starting out;  it is impossible to conceive of the sort of dizziness overcoming him when he sees himself quite alone with his back to the wall on a rostrum, facing and slightly looking down at forty youngsters aged between fifteen and seventeen. Mr Lebrun was especially agitated. In the lower classes, he had been dreadfully "baited" and it was specifically for this reason that he had asked to supervise a more responsible prep group — this one, which comprised the pupils of the fifth and a part of the sixth forms. Leniot  thought  that this new monitor would not dare to disrupt his idleness; so comfortably propped up at his desk, he concentrated   his   mind   on   the   matter   which   had   been occupying him for several hours.
First of all, there was this timidity which he had to subdue. But it was no longer just timidity, it was terror! And it was a terror which blinded him, which would cause him to squander the most heaven-sent opportunities for speech or action. He regretted not being properly in love; then perhaps this conquest would be easy for him. But confronted by the difficulty of the undertaking, any feelings of tenderness or affection evaporated and the thought of Fermina Marquez was irksome to him, even became painful and humiliated him. Just as a horse is led back to the object which frightens it, so Joanny patiently coaxed his will to face this image of Fermina Marquez he had in his mind and had ended up by finding intolerable.
"Why aren't you working then?"
"Me Sir?" said Leniot, brought back to the present.
"Yes you! Your name if you please?" asked Mr Lebrun, striving to steady his voice.
"Leniot."
"Well then Mr Leniot, will you please work?"
Mr Lebrun was being over-zealous. With the younger prep groups, he had expected that he would be provoked; here he supposed he would make himself respected by taking the offensive. He was incessantly calling somebody to order; and without knowing whether he was dealing with a good or a lazy pupil, he reprimanded schoolboys whom it was unusual to hear being treated like dunces. And he thought he saw in Leniot, completely idle that evening, the prep group's most trying character.
Joanny shrugged his shoulders and pursued his own thoughts . . . What then were the causes of this timidity? The principal one was undoubtedly this notion — which his mother and all the women in his family had instilled in him — namely that a fundamental, intrinsic disparity forever separates honest women from the rest. They were two different sexes so to speak. You respected the one; as for the other, "you paid", no more need be said. This view was undisputed and universally held by his mother and the middle-class women of her circle.