basketfuls of vegetables and meat. Sometimes they stop in front of shops and look at their reflections in the shop window. Then they walk away turning their heads, casting a proud and mustering eye on the backs of their shoes. At ten o'clock the beadle appears at the school gate and fills the street with the shrill ringing of his bell. Then the inside of the school seems to swell with a violent tumult that almost wrecks the building. Fugitives from the general commotion, small ragamuffins appear in the gateway, rush screaming down the stone steps and, finding themselves free, undertake some crazy leaps, and, between two mad looks of their rolling eyes, they throw themselves blindly into improvised games. Sometimes they venture up to my bench in their lunatic chases, throwing over their shoulders some obscure abuse at me. Their faces seem to come off their hinges in the violent grimaces that they make at me. Like a pack of busy monkeys, in a self-parody of clowning, this bunch of children run past me, gesticulating with a hellish noise. I can see their upturned, unformed, running noses, their mouths torn by shouting, their cheeks covered with spots, their small tight fists. Sometimes they stop near me. Strange to say, they treat me as if I were their age. True, I have been growing smaller for a long time. My face, wilted and flabby, has assumed the appearance of a child's face. I am slightly embarrassed when they address me as "thou." When one day one of them suddenly struck me across my chest, I rolled under the bench. I was not offended. They pulled me out, enchanted by this rather unexpected but refreshing behavior. The fact that I take no offense however violent and impetuous their conduct has gradually won me a measure of popularity. From then on, I have carried a supply of stones, buttons, empty cotton reels, and pieces of rubber in my pockets. This has enormously facilitated exchanges of ideas and made a natural bridge for starting friendships. Moreover, engrossed in factual interests, they pay less attention to me as a person. Under the cover of the arsenal produced from my pockets, I need not fear any more that their curiosity and inquisitiveness will be directed at me.
One day I decided to translate into action a certain idea that had been worrying me more and more insistently.
The day was mild, dreamy, and calm—one of those late fall days when the year, having exhausted all the colors and nuances of that season, seems to revert to the springtime pages of the calendar. The sunless sky had settled itself into colored streaks, gentle strips of cobalt, verdigris, and celadon, framed at the edges with whiteness as clear as water—the colors of April, inexpressible and long forgotten. I had put on my best suit and went out not without some misgivings. I walked quickly, effortlessly in the calm aura of the day, straying neither to the left nor right. Breathless, I ran up the stone steps. Alea iacta est, I said to myself, knocking at the door of the office. I stood in a modest posture in front of the headmaster's desk, as befitted my new role. I was slightly embarrassed.
The headmaster produced from a glass-topped box a cockchafer on a pin and lifting it aslant to his eye, looked at it against the light. His fingers were stained with ink, the nails were short and cut straight. He looked at me from behind his glasses.
"So you wish to enroll in the first form, Councilor?" he said. 'This is praiseworthy and admirable. I understand that you would like to refresh your education from the foundations, from the beginnings. I always repeat: grammar and the tables are the foundations of all learning. Of course, we cannot consider you, Councilor, as a schoolboy to whom compulsory education applies. Rather as a volunteer, a veteran of the alphabet, to coin a phrase, who after long years of wandering has called again at the haven of the school, who has brought his distressed ship to a safe port, as it were. Yes, yes, Councilor, very few people show us gratitude and recognition for our work, and few return to us after a lifetime