Chapter VII: The Schoolmaster: Carpentras

Only eighteen years old, he left the Normal College with his diploma, his brevet supérieur, and began his career as primary schoolmaster in the College of Carpentras. Merit, it seems, was recognised, and at the outset fortune did not treat him so badly. We may judge of this the better from the picture which the ex-schoolmaster has given us of his first beginnings at the College:

It was when I first began to teach, about 1843. I had left the
Normal School at Vaucluse some months before, with my diploma and
all the simple enthusiasm of my eighteen years, and had been sent
to Carpentras, there to manage the primary school attached to the
College. It was a strange school, upon my word, notwithstanding its
pompous title of “upper”; a sort of huge cellar oozing with the
perpetual damp engendered by a well backing on it in the street
outside. For light there was the open door, when the weather
permitted, and a narrow prison-window, with iron bars and lozenge
panes set in lead. By way of benches there was a plank fastened to
the wall all round the room, while in the middle was a chair bereft
of its straw, a blackboard and a stick of chalk.

Morning and evening, at the sound of the bell, there came rushing
in some fifty young imps who, having shown themselves hopeless
dunces with their Cornelius Nepos, had been relegated, in the
phrase of the day, to “a few good years of French.” Those who had
found mensa too much for them came to me to get a smattering of
grammar. Children and strapping lads were there, mixed up together,
at very different educational stages, but all incorrigibly agreed
to play tricks upon the master, the boy-master, who was no older
than some of them, or even younger.

To the little ones I gave their first lessons in reading; the
intermediate ones I showed how they should hold their pen to write
a few lines of dictation on their knees; to the big ones I revealed
the secrets of fractions and even the mysteries of Euclid. And to
keep this restless crowd in order, to give each mind work in
accordance with its strength, to keep attention aroused, and lastly
to expel dullness from the gloomy room, whose walls dripped
melancholy even more than dampness, my one resource was my tongue,
my one weapon my stick of chalk.

Things improved, however: a master came, and came to stay. I myself
secured tables on which my pupils were able to write instead of
scribbling on their knees; and, as my class was daily increasing in
numbers, it ended by being divided into two. As soon as I had an
assistant to look after the younger boys, things assumed a
different aspect.

A weeding-out takes place in my crowd of scatterbrains. I keep the
older, the more intelligent ones; the others are to have a term in
the preparatory division. From that day forward things are
different. Curriculum there is none. In those happy times the
master’s personality counted for something; there was no such thing
as the scholastic piston working with the regularity of a machine.
It was left for me to act as I thought fit. Well, what should I do
to make the school earn its title of “upper primary”?

Why, of course! Among other things, I shall do some chemistry! My
reading has taught me that it does no harm to know a little
chemistry, if you would make your furrows yield a good return. Many
of my pupils come from the country; they will go back to it to
improve their land. Let us show them what the soil is made of and
what the plant feeds on. Others will follow industrial careers;
they will become tanners, metal-founders, distillers; they will
sell cakes of soap and kegs of anchovies. Let us show them
pickling, soap-making, stills, tannin, and metals. Of course I know
nothing about these things, but I shall learn, all the more so as I
shall have to teach them to the boys; and your schoolboy is a
little demon for jeering at the master’s hesitation.

As it happens, the College boasts a small laboratory, containing
just what is strictly indispensable: a receiver, a dozen glass
balloons, a few tubes and a niggardly assortment of chemicals. That
will do, if I can have the run of it. But the laboratory is a
sanctum reserved for the use of the sixth form. No one sets foot in
it except the professor and his pupils preparing for their degree.
For me, the outsider, to enter that tabernacle with my band of
young imps would be most unseemly; the rightful occupant would
never think of allowing it. I feel it myself: elementary teaching
dare not aspire to such familiarity with the higher culture. Very
well, we will not go there, so long as they will lend me the
things.

I confide my plan to the principal, the supreme dispenser of those
riches. He is a classics man, knows hardly anything of science—at
that time held in no great esteem—and does not quite understand the
object of my request. I humbly insist and exert my powers of
persuasion. I discreetly emphasise the real point of the matter. My
group of pupils is a numerous one. It takes more meals at the
schoolhouse—the real concern of a principal—than any other section
of the College. This group must be encouraged, lured on, increased
if possible. The prospect of disposing of a few more platefuls of
soup wins the battle for me; my request is granted. Poor Science!
All that diplomacy to gain your entrance among the despised ones,
who have not been nourished on Cicero and Demosthenes!

I am authorised to move, once a week, the material required for my
ambitious plans. From the first floor, the sacred dwelling of the
scientific things, I shall take them down to a sort of cellar where
I give my lessons. The troublesome part is the pneumatic trough. It
has to be emptied before it is carried downstairs and to be filled
again afterwards. A day-scholar, a zealous acolyte, hurries over
his dinner and comes to lend me a hand an hour or two before the
class begins. We effect the move between us.

What I am after is oxygen, the gas which I once saw fail so
lamentably. I thought it all out at my leisure, with the help of a
book. I will do this, I will do that, I will go to work in this or
the other fashion. Above all, we will run no risks, perhaps of
blinding ourselves; for it is once more a question of heating
manganese dioxide with sulphuric acid. I am filled with misgivings
at the recollection of my old school-fellow yelling like mad. Who
cares? Let us try for all that: fortune favours the brave! Besides,
we will make one prudent condition from which I shall never depart:
no one but myself shall come near the table. If an accident happen,
I shall be the only one to suffer; and, in my opinion, it is worth
a burn or two to make acquaintance with oxygen.

Two o’clock strikes, and my pupils enter the class-room. I
purposely exaggerate the likelihood of danger. They are all to stay
on their benches and not stir. This is agreed. I have plenty of
elbow-room. There is no one by me, except my acolyte, standing by
my side, ready to help me when the time comes. The others look on
in profound silence, reverent towards the unknown.

Soon the bubbles come “gloo-glooing” through the water in the
bell-jar. Can it be my gas? My heart beats with excitement. Can I
have succeeded without any trouble at the first attempt? We will
see. A candle blown out that moment and still retaining a red tip
to its wick is lowered by a wire into a small test-jar filled with
my product. Capital! The candle lights with a little explosion and
burns with extraordinary brilliancy. It is oxygen right enough.

The moment is a solemn one. My audience is astounded and so am I,
but more at my own success than at the relighted candle. A puff of
vainglory rises to my brow; I feel the fire of enthusiasm run
through my veins. But I say nothing of these inner sensations.
Before the boys’ eyes, the master must appear an old hand at the
things he teaches. What would the young rascals think of me if I
allowed them to suspect my surprise, if they knew that I myself am
beholding the marvellous subject of my demonstration for the first
time in my life? I should lose their confidence, I should sink to
the level of a mere pupil.

Sursum corda! Let us go on as if chemistry were a familiar thing to
me. It is the turn of the steel ribbon, an old watch-spring rolled
cork-screw-fashion and furnished with a bit of tinder. With this
simple lighted bait, the steel should take fire in a jar filled
with my gas. And it does burn; it becomes a splendid firework, with
cracklings and a blaze of sparks and a cloud of rust that tarnishes
the jar. From the end of the fiery coil a red drop breaks off at
intervals, shoots quivering through the layer of water left at the
bottom of the vessel and embeds itself in the glass which has
suddenly grown soft. This metallic tear, with its indomitable heat,
makes every one of us shudder. They stamp and cheer and applaud.
The timid ones place their hands before their faces and dare not
look except through their fingers. My audience exults; and I myself
triumph. Ha, my friend, isn’t it grand, this chemistry!

All of us have red-letter days in our lives. Some, the practical
men, have been successful in business; they have made money and
hold their heads high in consequence. Others, the thinkers, have
gained ideas; they have opened a new account in the ledger of
nature and silently taste the hallowed joys of truth. One of my
great days was that of my first acquaintance with oxygen. On that
day, when my class was over and all the materials put back in their
place, I felt myself grow several inches taller. An untrained
workman, I had shown, with complete success, that which was unknown
to me a couple of hours before. No accident whatever, not even the
least stain of acid.

It is, therefore, not so difficult nor so dangerous as the pitiful
finish of the Saint-Martial lesson might have led me to believe.
With a vigilant eye and a little prudence, I shall be able to
continue. The prospect is enchanting.

And so, in due season, comes hydrogen, carefully contemplated in my
reading, seen and reseen with the eye of the mind before being seen
with the eyes of the body. I delight my little rascals by making
the hydrogen-flame sing in a glass tube, which trickles with the
drops of water resulting from the combustion; I make them jump with
the explosions of the thunderous mixture. Later, I show them, with
the same invariable success, the splendours of phosphorus, the
violent powers of chlorine, the loathsome smells of sulphur, the
metamorphoses of carbon, and so on. In short, in a series of
lessons, the principal non-metallic elements and their compounds
are passed in review during the course of the year.

The thing was bruited abroad. Fresh pupils came to me, attracted by
the marvels of the school. Some more places were laid in the
dining-hall; and the principal, who was more interested in the
profits on his beans and bacon than in chemistry, congratulated me
on this accession of boarders. [31]

However, we must make it clear, without wishing in any way to belittle the importance or the magical results of chemistry, that the latter was not the only attraction of the young schoolmaster’s teaching, any more than it was the sole subject on his programme.

Among the other subjects taught, one in especial had the power of interesting master and pupil alike:

This was open-air geometry, practical surveying. The College had
none of the necessary outfit; but, with my fat pay—seven hundred
francs a year, if you please!—I could not hesitate over the
expense. A surveyor’s chain and stakes, arrows, level, square, and
compass were bought with my money. A microscopic graphometer, not
much larger than the palm of one’s hand and costing perhaps five
francs, was provided by the establishment. There was no tripod to
it; and I had one made. In short, my equipment was complete.

And so, when May came, once every week we left the gloomy
schoolroom for the fields. It was a regular holiday. The boys
disputed for the honour of carrying the stakes, divided into
bundles of three; and more than one shoulder, as we walked through
the town, felt the reflected glory of those erudite rods. I
myself—why conceal the fact?—was not without a certain satisfaction
as I piously carried that most delicate and precious apparatus, the
historic five-franc graphometer. The scene of operations was an
untilled, flinty plain, a harmas, as we call it in the district.
Here, no curtain of green hedges or shrubs prevented me from
keeping an eye upon my staff; here—an indispensable condition—I had
not the irresistible temptation of the unripe apricots to fear for
my scholars. The plain stretched far and wide, covered with nothing
but flowering thyme and rounded pebbles. There was ample scope for
every imaginable polygon; trapezes and triangles could be combined
in all sorts of ways. The inaccessible distances had ample
elbow-room; and there was even an old ruin, once a pigeon-house,
that lent its perpendicular to the graphometer’s performances.

These exercises in open-air geometry, which had their charm, discounted beforehand, had also their delightful surprises and unexpected consequences which place them among the happiest experiences of the life which we are describing:

Well, from the very first day, my attention was attracted by
something suspicious. If I sent one of the boys to plant a stake, I
would see him stop frequently on his way, bend down, stand up
again, look about and stoop once more, neglecting his straight line
and his signals. Another, who was told to pick up the arrows, would
forget the iron pin and take up a pebble instead; and a third, deaf
to the measurements of angles, would crumble a clod of earth
between his fingers. Most of them were caught licking a bit of
straw. The polygon came to a full stop, the diagonals suffered.
What could the mystery be?

I inquired; and everything was explained. A born searcher and
observer, the scholar had long known what the master had not yet
heard of, namely, that there was a big black Bee who made clay
nests on the pebbles of the harmas. These nests contained honey;
and my surveyors used to open them and empty the cells with a
straw. The honey, although rather strong-flavoured, was most
acceptable. I acquired a taste for it myself and joined the
nest-hunters, putting off the polygon till later. It was thus that
I first saw Réaumur’s Mason Bee, [32] knowing nothing of her
history and nothing of her historian.

The magnificent Bee herself, with her dark-violet wings and
black-velvet raiment, her rustic edifices on the sun-blistered
pebbles amid the thyme, her honey, providing a diversion from the
severities of the compass and the square, all made a great
impression on my mind; and I wanted to know more than I had learnt
from the schoolboys, which was just how to rob the cells of their
honey with a straw. As it happened, my bookseller had a gorgeous
work on insects for sale. It was called Histoire naturelle des
animaux articulés, by de Castelnau, E. Blanchard, and Lucas, and
boasted a multitude of most attractive illustrations; but the price
of it, the price of it! No matter: was not my splendid income
supposed to cover everything, food for the mind as well as food for
the body? Anything extra that I gave to the one I could save upon
the other; a method of balancing painfully familiar to those who
look to science for their livelihood. The purchase was effected.
That day my professional emoluments were severely strained: I
devoted a month’s salary to the acquisition of the book. I had to
resort to miracles of economy for some time to come before making
up the enormous deficit.

The book was devoured; there is no other word for it. In it I
learnt the name of my black Bee; I read for the first time various
details of the habits of insects; I found, surrounded in my eyes
with a sort of halo, the revered names of Réaumur, Huber, and Léon
Dufour; and, while I turned over the pages for the hundredth time,
a voice within me seemed to whisper:

“You also shall be of their company!” [33]