The schoolmaster gazed with a covetous eye at the money which was counted out to him. He took it, and counted and recounted it several times; he put it in his pocket, then took it out to count it once more. He did not tire of handling that gold and silver, for never before had he been in possession of so large a sum. They spoke to him, he did not hear, he did not answer, but he jingled his gold pieces and his silver pieces, and after he had finally placed them in a pocket of his trousers, he put his hand over them and kept it there all the time.
Meanwhile, as it was late, Jasmin, having taken leave of his master and received from him renewed promises that he would study, returned to the carriage which had brought him thither and drove back to Paris, delighted that he had found a way to make a scholar of Chérubin.
As for Monsieur Gérondif, having saluted his future pupil and informed him that he would come on the morrow, he left the nurse’s house, and went home, still keeping his hand in his pocket and jingling the money which was there.
We will pass rapidly over the years following that during which Monsieur Gérondif became the young marquis’s tutor. Chérubin had kept his word; he had consented to study, but he had insisted on Louise’s presence during his lessons; at first, Monsieur Gérondif had tried to keep the little girl from the room, but Chérubin had shrieked and wept and refused to listen to his tutor; so that it was found necessary to yield to him. By slow degrees Louise’s presence had evidently come to seem less inconvenient to Monsieur Gérondif, for if she were not there when he arrived, he was the first to send for her.
The fact is that Louise had grown too, and that she had improved even more rapidly. At thirteen, she seemed at least fifteen; she was slender, well-built, and possessed of many graces; not studied and affected ones such as so many young ladies in Paris assume, thinking that they will be deemed natural; but those naïve, simple graces which one recognizes instantly but vainly tries to imitate.
Monsieur Gérondif was not a genuine scholar, but he might have passed for such in the eyes of many people. He had tried everything, having in his youth essayed a number of professions, but having fixed upon none; after making a pretence of becoming a doctor, a druggist, a chemist, an astronomer, a geometrician, a tradesman, and even a poet; after stuffing his head with the first rudiments of many forms of knowledge and succeeding in none, he had ended by turning schoolmaster. The man who knows one branch thoroughly has much more merit than he who talks glibly about all branches, and yet, in the world, the preference is often given to the latter.