THE LAST EXAMINATION
This morning we had our oral examinations. At eight o'clock we were all in the schoolroom, and at a quarter past they began to call us, four at a time, into the big hall, where there was a large table covered with a green cloth. Around it were seated the principal and four other teachers, among them our own. I was one of the first called out.
Dear teacher! how plainly I saw this morning that you are really fond of us! While they were questioning the others, he had no eyes for any one but us. He was troubled when we were uncertain in our replies; he grew serene when we gave a fine answer; he heard everything, and made us a thousand signs with his hand and head, to say to us, “Good!—no!—pay attention!—slower!—courage!”
He would have suggested everything to us, had he been able to talk. If the fathers of all these pupils had been in his place, one after the other, they could not have done more. I could have cried “Thank you!” ten times over, in the face of them all. And when the other masters said to me, “That is well; you may go,” his eyes beamed with pleasure.
I returned at once to the schoolroom to wait for my father. Nearly all were still there. I sat down beside Garrone. I was not at all cheerful; I was thinking that it was the last time that we should be near each other for an hour. I had not yet told Garrone that I should not go through the fourth grade with him, that I was to leave Turin with my father. He knew nothing. And he sat there, doubled up together, with his big head resting on the desk, making ornaments round the photograph of his father, who was dressed like a machinist, and who is a tall, large man. with a bull neck and a serious, honest look, like himself. And as he sat thus bent together, with his blouse a little open in front, I saw on his bare and robust breast the gold cross which Nelli's mother had presented to him, when she learned that he had protected her son. But I must tell him sometime that I was going away. So I said:—
“Garrone, my father is going away from Turin this autumn, for good.”
He asked me if I were going, also. I replied that I was.
“You will not go through the fourth grade with us?” he said.
I answered, “No.”
He did not speak for a while, but went on with his drawing.
Then, without raising his head, he inquired:—
“And shall you remember your comrades of the third grade?”
“Yes,” I told him, “all of them; but you more than all the rest. Who can forget you?”
He looked at me fixedly and seriously, with a gaze that said a thousand things, but he uttered no word. He only offered me his left hand, pretending to continue his drawing with the other; and I pressed it between mine,—that strong and loyal hand. At that moment the teacher entered hastily, with a red face, and said, in a low, quick voice, with a joyful intonation:—
“Good, all is going well now, let the rest come forward; bravi, boys! Courage! I am extremely well satisfied.”
And, in order to show us his contentment, and to cheer us, as he went out in haste, he made a motion of stumbling and of catching at the wall, to prevent a fall; he whom we had never seen laugh! The thing appeared so strange, that, instead of laughing, we were dumbfounded; all smiled, but no one laughed.
Well, I do not know,—that act of childish joy caused both pain and tenderness. All his reward was that moment of cheerfulness,—it was the compensation for nine months of kindness, patience, and even sorrow! For that he had toiled so long; for that he had so often gone to give lessons to a sick boy, poor teacher! That and nothing more was what he demanded of us, in exchange for so much affection and so much care!
And, now, it seems to me that I shall always see him in that act, when I recall him through many years; when I have become a man, if he be alive, and we meet, I shall tell him about that deed which touched my heart; and I shall give him a kiss on his white head.