surtout—whisper to his co-professor: "Est-elle done idiote?"
"Yes," I thought, "an idiot she is, and always will be, for such as you."
But I suffered—suffered cruelly; I saw the damps gather on M. Paul's brow, and his eye spoke a passionate yet sad reproach. He would not believe in my total lack of popular cleverness; he thought I could be prompt if I would.
At last, to relieve him, the professors, and myself, I stammered out:
"Gentlemen, you had better let me go; you will get no good of me; as you say, I am an idiot."
I wish I could have spoken with calm and dignity, or I wish my sense had sufficed to make me hold my tongue; that traitor tongue tripped, faltered. Beholding the judges cast on M. Emanuel a hard look of triumph, and hearing the distressed tremor of my own voice, out I burst in a fit of choking tears. The emotion was far more of anger than grief; had I been a man and strong, I could have challenged that pair on the spot—but it was emotion, and I would rather have been scourged, than betrayed it.
The incapables! Could they not see at once the
