le odour. He confessed that he did. I
said if he would let me out by the garden-door, and permit me just to
run across the court, I would fetch him a plateful; and added that I
believed they were excellent, as Goton had a very good method of
baking, or rather stewing fruit, putting in a little spice, sugar, and
a glass or two of vin blanc--might I go?

"Petite gourmande!" said he, smiling, "I have not forgotten how pleased
you were with the pate a la creme I once gave you, and you know very
well, at this moment, that to fetch the apples for me will be the same
as getting them for yourself. Go, then, but come back quickly."

And at last he liberated me on parole. My own plan was to go and return
with speed and good faith, to put the plate in at the door, and then to
vanish incontinent, leaving all consequences for future settlement.

That intolerably keen instinct of his seemed to have anticipated my
scheme: he met me at the threshold, hurried me into the room, and fixed
me in a minute in my former seat. Taking the plate of fruit from my
hand, he divided the portion intended only for himself, and ordered me
to eat my share. I complied with no good grace, and vexed, I suppose,
by my reluctance, he opened a masked and dangerous battery. All he had
yet said, I could count as mere sound and fury, signifying nothing: not
so of the present attack.

It consisted in an unreasonable proposition with which he had before
afflicted me: namely, that on the next public examination-day I should
engage--foreigner as I was--to take my place on the first form of
first-class pupils, and with them improvise a composition in French, on
any subject any spectator might dictate, without benefit of grammar or
lexicon.

I knew what the result of such an experiment would be. I, to whom
nature had denied the impromptu faculty; who, in public, was by nature
a cypher; whose time of mental activity, even when alone, was not under
the meridian sun; who needed the fresh silence of morning, or the
recluse peace of evening, to win from the Creative Impulse one evidence
of his presence, one proof of his force; I, with whom that Impulse was
the most intractable, the most capricious, the most maddening of
masters (him before me always excepted)--a deity which sometimes, under
circumstances--apparently propitious, would not speak when questioned,
would not hear when appealed to, would not, when sought, be found; but
would stand, all cold, all indurated,