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, all
granite, a dark Baal with carven lips and blank eye-balls, and breast
like the stone face of a tomb; and again, suddenly, at some turn, some
sound, some long-trembling sob of the wind, at some rushing past of an
unseen stream of electricity, the irrational demon would wake
unsolicited, would stir strangely alive, would rush from its pedestal
like a perturbed Dagon, calling to its votary for a sacrifice,
whatever the hour--to its victim for some blood, or some breath,
whatever the circumstance or scene--rousing its priest, treacherously
promising vaticination, perhaps filling its temple with a strange hum
of oracles, but sure to give half the significance to fateful winds,
and grudging to the desperate listener even a miserable remnant--
yielding it sordidly, as though each word had been a drop of the
deathless ichor of its own dark veins. And this tyrant I was to compel
into bondage, and make it improvise a theme, on a school estrade,
between a Mathilde and a Coralie, under the eye of a Madame Beck, for
the pleasure, and to the inspiration of a bourgeois of Labassecour!
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