Colette, prodded by her first husband, Willy, began her writing career with Claudine at School, which catapulted the young author into instant, sensational success. Among the most autobiographical of Colette's works, these four novels are dominated by the child-woman Claudine, whose strength, humor, and zest for living make her seem almost a symbol for the life force. Janet Flanner described these books as "amazing writing on the almost girlish search for the absolute of happiness in physical love . . . recorded by a literary brain always wide awake on the pillow."

Chapter One

Claudine at School

My name is Claudine, I live in Montigny; I was born there in 1884; I shall probably not die there. My Manual of Departmental Geography expresses itself thus: "Montigny-en-Fresnois, a pretty little town of 1,950 inhabitants, built in tiers above the Thaize; its well-preserved Saracen tower is worthy of note...." To me, those descriptions are totally meaningless! To begin with, the Thaize doesn't exist. Of course I know it's supposed to run through the meadows under the level-crossing but you won't find enough water there in any season to give a sparrow a foot-bath. Montigny "built in tiers"? No, that's not how I see it; to my mind, the houses just tumble haphazard from the top of the hill to the bottom of the valley. They rise one above the other, like a staircase, leading up to a big chateau that was rebuilt under Louis XV and is already more dilapidated than the squat, ivy-sheathed Saracen tower that crumbles away from the top a trifle more every day. Montigny is a village, not a town: its streets, thank heaven, are not paved; the showers roll down them in little torrents that dry up in a couple of hours; it is a village, not even a very pretty village, but, all the same, I adore it.

    The charm, the delight of this countryside composed of hills and of valleys so narrow that some are ravines, lies in the woods--the deep, encroaching woods that ripple and wave away into the distance as far as you can see.... Green meadows make rifts in them here and there, so do little patches of cultivation. But these do not amount to much, for the magnificent woods devour everything. As a result, this lovely region is atrociously poor and its few scattered farms provide just the requisite number of red roofs to set off the velvety green of the woods.

    Dear woods! I know them all; I've scoured them so often. There are the copses, where bushes spitefully catch your face as you pass. Those are full of sun and strawberries and lilies-of-the-valley; they are also full of snakes. I've shuddered there with choking terror at the sight of those dreadful, smooth, cold little bodies gliding just in front of my feet. Dozens of times near the "rosemallow" I've stopped still, panting, when I've found a well-behaved grass snake under my hand. It would be neatly coiled up, like a snail-shell, with its head raised and its little golden eyes staring at me: it was not dangerous, but how it frightened me! But never mind all that: I shall always end by going back there, alone or with my friends. Better alone, because those girls are so young lady-ish that they annoy me. They're frightened of being scratched by brambles; they're frightened of little creatures such as hairy caterpillars and those pretty heath-spiders that are as pink and round as pearls; they squeal, they get tired--in fact, they're insufferable.

    And then there are my favourites, the great woods that are sixteen and twenty years old. It makes my heart bleed to see one of those cut down. No bushy undergrowth in them but trees like pillars and narrow paths where it is almost night at noon, where one's voice and one's steps resound in a disturbing way. Heavens, how I love them! I feel so much alone there, my eyes lost far away among the trees, in the green, mysterious daylight that is at once deliciously peaceful and a little unnerving because of the loneliness and the vague darkness.... No small creatures in those great woods; no tall grasses; but beaten earth, now dry, and sonorous, now soft on account of the springs. Rabbits with white scuts range through them and timid deer who run so fast that you can only guess their passage. Great heavy pheasants too, red and golden, and wild boars (I've never seen one) and wolves. I heard a wolf once, at the beginning of winter, while I was picking up beech-nuts--those nice, oily little beech-nuts that tickle your throat and make you cough. Sometimes storm-showers surprise you in those woods; you huddle under an oak that is thicker than the others and listen to the rain pattering up there as if on a roof. You're so well-sheltered that when you come out of those depths you are quite lost and dazzled and feel ill at ease in the broad daylight.

    And the fir-woods! Not very deep, these, and hardly at all mysterious. I love them for their smell, for the pink and purple heather that grows under them and for the way they sing in the wind. Before you get to them, you have to go through dense forest; then suddenly you have the delicious surprise of coming out on the edge of a lake; a smooth, deep lake, enclosed on all sides by the woods, far, far away from everything! The firs grow on a kind of island in the middle; you have to straddle bravely across on a fallen tree-trunk that bridges the two banks. Under the firs, you light a fire, even in summer, because it's forbidden; you cook any old thing, an apple, a pear, a potato stolen from a field, some wholemeal bread if you've nothing better. And there's a smell of acrid smoke and resin--it's abominable but it's exquisite.

    I have lived ten years of wild rovings, of conquests and discoveries, in those woods; the day when I have to leave them my heart will be very heavy.

    Two months ago, when I turned fifteen and let down my skirts to my ankles, they demolished the old school and changed the headmistress. The long skirts were necessitated by my calves; they attracted glances and were already making me look too much like a young lady. The old school was falling into ruins. As to the Headmistress, poor good Madame X, forty, ugly, ignorant, gentle and always terrified in the presence of the Elementary School inspectors, Doctor Dutertre, our District Superintendent of Schools, needed her place for a protégée of his own. In this part of the world, what Dutertre wishes, the Minister wishes too.

    Poor old school, dilapidated and unhygienic, but so amusing! The handsome buildings they are putting up now will never make me forget you!

    The rooms on the first floor, the ones belonging to the masters, were cheerless and uncomfortable. The ground floor was occupied by our two classrooms, the big girls' and the little girls'; two rooms of incredible ugliness and dirtiness, with tables whose like I have never seen since. They were worn down to half their height by constant use and, by rights, we ought to have become hunchbacks after six months of sitting over them. The smell of those classrooms, after the three hours of study in the morning and in the afternoon, was literally enough to knock you down. I have never had schoolmates of my own kind, for the few middle-class families of Montigny send their children as a matter of course to boarding-school in the main county town. Thus the school's only pupils were the daughters of grocers, farmers, policemen and, for the most part, of labourers; all of them none too well washed.

    The reason I find myself in this strange milieu is that I do not want to leave Montigny. If I had a Mamma, I know very well that she would not have let me stay here twenty-four hours. But Papa-- he doesn't notice anything and doesn't bother about me. He is entirely wrapped up in his work and it never occurs to him that I might be more suitably brought up in a convent or in some Lycée or other. There's no danger of my opening his eyes!

    As companions therefore, I had--and still have--Claire (I won't give her surname) who made her First Communion with me, a gentle girl with beautiful, soft eyes and a romantic little soul. She spent her time at school becoming enamoured (oh! platonically, of course!) of a new boy every week and, even now, her only ambition is to fall in love with the first idiot of an Assistant-Master or Road-Surveyor who happens to be in the mood for "poetical" declarations.

    Then there's the lanky Anaïs who, no doubt, will succeed in entering the portals of the school at Fontenay-aux-Roses, thanks to a prodigious memory which takes the place of real intelligence. She is cold, vicious and so impossible to upset that she never blushes, lucky creature! She is a positive pastmistress of comedy and often makes me quite ill with laughing. Her hair is neither dark nor fair; she has a yellow skin, no colour in her cheeks, and narrow black eyes, and she is as tall as a bean-pole. Someone quite out of the ordinary, in fact. Liar, toady, swindler and traitress, that lanky Anaïs will always know how to get out of any scrape in life. At thirteen, she was writing to some booby of her own age and making assignations with him; this got about and resulted in gossip which upset all the girls in the school except herself. Then there are the Jauberts, two sisters--twins actually--both model pupils. Model pupils! Don't I know it! I could cheerfully flay them alive, they exasperate me so much with their good behaviour and their pretty, neat handwriting and their silly identical flat, flabby faces and sheep's eyes full of maudlin mildness. They swat all the time; they're bursting with good marks; they're prim and underhand and their breath smells of glue. Ugh!

    And Marie Belhomme, a goose but such a cheerful one! At fifteen, she has as much reasoning power and common sense as a rather backward child of eight; she overflows with colossally naïve remarks that disarm our maliciousness and we are very fond of her. I'm always saying any amount of disgraceful things in front of her because, at first, she's genuinely shocked and then, the next minute, she laughs wholeheartedly, flinging up her long, narrow hands as high as they'll go. "Her midwife's hands" Anaïs calls them. Dark, with a matt complexion, long, humid black eyes and an innocent nose, Marie looks like a pretty, timid hare. These four and myself make up an envied set this year; from now on we rank above the "big girls" as aspirants to the elementary School Certificate. The rest, in our eyes, are mere scum; lower orders beneath contempt! I shall introduce a few more of my schoolmates in the course of this diary for it is definitely a diary, or very nearly one, that I am about to begin....

    When Madame X received the notice of her dismissal, she cried about it for an entire day, poor woman--and so did we. This inspired me with a strong aversion for her successor. Just when the demolishers of the old school made their appearance in the playground, the new Headmistress, Mademoiselle Sergent, arrived. She was accompanied by her mother, a fat woman in a starched cap who waits on her daughter and admires her and who gives me the impression of a wily peasant who knows the price of butter but is not bad at heart. As for Mademoiselle Sergent, she seemed anything but kindly and I augured ill of that redhead. She has a good figure, with well-rounded bust and hips, but she is flagrantly ugly. Her face is puffy and permanently crimson and her nose is slightly snub between two small black eyes, deep-set and suspicious. She occupies a room in the old school which does not have to be demolished straight away and so does her assistant, the pretty Aimée Lanthenay who attracts me as much as her superior repels me. Against Mademoiselle Sergent, the intruder, I keep up a fierce and rebellious attitude. She has already tried to tame me but I've jibbed in an almost insolent way. After a few lively skirmishes, I have to admit that she is an unusually good headmistress; decisive, often imperious, with a strength of purpose that would be admirably clear-sighted if it were not occasionally blinded by rage. If she had more command over herself, that woman would be admirable. But, if one resists her, her eyes blaze and her red hair becomes soaked with sweat. The day before yesterday I saw her leave the room so as not to throw an ink-pot at my head.

    At recreation-time, since the damp cold of this wretched autumn doesn't make me feel in the least inclined to play games, I talk to Mademoiselle Aimée. Our intimacy is progressing very fast. Her nature is like a demonstrative cat's; she is delicate, acutely sensitive to cold, and incredibly caressing in her ways. I like looking at her nice pink face, like a fair-haired little girl's, and at her golden eyes with their curled-up lashes. Lovely eyes that only ask to smile! They make the boys turn and look after her when she goes out. Often, when we're talking in the doorway of the little crowded classroom, Mademoiselle Sergent passes by us on the way back to her room. She doesn't say a word but fixes us with her jealous, searching looks. Her silence makes us feel, my new friend and I, that she's furious at seeing us "hit it off" so well.

    This little Aimée--she's nineteen and only comes up to my ears--chatters, like the schoolgirl she still was only three months ago, with a need for affection and with repressed gestures that touch me. Repressed gestures! She controls them from an instinctive fear of Mademoiselle Sergent, clutching her cold little hands tight under the imitation fur collar (poor little thing, she has no money like thousands of her kind). To make her less shy, I behave gently (it isn't difficult) and I ask her questions, quite content just to look at her. When she talks, she's pretty, in spite of--or because of--her irregular little face. If her cheekbones are a trifle too salient, if her rather too full mouth, under the short nose, makes a funny little dint at the left side when she laughs, what marvellous golden-yellow eyes she has to make up for them! And what a complexion--one of those complexions that look so delicate but are so reliable that the cold doesn't even turn them blue! She talks and she talks--about her father who's a gem-cutter and her mother who was liberal with her smacks, about her sister and her three brothers, about the hard training-college in the country-town where the water froze in the jugs and where she was always dropping with sleep because they got up at five o'clock (luckily the English mistress was very nice to her), about the holidays at home where they used to force her to go back to housework, telling her she'd do better to cook than to sham the young lady. All this was unfolded in her endless chatter; all that poverty-stricken youth that she had endured with impatience and remembered with terror.

    Little Mademoiselle Lanthenay, your supple body seeks and demands an unknown satisfaction. If you were not an assistant mistress at Montigny you might be ... I'd rather not say what. But how I like listening to you and looking at you--you who are four years older than I am and yet make me feel every single moment like your elder sister!

    My new confidante told me one day that she knew quite a lot of English and this inspired me with a simply marvellous idea. I asked Papa (as he takes Mamma's place) if he wouldn't like me to get Mademoiselle Aimée Lanthenay to give me lessons in English grammar. Papa thought the idea a good one, like most of my ideas, and to "clinch the matter", as he says, he came with me to see Mademoiselle Sergent. She received us with a stony politeness and, while Papa was explaining his idea to her, she seemed to be approving it. But I felt vaguely uneasy at not seeing her eyes while she was talking. (I'd noticed very quickly that her eyes always tell what she is thinking without her being able to disguise it and I was worried to observe that she kept them obstinately lowered.) Mademoiselle Aimée was called down and arrived eager and blushing. She kept repeating "Yes, Monsieur", and "Certainly, Monsieur", hardly realising what she was saying, while I watched her, highly delighted with my ruse and rejoicing in the thought that, henceforth, I should have her with me in more privacy than on the threshold of the small classroom. Price of the lessons: fifteen francs a month and two sessions a week. For this poor little assistant mistress, who earns sixty-five francs a month and has to pay for her keep out of it, this was a windfall beyond her dreams. I believe, too, that she was pleased at the idea of being with me more often. During that visit, I barely exchanged a couple of sentences with her.

    The day of our first lesson! I waited for her after class while she collected her English books and off we went to my home! I'd arranged a comfortable corner for us in Papa's library--a big table, pens and exercise-books, with a good lamp that only lit the table. Mademoiselle Aimée, extremely embarrassed (why?) blushed and said with a nervous little cough:

    "Now then, Claudine, you know your alphabet, I think?"

    "Of course, Mademoiselle. I also know a little grammar. I could easily do that little bit of translation.... We're cosy here, aren't we?"

    "Yes, very cosy."

    I asked, lowering my voice a little as I did when we were having our gossips:

    "Did Mademoiselle Sergent mention my lessons with you again?"

    "Oh, hardly at all. She told me it was a piece of luck for me---that you'd give me no trouble if you were only willing to work a little--that you could learn very quickly when you wanted to."

    "Was that all? That's not much! She must have been sure you'd repeat it to me."

    "Now, now Claudine, we're not working. In English there is only one article ..., etc., etc."

    After ten minutes of serious English, I questioned her again.

    "Did you notice she didn't look at all pleased when I came with Papa to ask to have lessons with you?"

    "No ... Yes ... Well, perhaps. But we hardly spoke to each other that evening."

    "Do take off your jacket, it's always stifling in Papa's room. How slim you are--one could snap you in two! Your eyes are awfully pretty by this light."

    I said that because I thought it and also because it gave me pleasure to pay her compliments--more pleasure than if I had received them on my own account. I enquired:

    "Do you still sleep in the same room as Mademoiselle Sergent?"

    This proximity seemed odious to me but how could she do otherwise? All the other rooms had already been stripped of their furniture and the men were beginning to take off the roof. The poor little thing sighed:

    "I have to, but it's too tiresome for words. At nine o'clock I go to bed at once--quick, quick--and she comes up to bed later on. But it's unpleasant all the same, when the two of us are so ill-at-ease together."

    "Oh, I do feel so frightfully sorry for you! It must be maddening for you to have to dress in front of her in the morning! I should loathe to have to show myself in my chemise to people I don't like!"

    Mademoiselle Lanthenay started as she pulled out her watch.

    "Really, Claudine, we're not doing a thing! We simply must work!"

    "Yes.... Did you know they're expecting some new assistant-masters?"

    "I know. Two. They're arriving tomorrow."

    "That'll be amusing! Two admirers for you!"

    "Oh, be quiet, do. To begin with, all the ones I've seen were so stupid that I wasn't a bit tempted. And, besides, I know the names of these two already. Such ludicrous names--Antonin Rabastens and Armand Duplessis."

    "I bet those two idiots will go through our playground twenty times a day. They'll make the excuse that the boys' entrance is cluttered up with builder's rubbish...."

    "Listen, Claudine, this is disgraceful. We haven't done a stroke today."

    "Oh, it's always like that the first day. We'll work much better next Friday. One has to have time to get going."

    In spite of this convincing reasoning, Mademoiselle Lanthenay felt guilty about her own laziness and made me work seriously to the end of the hour. Afterwards, I accompanied her down to the bottom of the street. It was dark and freezing and it upset me to see this small shadow going off into that cold and that blackness to return to the Redhead with the jealous eyes.

    This week we've enjoyed some hours of pure bliss because they've been using us big ones to clear the loft and bring down all the books and the old lumber with which it was crammed. We had to hurry: the builders were waiting to pull down the first storey. There were mad gallops through the attics and up and down the stairs. At the risk of being punished we ventured, the lanky Anaïs and I, right on to the staircase leading to the masters' rooms, in the hopes of at least catching a glimpse of the two new assistants who had remained invisible since their arrival....

    Yesterday, in front of a door left ajar, Anaïs gave me a shove. I stumbled and pushed the door right open with my head. Then we burst into giggles and stood rooted to the spot on the threshold of this room, obviously a master's and, luckily, empty of its tenant. Hastily, we inspected it. On the wall and on the mantelpiece were large chromolithographs in commonplace frames: an Italian girl with luxuriant hair, dazzling teeth and eyes three times the size of her mouth; as a companion-piece, a swooning blonde clutching a spaniel to her blue-ribboned bodice. Above the bed of Antonin Rabastens (he had stuck his card on the door with four drawing-pins) hung entwined pennants in the French and Russian national colours. What else? A table with a wash-basin, two chairs, some butterflies stuck on corks, some sentimental songs lying about the mantelpiece, and not a thing besides. We stared at all this without saying a word, then suddenly we escaped towards the loft at full speed, oppressed by an absurd fear that Antonin (one simply can't be called Antonin!) might be coming up the stairs. Our trampling on those forbidden steps was so noisy that a door opened on the ground-floor--the door of the boys' classroom--and someone appeared, enquiring in a funny Marseilles accent:

    "What on earrth's going on? For the last half-hour, have I been hearing hosses on the staircase?"

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Complete Claudine by COLETTE. Copyright © 1976 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.