"Ah! how are you, papa Dugrand?" he says, on encountering him. This
apostrophe is, therefore, a mixture of surprise, soldierly bluntness and
joviality.
At the first words I was stopped short by an almost insurmountable
difficulty. This difficulty was all in my gesture. Do what I would, my
manner of accosting papa Dugrand was grotesque; and all the lessons that
were given me on that scene, all the pains I took to profit by those
lessons, effected no change. I paced to and fro, saying and resaying the
words: "How are you, papa Dugrand?" Another scholar in my place would
have gone on; but the greater the difficulty seemed to me, the higher my
ardor rose. However, I had my labor for my pains.
"That's not it," said my instructors. Good heavens! I knew that as well
as they did; but what I did not know was _why_ that was not it. It seems
that my professors were equally ignorant, since they could not tell me
exactly in what my way differed from theirs.
The specification of that difference would have enlightened me, but all
remained, with them as with me, subject to the uncertain views of a
vague instinct.
"Do as I do," they said to me, one after the other.
Zounds! the thing was easier said than done.
"Put more enthusiasm into your greeting to papa Dugrand!"
The greater my enthusiasm, the more laughable was my awkwardness.
"See here; watch my movements carefully!"
"I do watch, but I don't know how to go to work to imitate you; I don't
seize the details of your gesture.
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