Granville's estate

In the winter of January 1815, the area where Saint-Étienne was located had already begun to snow.

Calliste de Durand, who had to conceal his identity because of his family's royalist stance—then he used the pseudonym Calliste Duvas, his mother's maiden name—was already at the Saint-Etienne has been there for nearly 11 years and is about to graduate, but he is getting more and more tired of this dreary boarding school that is so rigid that even the dogs bark like clockwork; and the teacher in his math class M. Legrand's recent unkindness towards him undoubtedly intensified his rebellious tendencies.

In Mr. Legrand's class, Calliste Duvas was definitely one of the most unpopular students of the teacher. When Callister's father chose mathematics class for him (yes, this kind of choice is different from It is better to say that it is the will of the fathers than the interests of the students themselves), Mr. Legrand was very reluctant to have this rebellious and thorny leader come to his class. Finally, after repeated requests from the supervisor, Mr. Legrand He reluctantly agreed.This sowed the seeds of discord in their relationship from the very beginning - Callister's three years in math class were a torture for both parties: the teacher believed that his authority should be as supreme as tradition , and the young and energetic student would never obey his instructor as the social rules required, so confinement and corporal punishment became a common occurrence.

Perhaps the god of fate likes to joke with mortals. The confrontation between teachers and students had already eased when Callister was about to graduate, but since Callister snatched it from the maid, Mother Moreau, at Christmas After taking away a prey named Louis du Farentin, the contradictions were secretly and fiercely intensified.

There is no doubt that an immoral relationship existed between M. Legrand and Mama Moreau—perhaps the teacher's wife was so religious that she hung her bed between the two side-by-side beds. Because of the cold cross that turned the relationship between husband and wife into empty talk, Mother Moreau easily controlled this poor man who could not get emotional response from his wife; After the beautiful child in the house kept stopping her from continuing to attack that child, the annoyed maid took advantage of Mr. Legrand's advantage of being in charge of the math class and started to make trouble for him continuously.

For students in this era, being reprimanded, corporal punishment and confinement are all very common things, even noble princes and princesses have no right to say "I don't" when facing the control and punishment of tutors .Teachers can rough up students they don't like without thinking about anything else about status and identity (in God's name, the phrase "I am his teacher" will suffice!); so borrowing the teacher's natural Mother Moreau and Mr. Legrand, who are in power, naturally would not have imagined that Callister, as a student, would have the ability and courage to plan a revenge against them, and he really succeeded in carrying it out—if not Because of a little accident later, he could even graduate from Saint-Etienne safely without anyone knowing!

Of course, when planning this revenge, our Mr. Callister Duvas would never admit that there was a factor in the little guy named Louis du Farentin in the philosophy class next door, even if he had Several times I saw Farentin see Mr. Legrand like a mouse seeing a cat, and he could only hold the book and walk against the wall with tears in his eyes; he thought that his actions were purely for Mr. Legrand over the years Payback for his "care": After all, he's graduating from the damn school soon, and he really wouldn't be one if he didn't leave some meaningful "souvenirs" for his teachers before leaving Good student, isn't he?

At the heart of Calliste's Revenge was an earthenware pot, a not-so-refined clay pot very common in Saint-Etienne: it was sold at Madame Walker's shop for a few sous , students can use it to heat the rice and leftovers that they couldn't finish the day before, and of course some people put water in it and boil it on the fireplace, and use it as a hand or foot warmer.So there's nothing suspicious about keeping this crock pot with a lid next to the fireplace, and no one would be bored enough to lift the lid to see the unappetizing leftovers inside.

Calliste Duis, who has been wandering around Saint-Etienne all year round, managed to get one of these new clay pots without much effort, and then spent two more days to get it from Saint-Etienne. A tattered asbestos cloth was found in Étienne's cluttered storeroom - the cloth is excellent at insulating heat, making it ideal for keeping clay pots warm when they left the stove. materials; and at the same time, at the cost of three francs—M. Legrand would never have imagined that so little money was needed to finally get him into a nervous breakdown—to hire a farmer outside the boarding school. The ten-year-old brought him what he needed from the forest outside town: two frozen snakes.

"Sir, they're definitely alive," the farmer's son assured Callister, handing him the jar with the snake in it: "I just threw another one into the fire, and it' They ran away in no time, if you need, I can find some more for you."

It turned out that the child was not lying: the two snakes, frozen in the cold of winter, slowly came to life after being exposed to the warmth of the stove, and stayed lazily in the jar; The long, slippery rope is actually not poisonous, even if it bites someone, it won't cause much harm - after all, Callister just wanted to give Mr. Legrand and his concubine a "surprise". Instead of going directly to let them accept God's judgment.

After everything was ready, Callister slipped out of the curfew bedroom late in the cold night. He took the deadly pot from the fire that had been extinguished, wrapped it in asbestos cloth to keep it inside Then, he skilfully stepped on the gap between the inspection rooms of the teachers and slipped out of the dormitory, and walked to the hut beside the garden that belonged exclusively to Mama Moro—he stepped on the time very precisely, because he didn’t need to inspect this day , Mr. Legrand couldn't wait to come here and get entangled with the maid.

"May God bless your souls!"

Before picking the snake in the pot with a branch through the gap in the window—the people in the house have been so dazzled by lust, they didn’t even notice that the window was quietly opened a gap from the outside—Callister Pretending to pray for his teacher in his heart, he thought his prayer was very sincere: If God thinks that M. Legrand is innocent, then this little trick of his will be of no avail ; And if these snakes really swim to Mother Moreau's bed, it means that God can't stand their immorality anymore and decides to punish them, doesn't it?

Under the cover of darkness, he used branches to send two long snakes that would not move through the window into Mother Moreau's hut, and then left the scene immediately to avoid the possibility of being discovered: once these slender things with scales Leaving the warm environment in the jar, they must find a new source of heat spontaneously, otherwise they will freeze; and in the maid's wooden house, the closest source of heat to them will undoubtedly be...human body temperature .

Judging from the results, Callister's plan was very successful, but the one who suffered the most was not the maid he wanted to take revenge the most—he hadn't slipped back to his dormitory when he heard it from a distance. From the other side of the garden came the roar of a bull-like man, the voice was as terrifying as the desperate cry of the prisoner who was imprisoned in the hot copper bull by the cruel Roman emperor in legend.

The students of Saint-Etienne naturally noticed this terrible roar in the dead of night, and the next day everyone talked about it, but no one could explain why; M. Legrand reluctantly showed his face, and then After a few days, when he almost disappeared from Saint-Etienne, the doctor announced that M. Legrand had "suffered a serious neurasthenia and could no longer hold any position," and M. Nathan, the superintendent, temporarily took over as teacher of mathematics. duty.

Monsieur Legrand had been struck down by a mysterious accident, but Mama Moreau had not, a woman whose nerves were as tough as a vine, and Monsieur Legrand was on the point of leaving Saint-Étienne for a spa in Savoy. However, she was only panicked for a few days and then became as if nothing had happened. She even fell in love with a new love soon, and forgot about the poor man with nervous breakdown.

Such a result is naturally not what Callister wanted-in fact, he hated the maid more than the teacher who had been targeting him (Callister insisted that this was because of the woman's desire for him. seriously offended the dignity of the aristocracy, even though he used the identity in Saint-Étienne as the son of a merchant); so he began to plan a second revenge, this time he got two different kinds of Snakes: They are also non-venomous, but if bitten by them, it will be quite painful.

However, perhaps because the first revenge was so smooth that all the good luck was used up, Callister just got the new jar containing snakes, and he was confronted by a fool in his class. An unexpected failure: Pierre, who was always against him that day, was ridiculed because he quarreled with him, and in agitation, he grabbed the clay pot he had placed by the fireplace, reached in and grabbed a piece of it. Bundle--

——So Pierre, who originally just wanted to smash Callister's leftovers, grabbed a hissing and spitting snake from the jar. That day, the self-proclaimed man screamed so loudly People thought he was actually an outstanding soprano singer.

And when Mr. Nathan, the school supervisor who came over after hearing the news, saw the snake that Pierre threw on the ground and was still crawling around——his, face, was all, green.