vin blanc - might I go?
    »Petite gourmande!« said he, smiling. »I have not forgotten how pleased you
were with the pâté à la crême 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, 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