Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny. –Aeschylus
"Aeschylus is ridiculously hard," Pèir whispered over to Jérôme Bahorel as soon as their Greek teacher's back was turned. "I'm certain we shouldn't have to translate him yet."
"Brostau has always been an utter bastard about setting hard in-class assignments," Jérôme whispered back, behind his hand. "Good-for-nothing tyrant. What sort of person decides it's a good idea to spend his life teaching Greek anyway?"
A tiny ball of paper flew at them from Marcèth, two rows up. Jérôme unfolded it and he and Pèir read it together. "It's only sixteen lines, lads, quit complaining. At least we're allowed use of our lexicons." Then in smaller writing: "And for God's sake get rid of this note or we'll have a repeat of last week."
"Damn," muttered Jérôme as he ripped up the note and stashed the shreds in his satchel, "if Marcèth can hear us, we're being too loud. –What have you got for this word here?"
Pèir consulted his lexicon, and they bent half-desperately, half-carelessly over their work. Eventually their rough translations came to the last two lines, and Jérôme started to give a sort of exclamation before cutting it off as Pèir stepped on his foot in warning.
"I know what these two lines are," he explained ecstatically. "I remember them from one afternoon that my mother made me sit down and read something academic-looking and I pulled out a translation of this play. It says, Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny."
Pèir looked down at the notes he'd taken from his lexicon. "That doesn't make any sense," he whispered back. "I see 'death' and 'monarchy' or something, but…for one thing what's this 'πεπαιτέρα' here? The lexicon says it means 'ripe, warmed by the sun' and that doesn't fit in your translation at all. –'Sides, if part of your translation sounds really good and the rest sounds like ours always sound, he'll know you found it somewhere."
Jérôme scrunched up his nose. "No clue about the 'ripe' bit. And anyways, I'll bollocks it up a little, but that's what it says. Maybe it'll help make sense of the rest of the passage."
They fudged around with their assignment a bit more and watched Marcèth bent studiously over his paper, obviously frustrated with one particular bit. When M. Brostau came past them, impatiently tapping a ruler in his palm, they pretended to be as diligent as they could
When time was called the class surrendered up their translations. The assignments would be marked later, but as always M. Brostau looked them over now. After a moment, he rapped his ruler on the desk.
"Young men," he said, "I am very disappointed. Not one of you seems to be making a real effort in translation. Those of you who achieve technical correctness still fall back into the trap of remaining utterly literal in your renditions. Take line 1365 of the text, for example. Every one of you—every last one!—translated the word 'πεπαιτέρα' as 'ripe'…the more creative used 'warm,' or 'ready.' But it is a very simple thing! A ripe fruit, warmed by the sun, has a mild and gentle taste—and what makes more sense in context? To say mild! I cannot believe that after years of studying Greek…"
Jérôme, who had been stirring restlessly on his bench, finally shot his hand up. M. Brostau sighed. "Yes?"
"Well monsieur," he said, not bothering to hide his frustration and even scorn, "Perhaps some of the students would have gotten that. I'm not saying I would've—I mean, the devil can take Greek for all I care; I'm rubbish at the stuff—but didn't you give Marcèth a beating not long ago for translating some word that usually meant, I don't remember exactly, 'black and clotted' as 'discolored?' You told him it wasn't his place to be making guesses based on context. But when he got home, that was exactly how the translator had done it—what was the word, Marcèth?"
Marcèth bowed his head and wouldn't answer. Jérôme was absolutely undaunted.
"Like I was saying," he continued, "you've got a double standard and that's just tyrannical. Weren't we just translating something about that? Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny?"
"Enough of your accusations!" M. Brostau shouted, as Jérôme stared back at him unfazed. "I've put up with your disrespectful and insolent behavior for far too long, Master Bahorel." It came out as "Bahoreu" as the teacher's Gascony accent thickened in anger. "It's not your place. Now get up here."
Jérôme sighed, slamming his pen down on the desk in defiance of his teacher's authority over him. Pèir and Marcèth both gave him sympathetic looks as he marched up the aisle and prepared to face his inevitable punishment.
As he came stiffly back to his desk a while later, he kept his chin up to show the teacher that nothing had changed in his attitude. But still…even if death was a milder fate than tyranny, getting such a thorough beating while the tyranny kept right on was a pretty raw deal.
He comforted himself by drawing caricatures of M. Brostau's angry face on a slip of paper well-hidden under his desk.
AN: The reason that Bahorel's classmates and teacher in this don't have typically French-sounding names is that I've set his childhood, including his lycee years, in rural-ish Gascony.
The reason he does is that although his parents are peasants, they are growing rich and have rich relatives (who eventually provide him with that three thousand a year in Paris) and want to sound like it.
(Blame Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac for my image of Gascony, which is rather Bahorel-esque.)