To no longer hear the ululations of the insane from the hospice located on the heights of Fourvière, Charles stuck his head under the bolster.
It is rough and questionably clean.
Besides, everything is dirty at the Royal College of Lyon.
The walls, the dormitories, the dark classrooms.
During the long hours of study, Charles can not help but chatter, grimace, which almost always earns him a pension and deprivation of exit.
He begs his mother to come and see him.
She rarely agrees.
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If only the demented of Antiquity could stop thinking of themselves as owls!
Charles would try to relive the happy days when he walked with his father in the Luxembourg Gardens.
François Baudelaire had white hair and very dark eyebrows, but his son cannot remember the color of his eyes.
However, he kept the memory of his phrasing.
His friends - François frequented painters and artists - said that his politeness smacked of the Old Regime.
Born into a family of wealthy farmers, he had become a priest, then tutor to the count of Choiseul-Praslin.
During the Revolution, he had defrocked, then married.
His wife had given him a son, Alphonse, before dying.
Charles was born on April 9, 1821 from his second marriage to Caroline Dufaÿs, an orphan raised by one of his relatives. Very early on, François Baudelaire initiated his younger brother into Latin, painting and poetry, himself not disdaining to wash watercolors and compose a few sonnets. In 1825, François' health began to deteriorate. Two years later, he died at the age of sixty-eight. Charles, who was not yet six years old, cried in the arms of Mariette, the faithful servant of the family. But very quickly, he was happy to have his mother all to himself. He could snuggle up to her, bury his face in her dresses, her blouses. How good they smelled! Shortly after the death of her husband, during the summer, Caroline rented a white house in Neuilly.They spent long evenings there talking or most often being silent as the sun slowly declined. Happiness !
One day a man in uniform appeared. A career soldier, Jacques Aupick had a good presence. On November 8, 1828, Caroline and he married. Adopted by his father-in-law, Charles wanted to please him and listen to his campaign stories in Spain or Africa. But very quickly "papa" decided that his "child" should join a boarding house, because a boy should not soften in the family home, if he wanted to become a man. Charles didn't know if that was what he wanted. At that time he wanted to be a pope or an actor. Because of the beautiful clothes they wear.
When Jacques Aupick was sent to Lyon, Charles and his mother joined him. What a journey ! When it was time to get out of the car, he would jump from one leg to the other, run, grab the air, the wind, the smell of grass, the scent of freedom.
At the Royal College, his education is going quite well. He was still in the top ten in his class, but by 1833, in fifth, Charles suddenly felt overwhelmed with boredom. He begins to put off his homework until the next day. In his letters to his mother, he never ceases to highlight his good results, to promise not to "dawdle" when they are mediocre and begs Caroline to remind "dad" that he dangled him, for the next few years. holidays, from long rides to boot to boot.
Until then, Charles discovers the pleasures of skating on the Rhône, the dance with which he is madly infatuated as well as the theater. He begins to write poems - Hugo and Lamartine are his idols - while neither refusing the punch with brutal comrades,nor the mutiny against pawns who abuse their power.
In 1836, Colonel Aupick, who knew how to promote himself to his superiors, was appointed chief of staff of the 1st military division in Paris. Charles is overjoyed at the idea of finding the capital. His stepfather brought him into Louis-le-Grand, assuring the principal that his son would honor the college. Most of his classmates find him weird, posh, extravagant in his outfits. But no one can dispute his aptitudes and Charles allows himself to be drawn into the great affair of Louis-le-Grand: the Concours Général. He shines there, but even before passing his baccalaureate, Charles is expelled from college. Not only did he refuse to show the note that a comrade had slipped to him, but he sneered in the face of the headmaster, after having swallowed it. He himself does not yet know it but, at seventeen, he has just entered into a rebellion.
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