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The schoolboy stepped slightly backward and looked up toward the lowest branches. Then he took a step forward, to try to reach a branch which seemed within his grasp; he stood on tiptoes and stretched his hand as high as he could, but failed to reach it. After several fruitless efforts, he apparently gave up. He lowered his arm and merely continued to stare at something among the leaves.

Next he returned to the foot of the tree, where he took up the same position as before: his knees bent slightly, the top of his body twisted to the right, and his head bent over toward his shoulder. He still held his book satchel in his left hand. It was impossible to see the other hand, with which he was no doubt supporting himself against the tree, or his face, which was almost glued to the bark of the tree, as if to scrutinize minutely some detail about a yard and a half above the ground.

The boy had again paused in his reading aloud, but this time there must have been a period, perhaps even an indentation, and he gave the impression that he was making an effort to indicate the end of the paragraph. The schoolboy straightened up to inspect the bark of the tree higher up.

Whispers could be heard in the classroom. The schoolmaster turned his head and noticed that most of the pupils were looking up, instead of following the oral reading in their books; even the one reading aloud kept looking toward the teacher’s desk with a vaguely questioning, or fearful, expression. The teacher said severely:

“What are you waiting for?”

The faces were all lowered silently and the boy began again, with the same studious voice, expressionless and a bit too slow, that gave each word equal emphasis and spaced it evenly from the next:

“Therefore, that evening, Joseph de Hagen, one of Philippe’s lieutenants, went to the Archbishop’s palace on the pretext of paying a courtesy call. As previously stated the two brothers . . .”

On the other side of the street, the schoolboy peered again at the leaves on the low branches. The teacher slapped on the desk with the flat of his hand:

“As previously stated, comma, the two brothers . . .”

Searching out the passage in his own book, he read aloud, exaggerating the punctuation:

“Start at: ‘As previously stated, the two brothers were already there, so that they might, if need be, protect themselves with this alibi . . .’ and pay attention to what you are reading.”

“As previously stated, the two brothers were already there, so that they might, if need be, protect themselves with this alibi — a suspect alibi in truth, but the best available to them at this juncture — without allowing their mistrustful cousin . . .”

The monotonous voice stopped abruptly, in the middle of the sentence. The other pupils, already raising their eyes toward the paper puppet hanging on the wall, immediately returned to their books. The teacher turned his glance from the window back to the boy who was reading aloud, on the opposite side of the room, in the first row near the door.

“All right, go on! There isn’t any period there. You don’t seem to understand what you are reading!”

The boy looked at the teacher, and behind him, slightly to the right, the puppet made of white paper.

“Do you understand, or not?”

“Yes,” said the boy without much conviction.

“Yes, sir,” the teacher corrected him.

“Yes, sir,” the boy repeated.

The teacher looked at the printed text and asked:

“What does the word ‘alibi’ mean to you?”

The boy looked at the puppet cut out of paper, then at the blank wall, straight in front of him, then at the book lying on his desk; and then again at the wall, for almost a full minute.

“Well?”

“I don’t know, sir,” said the boy.

The teacher slowly looked over the other pupils in the class. One boy raised his hand, near the window in back. The teacher pointed at him, and the boy stood up alongside his bench:

“It’s to make people think they were there, sir.”

“Just what do you mean? Who are they?”

“The two brothers, sir.”

“Where did they want people to think they were?”

“At the Archbishop’s, sir.”

“And where were they really?”

The boy thought for a moment before answering.

“But they were really there, sir, only they wanted to go somewhere else and make people think they were still there.”

Late at night, hidden under black masks and wrapped in huge capes, the two brothers slid down a long rope ladder into a small, deserted street.

The teacher nodded slightly a couple of times, as if he were giving his halfhearted approval. After several seconds, he said: “Right.”

“Now you will summarize for us the whole reading passage, for the benefit of your friends who may not have understood.”

The boy looked out the window. Then he glanced down at his book, then up again toward the teacher’s desk.

“Where should I start, sir?”

“Start at the beginning of the chapter.”

Without sitting down, the boy leafed through the pages of his book and, after a short silence, began to summarize the conspiracy of Philippe de Cobourg. In spite of frequent stops and starts, he did it almost coherently. On the other hand, he stressed unduly a number of secondary matters, while hardly mentioning, or even omitting, certain crucial events. As, moreover, he was disposed to dwell on actions rather than on their political motives, it would have been extremely difficult for an uninformed listener to puzzle out the reasons for the episode or the connections between the various events described, or between the different people involved. The teacher allowed his glance to travel gradually along the windows. The schoolboy had returned to the spot below the lowest tree branch; he had put his satchel at the foot of the tree and was jumping up and down, stretching one arm upward. Seeing that all his attempts were in vain, he again stood motionless, staring at the inaccessible leaves. Philippe de Cobourg had set up camp with his mercenaries on the banks of the Neckar. The pupils, who were no longer required to follow the printed text, had all raised their heads and were silently staring at the paper puppet hanging on the wall. He had no hands or feet, but only four crudely cut-out limbs and a round head, oversized, through which ran the supporting thread. Several inches higher, at the other end of the thread, could be seen the little ball of chewed-up blotting paper that held it on the wall.

But the boy who was reciting was losing his way among wholly insignificant details, so that the teacher finally stopped him:

“That’s enough,” he said, “we know enough about that. Sit down and we will take up the reading again at the top of the page: ‘But Philippe and his followers . . .’ ”

The whole class, as one, leaned over the desks, and a new reader began, in a voice as devoid of expression as his classmate’s, although conscientiously indicating the commas and the periods:

“But Philippe and his followers were not of this opinion. If the majority of the Diet — or even only the barons’ party — were to renounce in this manner the prerogatives accorded to them, to him as well as to them, as a result of the invaluable assistance they had given to the Archduke’s cause at the time of the uprising, they would be henceforth unable, either they or he, to demand the indictment of any new suspect, or the suspension without trial of his manorial rights. It was absolutely essential that these negotiations, which seemed to him to have begun so inauspiciously for his own cause, be broken off before the fateful date. Therefore, that evening, Joseph de Hagen, one of Philippe’s lieutenants, went to the Archbishop’s palace on the pretext of paying a courtesy call. As previously stated, the two brothers were already there . . .”

The faces remained dutifully leaning over the desks. The teacher looked at the window. The schoolboy was leaning against the tree, absorbed in his examination of the bark. He crouched down slowly, as if to follow a line running down the trunk — on the side not visible from the school windows. About a yard and a half above the ground, his movement stopped and he tilted his head to one side, in the same position he had formerly occupied. One by one, the faces in the classroom looked up.

The pupils looked at the teacher, then at the windows. But the bottom panes were of frosted glass, and, above, they could see only the treetops and the sky. Not a fly or a butterfly appeared on the windowpanes. Soon all eyes were again fixed on the white paper cut-out of a man.