Chapter Text
The logs crackling in the grand fireplace mingling with the smell of books–old, new, leather, paper–served well to drive away the dreariness of the winter evening looming over the French university town as Sydney Carton lounged into the main room of the library. He breathed deeply and shed his overcoat. As usual, he was somewhat late for his shift. Nevertheless, he made no effort to hurry as he made his way through the rows of sturdy wooden desks to join his colleagues in their designated corner. He smiled briefly at them, not attempting to greet anyone by name. As noted by all his teachers and relatives growing up, one of his faults was in getting too absorbed in observing his surroundings and failing to mark details such as other people’s names. No matter, he was certain he would learn their names in time. He always did. No need to hurry almost anything, he felt.
“Late again, eh, Carton?” one of his fellow tutors asked with an arched brow.
“It’s my third day at this position, I’m only taking some time to settle into my routine for the term,” Sydney lied fluidly. “Has anyone been by yet?”
“No,” another young man offered.
“Well then, it seems disaster has been averted.”
“Indeed,” rejoined the original fellow, who turned bespectacled eyes back to his rhetoric book.
Sydney allowed himself to sink into one of the armchairs at the edge of the section of the library that had been dedicated to the peer tutor program. Sydney would not have thought that an old French law college would have been at the forefront of such a model of student academic assistance, but he opted not to question it when his Latin instructor approached him about the open position at the end of last semester. Maybe he had simply been flattered that his professor noticed a quiet, if bright, first-year such as himself, but, certainly now that he had taken the job, he found excitement and even passion stirring in him at the thought of helping his fellow students to succeed in their courses, to overcome the sorts of challenges that hurt a young man’s self-image and instead to gain confidence in their intelligence and abilities. He’d always offered assistance to his schoolmates as a boy, even though often he was rebuffed, and, at one school, taken advantage of and used to cheat (before Sydney’s father found out about this abuse of his son’s good nature and swiftly moved him to a more honest establishment). To be paid for it, and to have the students come to him–this was perfect. He only worried that the ease with which academic matters came to him would make it difficult for him to explain things usefully to someone who didn’t understand everything as quickly as he did. For all his intelligence, he tended to be rather lazy and never put more work into his studies than he needed to.
The smells of the library, of wood smoke, ink, and old leather, and of his fellow students’ damp woolen overcoats, filled his head. Between the flickering of the fire and the low murmurs of young men studying in small groups all around him, Sydney fell into a sort of trance. Then the rustle of purposeful feet roused him. He blinked owlishly and looked up from his plush seat to see a tall student, brocaded chest puffed out, leaning one hand confidently on the tutors’ table and speaking to the tutor of legal history.
“Excuse me, who among you is the Latin tutor?” the young man inquired in a voice somewhat harsh and too loud for the library.
Young Legal History extended a long pale hand to point at Sydney. “That’ll be Carton, shirking his duties in a comfortable chair.”
Sydney leaned forward unhurriedly in indignation. “I assure you, friends, I only find it preferable to wait in comfort if one must wait for visitors to our fine corner of this library. But,” he continued, turning his gaze to the newcomer, “I shall join you gentlemen in sitting stiffly now that I have someone in need of my assistance.” He provided the other student with a bland smile of acknowledgement. Although the other man clearly wished to project an air of utter confidence and absolute self-control, Sydney suspected immediately that there was much beneath that bluster. He hoped he could make him feel more at ease.
And with that, Sydney transplanted himself from the armchair to one of the chairs at the table, dragging his book-bag with him. “Sydney Carton,” he offered his hand.
“Stryver,” said the other with a crushing grip as he too sat down. The name suited him perfectly, and Sydney knew this was one that would stick. Stryver crossed one leg over the other then uncrossed it, and then spent visible effort keeping perfectly still. “Well!” he ejaculated uselessly.
“You’ll have to forgive me, Stryver, if I don’t quite know what to do,” Sydney confided. “I’m new to this position and you’re only the second person I’ve seen in three days at it. But the good news is, I know Latin quite well, so chances are I can help you with whatever your question is.” He gave what he hoped was an ingratiating smile and tilt of his head, inviting the other to dive into his academic quandaries.
“It is introductory Latin,” Stryver explained, passing over his books. Sydney thought his chest puffed out even further. He would’ve expected any other student to make some self-deprecating comment about being in introductory Latin at university, but not this fellow. “Damned difficult subject, this Latin,” was the closest he got, stating it as though it were objective truth, as though Latin were conspiring personally to make his life miserable.
“It can be,” Sydney concurred absently as he skimmed the page Stryver indicated with a sturdy index finger. Second declension. Good Lord, he could help this man in his sleep. He couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pity for Stryver. The poor man must have struggled greatly as a schoolboy to still be stuck on second declension at this stage. “Well… Could you tell me what exactly is causing you difficulty?”
“It’s the whole bloody business of the thing,” Stryver explained unhelpfully, like a steamboat sailing in tight circles upon the Thames. “How is one meant to tell the difference between the masculine and the neuter?” Finally, Sydney thought, a question with substance. He suppressed a smile. The obviousness of Stryver’s facade combined with the effort and care that he expended to maintain it delighted him for some reason.
“Well, we must look at the nominative,” Sydney began. He dug up a piece of paper from his book-bag and began making two columns of nouns to illustrate his point.
“Good Lord, what is the nominative?” Stryver sounded personally wounded by the blameless noun case.
“It’s the–” Sydney stopped to collect himself. It was becoming clear to him that the services required of him were so basic that perhaps he could not do it in his sleep after all. “The nominative case is the subject.”
“The subject of what?” Stryver’s eyes were very round and very pale as they fixed upon Sydney, sense of personal insult persisting.
“Of the sentence. Nouns are in the nominative case when they are the thing doing the action in a sentence. One moment–” Sydney reached for another piece of paper. This was going to be a long evening. He switched from French to English. “I’m assuming by your name that you are also English? Perhaps it would be easiest to start by parsing some sentences in our native tongue, just to jog your memory on how noun cases work. Even though we don’t have declensions in English, it can still help to think about the functions of the words in a more familiar context…” As Stryver acquiesced to the switch of language, Sydney asked himself how this man managed to become proficient enough in French to study in France and yet fail so abysmally at the language from which French was descended–not to mention display such complete ignorance of basic tenets of grammar.
Stryver remained with Sydney for the full two hours of his shift. Sydney walked him through the process of parsing a sentence and identifying the cases and conjugations of all parts of speech. Stryver fell into the routine without too much trouble, leading Sydney to suspect that much of his seeming ignorance was merely panic concealed under a thick and inflexible layer of bravado. Once Sydney was satisfied that Stryver understood the concept of the nominative case, he returned to the original piece of paper with its masculine and neuter nouns of the second declension sorted into two columns. “Notice the endings: masculine nouns all end in ‘-us,’ and–”
“The neuter nouns end in ‘-um,’ yes, yes, it’s coming back to me now,” Stryver interrupted briskly.
“Ah, excellent.” Sydney paused to quash his annoyance at being interrupted. He supposed he might have to get used to it at this job.
“But how in the Lord’s name is a man supposed to know which one he is looking at when it’s not in the nominative case?” Stryver insisted.
“I’m afraid he must memorize the gender of the noun,” Sydney answered with a small sympathetic smile. “The good news is that whether a second-declension noun is neuter or masculine is not so important when you are simply reading a text to understand it. You only need to know the difference when writing your own compositions since they differ in the accusative.”
Stryver let out a sound delightfully close to a “Harrumph.” “Seems unnecessary if you ask me.”
“Take it up with the Romans,” Sydney rejoined easily. “Now, do you think you could write out a general second declension table for me? You can start with the masculine or the neuter, whichever you want…”
Many painstakingly slow full declensions of nouns later, Sydney gently informed Stryver that it was time for him to leave the library.
“Excellent, very good,” Stryver responded reflexively, standing to attention. “Well, I think I shall see you tomorrow, Carton.” And then, after he had already turned to go– “Thank you.” It was quick, clipped, and quieter than his usual volume, but Sydney made sure Stryver saw his encouraging smile of acknowledgement.
As Stryver’s ramrod-straight back receded toward the library doors, Sydney had the distinct feeling that this would be an interesting term.