“I hope there’s a bit of tragedy in it at least.”

“No idea. You’ll have to wait and see.”

The telephone rang and Lucky Luke answered. It was the head.

“Right, we have to go. Still, you haven’t got much to complain about. When I was at boarding school, if you did something wrong, you had to get down on your knees in the head teacher’s empty office. You had to wait like that for fifteen minutes … half an hour … and then a bell would ring, the head would barge in and give you a whack, or several whacks depending on the crime, without ever saying a word. Then you had to stay on your knees until another bell rang to let you know you could clear off.”

“Things were harder in those days.”

“Once I escaped by stealing the porter’s bicycle. I did three hundred and fifty kilometres in three days and since then I’ve never been able to get enough of it…”

“You had a pretty weird childhood!”

He seemed flattered by the note of admiration in my voice.

“Do you remember yesterday when we bumped into each other in the corridor and you were on your way to hide in the gym to read Don Quixote? Huh? Well, you said you’d owe me one.”

“OK. I’ll see what I can do. But I don’t know what you were thinking of, putting on such a display! It’s not nice to make fun of the blind. Coming from you, it doesn’t surprise me all that much, though I’m shocked that your girlfriend would do such a thing.”

“It was a stupid bet. But it was my idea and I think it would be best just to punish me. Because I’m sure that if you punish her too, her parents will send her away to boarding school and you’ll lose your best student.”

“Are her parents really that strict?”

“Yes, sure they are, I know them well. The father’s an auction ear, she’ll never hear the end of it! As soon as they find out, I guarantee you they’ll start packing, and that’ll be the last you’ll see of your star pupil.”

Then Marie and I followed Lucky Luke down the corridor.

“Right, let me go in first,” he said, outside the head’s office.

Suddenly, I had a brainwave.

“I know, tell her I’ve got a brilliant idea for a way to make amends.”

“What kind of idea?” said Lucky Luke.

“Well, I was thinking we could put on a cello concert for the school … something really distinguished, for connoisseurs.”

“But you don’t play the cello.”

“No, but I can turn the pages for the cellist.”

Lucky Luke disappeared inside the head’s office.

“Have you gone crazy?” asked Marie. “A cello concert? What’s got into you?”