Alphonse Daudet's story of a boy who never studied, and the morning the lesson ran out.
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Ten words unlock the story. Work through the four activities — say your answer out loud before you reveal it.
Three words from the story: reproach · complacency · mother tongue. Say the right word, then reveal.
Read each part. After it, there's a quick comprehension check (try the questions from memory first), then one thing to discuss.
Franz was very late that morning, and he had good reason to be afraid of the consequences, since Monsieur Hamel had promised to examine them on participles and he did not know the first word about them. It was a bright warm morning. Birds were audible at the edge of the wood, and in the field behind the sawmill the soldiers were drilling. All of it was considerably more attractive than the rules governing the agreement of the past participle, and for a moment he considered spending the day out of doors. Then he ran on.
Passing the town hall he saw a small crowd gathered at the notice board. For two years every piece of bad news had reached the village from that board, and he had learned to associate a crowd in front of it with something disagreeable. He did not stop. The blacksmith, watching him hurry past, called out that there was no need to run so fast — he would get there in plenty of time. Franz assumed he was being mocked, and arrived in the schoolyard out of breath.
Ordinarily the beginning of school produced a noise audible from the street: desks opened and shut, lessons repeated in unison, and the master's iron ruler rapping the table for order. Franz had been counting on that noise to cover his entrance. Instead there was a stillness like a Sunday morning. Through the window he could see the class already in their places and Monsieur Hamel walking up and down with the ruler under his arm. There was nothing for it but to open the door and cross the silent room, scarlet to the ears. And his master, instead of the expected storm, looked at him without any anger at all and said gently that he should take his place quickly, as they had been about to begin without him.
1. Why is Franz afraid of arriving at school, and what nearly stops him going?
2. List the details that tell Franz something is wrong before anyone explains anything.
1. He is late and has not learned the participles he is to be examined on. The warm morning, the birds and the soldiers drilling nearly tempt him to stay outside.
2. The crowd at the notice board; the blacksmith's odd remark; the complete silence instead of the usual noise; the class already seated; and his master's gentleness instead of anger.
Two further oddities presented themselves. Monsieur Hamel was wearing the fine green coat and the small black silk cap reserved for inspection days and prize-givings. And on the benches at the back, always empty, the village had assembled: old Hauser with an ancient spelling book open on his knees, the former mayor, the old postman, and others besides. Every one of them looked stricken.
Monsieur Hamel took his chair and said, in the same gentle voice, that this was the last lesson in French he would give them; the order had come that only the new language was to be taught in the schools of the district; the new master arrived tomorrow. He asked them to give him their full attention.
Franz felt the words go through him. So that was what they had been reading on the notice board. His last French lesson — and he could barely write. Every wasted morning came back to him at once: the birds' nests, the ice on the river, the mornings he had preferred to grammar. His books, which an hour earlier had been a nuisance to be carried, became suddenly things he could not bear to part with. When his name was called for the participles he stood up and could not get through the opening line, and stood there gripping the edge of the desk, not daring to raise his head, his heart going hard.
1. Who is sitting at the back, and what has brought them?
2. How does Franz's relationship with his own schoolbooks change, and at what moment?
1. The villagers — old Hauser with an old spelling book, the former mayor, the postman and others — who have come to sit in on the final French lesson as an act of homage.
2. The instant he learns there will be no more lessons. Books he had resented carrying become objects he cannot bear to give up.
Monsieur Hamel did not scold him. He said that Franz was punished enough, and that this was how it always went: we tell ourselves there is time in abundance, that we shall learn tomorrow, and then the day arrives when it is too late. Nor did he exempt himself. How often, he asked, had he sent a pupil to water his garden instead of setting him to work, or given a holiday because he wanted to go fishing? The complacency, he said, belonged to all of them.
Then he spoke about the language itself — the clearest and most beautiful in the world, he called it — and told them that they must guard it among themselves and never let it go, because a people held down keeps the key to its own prison for as long as it keeps its language. He read to them from the grammar, and Franz was astonished to find that he understood every word: it had never seemed easy before, and he could not tell whether that was the reading or the attention. Then came the writing lesson. New copies had been prepared, and on each sheet, in a beautiful round hand, the name of their country was written over and over. The room bent over the paper and there was no sound but the scratching of pens; at the back, old Hauser spelled the letters out with the smallest children, his voice shaking so badly that everybody wanted to laugh and cry at once.
At noon the church bell rang, and under the windows the trumpets of the soldiers returning from drill answered it. Monsieur Hamel stood up in his chair, very pale. He began, "My friends, I —" and something took hold of his voice and stopped it. He turned to the blackboard, took a piece of chalk, and wrote in the largest letters he could manage two words about his country. Then he stood with his head against the wall, and without speaking made a sign with his hand: that is all — you may go.
1. Who does Monsieur Hamel blame, and how widely does he spread the blame?
2. What happens at noon, and how does the lesson end?
1. Everyone: the parents who sent children to work, the children who postponed, and himself — for the garden, the fishing trips, the holidays he granted for his own convenience.
2. The church bell rings and the soldiers' trumpets sound outside. He tries to address the class, cannot finish the sentence, writes two words about his country on the board in the largest letters he can, and dismisses them with a gesture.
This story is one long act of hindsight, and English has an unusually rich set of structures for it. They share one mechanism: to talk about something unreal, the verb steps one tense further back than the time you mean.
Put the verb in brackets into the correct form after wish or if only.
1. Franz wishes he (learn) his participles when he had the chance.
2. If only the villagers (understand) how little time was left.
3. He wishes he (can) read the grammar as easily every day of the year.
1. had learned (past regret) 2. had understood (past regret) 3. could (about now — "can" steps back to "could")
Express the same regret using the structure indicated. Write only the missing words.
1. He did not pay attention in class. → He attention in class. (should)
2. The village postponed learning to read for forty years. → If only they it for so long. (if only)
3. Monsieur Hamel gave holidays he should not have given, and now he is sorry about it. → He so many holidays. (regret + -ing)
1. should have paid 2. hadn't postponed 3. regrets giving
Three structures, one feeling — and note that only the third does not step back into the past perfect.
Fill each gap with the correct form, then read the whole paragraph aloud.
Sitting at the back with their old spelling books, the villagers wished they (come) to school more often as boys. If only they (realise) how quickly a thing can be taken away. Franz wishes he (not / waste) so many mornings by the river; he knows he (should / listen) years ago. Monsieur Hamel, who refuses to exempt himself, wishes he (be) a stricter man, and regrets (send) his pupils to water the garden. It is too late (undo) any of it — though not, he tells them, too late to begin.
had come · had realised · hadn't wasted · should have listened · had been · sending · to undo
Every unreal past steps back into the past perfect; only "regret + -ing" and "too late to + infinitive" behave differently.
Hold on to these forms — the Speak tab asks you to look back at your own learning, which is exactly what they are for.
Daudet published this in 1873, two years after the Franco-Prussian War transferred Alsace and part of Lorraine to Germany and German became the language of instruction there. It was reprinted in school anthologies for a century, learned by heart by generations of French children, and is one of the most effective pieces of patriotic writing ever produced. It should also be read with one eye open: it is told from one side of a border where a great many people had spoken German or Alsatian at home for centuries, and where "the mother tongue" was never a simple matter.
This is the heart of the lesson — do all of it out loud. The timer is there to keep you going: fill the time with detail rather than racing through it.
Tell The Last Class as if to someone who has never read it. Move through the arc: the warm morning and the unlearned participles → the crowd at the notice board → the silence and the green coat → the village on the back benches → the announcement → the participles he cannot recite → what the master says about complacency and about language → the writing lesson → the bell, the trumpets, the blackboard.
Use at least three regret structures and at least five key words (solemn, homage, notice, complacency, mother tongue, reproach, tempted, put off, hold fast to, regrettable).
Build an argument. One position: children need the dominant national language to compete for work, and school hours are finite. Another: a school that abandons the local language accelerates its death, and the cost is not measurable in wages. Take a side, give three reasons, deal with the strongest objection, and propose a policy you could actually defend to both a parent and a minister.
Then argue the opposite for one minute.
Take the story's argument into your own experience — or keep it entirely general if you prefer.
Stuck for an idea? Pick one of these and run with it: