3 vo% , 
 
//.../ 
 
VI L L E T T E. 
 
 By CURRER BELL, 
 
 ATJTHOE OF " JANE EYKE," " SHIRLEY," ETC. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 SMITH, ELDER & CO., 65, CORNHILL. 
 
 SMITH, TAYLOR & CO., BOMBAY. 
 
 1853. 
 
 The Author of this work reserves the right of translating it. 
 
Loudon : 
 
 Printed by Stewart and Murray, 
 
 Old Bailey. 
 
CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I. — Bretton 1 
 
 II. — Paulina 15 
 
 III.— The Playmates 28 
 
 IV. — Miss Marchmont . .. . . . .61 
 
 V. — Turning a New Leaf 77 
 
 VI. — London . 86 
 
 VTI. — Villette 109 
 
 Vm.— Madame Beck 127 
 
 IX. — Isidore 155 
 
 X. — Dr. John 177 
 
 XL — The Portresse's Cabinet .... 191 
 
 XLT.— The Casket 204 
 
 XIII. — A Sneeze out of Season .... 225 
 
 XIY.— The Fete 245 
 
 XVI. — The Long Vacation 301 
 
 R<e<sS 
 
VILLETTE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BRETTON. 
 
 My godmother lived in a handsome house in the 
 clean and ancient town of Bretton. Her hus- 
 band's family had been residents there for genera- 
 tions, and bore, indeed, the name of their birth- 
 place — Bretton of Bretton : whether by coincidence, 
 or because some remote ancestor had been a per- 
 sonage of sufficient importance to leave his name to 
 his neighbourhood, I know not. 
 
 When I was a girl I went to Bretton about twice 
 a year, and well I liked the visit. The house and its 
 inmates specially suited me. The large peaceful 
 rooms, the well-arranged furniture, the clear wide 
 windows, the balcony outside, looking down on a 
 
 VOL. I. B 
 
2 VILLETTE. 
 
 fine antique street, where Sundays and holidays 
 seemed always to abide — so quiet was its atmosphere, 
 so clean its pavement — these things pleased me 
 well. 
 
 One child in a household of grown people is 
 usually made very much of, and in a quiet way I 
 was a good deal taken notice of by Mrs. Bretton, 
 who had been left a widow, with one son, before I 
 knew her ; her husband, a physician, having died 
 while she was yet a young and handsome woman. 
 
 She was not young, as I remember her. but she 
 was still handsome, tall, well-made, and though dark 
 for an Englishwoman, yet wearing always the clear- 
 ness of health in her brunette cheek, and its vivacity 
 in a pair of fine, cheerful black eyes. People es- 
 teemed it a grievous pity that she had not conferred 
 her complexion on her son, whose eyes were blue — 
 though, even in boyhood, very piercing — and the 
 colour of his long hair such as friends did not ven- 
 ture to specify, except as the sun shone on it, when 
 they called it golden. He inherited the lines of his 
 mother's features, however ; also her good teeth, her 
 stature (or the promise of her stature, for he was 
 not yet full-grown), and, what was better, her health 
 without flaw, and her spirits of that tone and 
 
BEETTON. 3 
 
 equality which are better than a fortune to the 
 possessor. 
 
 In the autumn of the year I was staying at 
 
 Bretton; my godmother having come in person to 
 claim me of the kinsfolk with whom was at that 
 time fixed my permanent residence. I believe she 
 then plainly saw events coming, whose very shadow 
 I scarce guessed; yet of which the faint suspicion 
 sufficed to impart unsettled sadness, and made me 
 glad to change scene and society. 
 
 Time always flowed smoothly for me at my god- 
 mother's side; not with tumultuous swiftness, but 
 blandly, like the gliding of a full river through a 
 plain. My visits to her resembled the sojourn of 
 Christian and Hopeful beside a certain pleasant 
 stream, with " green trees on each bank, and mea- 
 dows beautified with lilies all the year round." The 
 charm of variety there was not, nor the excitement 
 of incident; but I liked peace so well, and sought 
 stimulus so little, that when the latter came I almost 
 felt it a disturbance, and wished rather it had still 
 held aloof. 
 
 One day a letter was received of which the con- 
 tents evidently caused -Mrs. Bretton surprise and 
 some concern. I thought at first it was from home, 
 
4 VILLETTE. 
 
 and trembled, expecting I know not what disastrous 
 communication; to me, however, no reference was 
 made, and the cloud seemed to pass. 
 
 The next day, on my return from a long walk, I 
 found, as I entered my bed-room, an unexpected 
 change. In addition to my own French bed in its 
 shady recess, appeared in a corner a small crib, 
 draped with white ; and in addition to my ma- 
 hogany chest of drawers, I saw a tiny rosewood 
 chest. I stood still, gazed, and considered. 
 
 " Of what are these things the signs and to- 
 kens?" I asked. The answer was obvious. "A 
 second guest is coming : Mrs. Bretton expects other 
 visitors." 
 
 On descending to dinner, explanations ensued. 
 A little girl, I was told, would shortly be my com- 
 panion: the daughter of a friend and distant re- 
 lation of the late Dr. Bretton's. This little girl, it 
 was added, had recently lost her mother; though 
 indeed, Mrs. Bretton ere long subjoined, the loss 
 was not so great as might at first appear. Mrs. 
 Home (Home it seems was the name) had been a 
 very pretty, but a giddy, careless woman, who had 
 neglected her child, and disappointed and dis- 
 heartened her husband. So far from congenial had 
 
BKETTOtf, 5 
 
 the union proved,, that separation at last ensued — se- 
 paration by mutual consent, not after any legal pro- 
 cess. Soon after this event, the lady having over- 
 exerted herself at a ball, caught cold, took a fever, 
 and died after a very brief illness. Her husband, 
 naturally a man of very sensitive feelings, and shocked 
 inexpressibly by too sudden communication of the 
 news, could hardly, it seems, now be persuaded but 
 that some over-severity on his part — some defici- 
 ency in patience and indulgence — had contributed 
 to hasten her end. He had brooded over this idea 
 till his spirits were seriously affected; the medical 
 men insisted on travelling being tried as a remedy, 
 and meanwhile Mrs. Bretton had offered to take 
 charge of his little girl. " And I hope," added my 
 godmother in conclusion, "the child will not be 
 like her mama ; as silly and frivolous a little flirt 
 as ever sensible man was weak enough to marry. 
 For," said she, " Mr Home is a sensible man in his 
 way, though not very practical : he is fond of sci- 
 ence, and lives half his life in a laboratory trying 
 experiments — a thing his butterfly wife could neither 
 comprehend nor endure ; and indeed," confessed my 
 godmother, " I should not have liked it myself." 
 In answer to a question of mine, she further in- 
 
6 VILLETTE. 
 
 formed me that her late husband used to say, 
 Mr. Home had derived this scientific turn from a 
 maternal uncle, a French savant; for he came, it 
 seems, of mixed French and Scottish origin, and 
 had connections now living in France, of whom 
 more than one wrote de before his name, and called 
 himself noble. 
 
 That same evening at nine o'clock, a servant was 
 despatched to meet the coach by which our little 
 visitor was expected. Mrs. Bretton and I sat alone 
 in the drawing-room waiting her coming ; John 
 Graham Bretton being absent on a visit to one 
 of his school-fellows who lived in the country. My 
 godmother read the evening paper while she waited ; 
 I sewed. It was a wet night; the rain lashed the 
 panes, and the wind sounded angry and restless. 
 
 " Poor child ! " said Mrs. Bretton from time to 
 time. " What weather for her journey ! I wish she 
 were safe here." 
 
 A little before ten the door-bell announced War- 
 ren's return. No sooner was the door opened than 
 I ran down into the hall ; there lay a trunk and some 
 band-boxes, beside them stood a person like a nurse- 
 girl, and at the foot of the stair-case was Warren 
 with a shawled bundle in his arms. 
 
BRETTON. 7 
 
 " Is that the child ?" I asked. 
 
 " Yes, miss." 
 
 I would have opened the shawl, and tried to get 
 a peep at the face, but it was hastily turned from me 
 to Warren's shoulder. 
 
 " Put me down, please," said a small voice when 
 Warren opened the drawing-room door, " and take 
 off this shawl," continued the speaker, extracting 
 with its minute hand the pin, and with a sort of 
 fastidious haste doffing the clumsy wrapping. The 
 creature which now appeared made a deft attempt 
 to fold the shawl; but the drapery was much too 
 heavy and large to be sustained or wielded by 
 those hands and arms. " Give it to Harriet, please," 
 was then the direction, " and she can put it away." 
 This said, it turned and fixed its eyes on Mrs. 
 Bretton. 
 
 " Come here, little dear," said that lady. " Come 
 and let me see if you are cold and damp : come 
 and let me warm you at the fire." 
 
 The child advanced promptly. Relieved of her 
 wrapping, she appeared exceedingly tiny ; but was 
 a neat, completely - fashioned little figure, light, 
 slight, and straight. Seated on my godmother's 
 ample lap, she looked a mere doll ; her neck, deli- 
 
8 VILLETTE. 
 
 cate as wax, her head of silky curls, increased, I 
 thought, the resemblance. 
 
 Mrs. Bretton talked in little fond phrases as she 
 chafed the child's hands, arms, and feet ; first she 
 was considered with a wistful gaze, but soon a 
 smile answered her. Mrs. Bretton was not gene- 
 rally a caressing woman: even with her deeply- 
 cherished son, her manner was rarely sentimental, 
 often the reverse ; but when this small stranger 
 smiled at her, she kissed it, asking — 
 
 " What is my little one's name ? " 
 
 " Missy." 
 
 "But besides Missy?" 
 
 " Polly, papa calls her." 
 
 " Will Polly be content to live with me ? " 
 
 " Not always ; but till papa comes home. Papa 
 is gone away." She shook her head expressively. 
 
 " He will return to Polly, or send for her." 
 
 * f Will he, ma'am ? Do you know he will ?" 
 
 " I think so." 
 
 " But Harriet thinks not : at least not for a long- 
 while. He is ill." 
 
 Her eyes filled. She drew her hand from Mr,?. 
 Bretton's, and made a movement to leave her lap: 
 it was at first resisted, but she said — 
 
BRETTON. 9 
 
 " Please, I wish to go : I can sit on a stool." 
 
 She was allowed to slip down from the knee, and 
 taking a foot-stool, she carried it to a corner where 
 the shade was deep, and there seated herself. Mrs. 
 Bretton, though a commanding, and in grave mat- 
 ters even a peremptory woman, was often passive 
 in trifles: she allowed the child her way. She 
 said to me, " Take no notice at present." But 
 I did take notice: I watched Polly rest her small 
 elbow on her small knee, her head on her hand; 
 I observed her draw a square-inch or two of pocket 
 handkerchief from the doll-pocket of her doll-skirt, 
 and then I heard her weep. Other children in 
 grief or pain cry aloud, without shame or re- 
 straint; but this being wept: the tiniest occa- 
 sional sniff testified to her emotion. Mrs. Bretton 
 did not hear it: which was quite as well. Ere 
 long, a voice, issuing from the corner, demanded — 
 
 "May the bell be rung for Harriet ?" 
 
 I rang ; the nurse was summoned and came. 
 
 "Harriet, I must be put to bed," said her little 
 mistress. " You must ask where my bed is." 
 
 Harriet signified that she had already made that 
 inquiry. 
 
 " Ask if you sleep with me, Harriet." 
 
10 VILLETTE. 
 
 " No, missy," said the nurse : " You are to 
 share this young lady's room," designating me. 
 
 Missy did not leave her seat, but I saw her eyes 
 seek me. After some minutes' silent scrutiny, she 
 emerged from her corner. 
 
 " I wish you, ma'am, good night," said she to 
 Mrs. Bretton ; but she passed me mute. 
 
 " Good night, Polly," I said. 
 
 " No need to say good night, since we sleep in 
 the same chamber ; " was the reply with which she 
 vanished from the drawing-room. We heard Harriet 
 propose to carry her up stairs. "No need," was 
 again her answer — " No need, no need : " and her 
 small step toiled wearily up the staircase. 
 
 On going to bed an hour afterwards, I found her 
 still wide awake. She had arranged her pillows so 
 as to support her little person in a sitting posture ; 
 her hands, placed one within the other, rested 
 quietly on the sheet, with an old-fashioned calm 
 most unchildlike. I abstained from speaking to her 
 for some time, but just before extinguishing the 
 light, I recommended her to lie down. 
 
 " By and by," was the answer. 
 
 " But you will take cold, missy." 
 
 She took some tiny article of raiment from the 
 
BRETTON. 11 
 
 chair at her crib side, and with it covered her 
 shoulders. I suffered her to do as she pleased. 
 Listening awhile in the darkness, I was aware that 
 she still wept — wept under restraint, quietly and 
 cautiously. 
 
 On awaking with daylight, a trickling of water 
 caught my ear. Behold! there she was risen and 
 mounted on a stool near the wash-stand, with pains 
 and difficulty inclining the ewer (which she could 
 not lift) so as to pour its contents into the basin. 
 It was curious to watch her as she washed and 
 dressed, so small, busy, and noiseless. Evidently 
 she was little accustomed to perform her own toilet; 
 and the buttons, strings, hooks and eyes, offered 
 difficulties which she encountered with a perse- 
 verance good to witness. She folded her night- 
 dress, she smoothed the drapery of her couch quite 
 neatly; withdrawing into a corner, where the sweep 
 of the white curtain concealed her, she became still. 
 I half rose, and advanced my head to see how she 
 was occupied. On her knees, with her forehead 
 bent on her hands, I perceived that she was 
 praying. 
 
 Her nurse tapped at the door. She started up. 
 
 " I am dressed, Harriet, " said she : " I have 
 
12 VILLETTE. 
 
 dressed myself, but I do not feel neat. Make me 
 neat!" 
 
 " Why did you dress yourself, missy ? " 
 
 " Hush ! speak low, Harriet, for fear of waking 
 the girl" (meaning me, who now lay with my eyes 
 shut). " I dressed myself to learn, against the time 
 you leave me." 
 
 " Do you want me to go?" 
 
 " When you are cross, I have many a time 
 wanted you to go, but not now. Tie my sash 
 straight; make my hair smooth, please." 
 
 u Your sash is straight enough. What a parti- 
 cular little body you are ! " 
 
 " It must be tied again. Please to tie it." 
 
 " There, then. When I am gone you must get 
 that young lady to dress you." 
 
 " On no account." 
 
 " Why ? She is a very nice young lady. I hope 
 you mean to behave prettily to her, missy, and not 
 show your airs." 
 
 " She shall dress me on no account." 
 
 " Comical little thing!" 
 
 " You are not passing the comb straight through 
 my hair, Harriet : the line will be crooked." 
 
 " Ay, you are ill to please. Does that suit ?" 
 
BRETTON". 13 
 
 " Pretty well. Where should I go now that I 
 am dressed?" 
 
 " I will take you into the breakfast-room." 
 
 " Come, then." 
 
 They proceeded to the door. She stopped. 
 
 " Oh ! Harriet, I wish this was papa's house ! I 
 don't know these people." 
 
 " Be a good child, missy." % 
 
 " I am good, but I ache here ; " putting her hand 
 to her heart, and moaning while she reiterated 
 "Papa! papa!" 
 
 I roused myself and started up, to check this 
 scene while it was yet within bounds. 
 
 " Say good morning to the young lady," dictated 
 Harriet. 
 
 She said " good morning," and then followed her 
 nurse from the room. Harriet temporarily left that 
 same day, to go to her own friends, who lived in the 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 On descending, I found Paulina (the child called 
 herself Polly, but her full name was Paulina Mary) 
 seated at the breakfast table, by Mrs. Bretton's side ; 
 a mug of milk stood before her, a morsel of bread 
 filled her hand, which lay passive on the table-cloth : 
 she was not eating. 
 
14 VILLETTE. 
 
 " How we shall conciliate this little creature," 
 said Mrs. Bretton to me, " I don't know : she tastes 
 nothing, and, by her looks, she has not slept." 
 
 I expressed my confidence in the effects of time 
 and kindness. 
 
 " If she were to take a fancy to anybody in the 
 house, she would soon settle; but not till then," 
 replied Mrs. Bretton, 
 
PAULINA. 15 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 PAULINA. 
 
 Some days elapsed, and it appeared she was not 
 likely to take much of a fancy to anybody in the 
 house. She was not exactly naughty or wilful : she 
 was far from disobedient ; but an object less con- 
 ducive to comfort — to tranquillity even — than she 
 presented, it was scarcely possible to have before 
 one's eyes. She moped: no grown person could 
 have performed that uncheering business better ; no 
 furrowed face of adult exile, longing for Europe 
 at Europe's antipodes, ever bore more legibly the 
 signs of home sickness than did her infant visage. 
 She seemed growing old and unearthly. I, Lucy 
 Snowe, plead guiltless of that curse, an overheated 
 and discursive imagination ; but whenever, opening 
 a room-door, I found her seated in a corner alone, 
 
16 VILLETTE. 
 
 her head in her pigmy hand, that room seemed to 
 me not inhabited, but haunted. 
 
 And again, when of moonlight nights, on waking, 
 I beheld her figure, white and conspicuous in its 
 night-dress, kneeling upright in bed, and praying 
 like some Catholic or Methodist enthusiast — some 
 precocious fanatic or untimely saint — I scarcely 
 know what thoughts I had ; but they ran risk of 
 being hardly more rational and healthy than that 
 child's mind must have been. 
 
 I seldom caught a word of her prayers, for they 
 were whispered low : sometimes, indeed, they were 
 not whispered at all, but put up unuttered; such 
 rare sentences as reached my ear still bore the 
 burden, " Papa ; my dear papa ! " This, I per- 
 ceived, was a one-idead nature ; betraying that 
 monomaniac tendency I have ever thought the most 
 unfortunate with which man or woman can be 
 cursed. 
 
 What might have been the end of this fretting, 
 had it continued unchecked, can only be conjec- 
 tured : it received, however, a sudden turn. 
 
 One afternoon Mrs. Bretton, coaxing her from her 
 usual station in a corner, had lifted her into the 
 window-seat, and, by way of occupying her atten- 
 
PAULINA. 17 
 
 tion, told her to watch the passengers and count 
 how many ladies should go down the street in a 
 given time. She had sat listlessly, hardly looking, 
 and not counting, when — my eye being fixed on 
 hers — I witnessed in its irid and pupil a startling 
 transfiguration. These sudden, dangerous natures 
 — sensitive as they are called — offer many a curious 
 spectacle to those whom a cooler temperament has 
 secured from participation in their angular vagaries. 
 The fixed and heavy gaze swum, trembled, then 
 glittered in fire ; the small overcast brow cleared ; 
 the trivial and dejected features lit up ; the sad 
 countenance vanished, and in its place appeared a 
 sudden eagerness, an intense expectancy. 
 
 " It is ! " were her words. 
 
 Like a bird or a shaft, or any other swift thing, 
 she was gone from the room. How she got the 
 house-door open I cannot tell ; probably it might 
 be ajar; perhaps "Warren was in the way and 
 obeyed her behest, which would be impetuous 
 enough. I — watching calmly from the window — 
 saw her, in her black frock and tiny braided apron 
 (to pinafores she had an antipathy), dart half the 
 length of the street ; and, as I was on the point of 
 turning, and quietly announcing to Mrs. Bretton 
 
 vol. I. C 
 
18 YILLETTE. 
 
 that rhe child was run out mad, and ought instantly 
 to be pursued, I saw her caught up, and rapt 
 at once from my cool observation, and from the 
 wondering stare of the passengers. A gentleman 
 had done this good turn, and now, covering her with 
 his cloak, advanced to restore her to the house 
 whence he had seen her issue. 
 
 I concluded he would leave her in a servant's 
 charge and withdraw; but he entered: having 
 tarried a little while below, he came upstairs. 
 
 His reception immediately explained that he was 
 known to Mrs. Bretton. She recognized him; she 
 greeted him, and yet she was fluttered, surprised, 
 taken unawares. Her look and manner were even 
 expostulatory ; and in reply to these, rather than 
 her words, he said, — 
 
 "I could not help it, madam: I found it im- 
 possible to leave the country without seeing with 
 my own eyes how she settled." 
 
 " But you will unsettle her." 
 
 "I hope not. And how is papa's little Polly ?" 
 
 This question he addressed to Paulina, as he 
 sat down and placed her gently on the ground 
 before him. 
 
 "How is Polly's papa?" was the reply, as 
 
PAULINA. 19 
 
 she leaned on his knee, and gazed up into his 
 face. 
 
 It was not a noisy, not a wordy scene: for that 
 I was thankful ; but it was a scene of feeling too 
 brimful, and which, because the cup did not foam 
 up high or furiously overflow, only oppressed one 
 the more. On all occasions of vehement, unre- 
 strained expansion, a sense of disdain or ridicule 
 comes to the weary spectator's relief; whereas I 
 have ever felt most burdensome that sort of sen- 
 sibility which bends of its own will, a giant slave 
 under the sway of good sense. 
 
 Mr. Home was a stern-featured — perhaps I should 
 rather say, a hard-featured man: his forehead was 
 knotty, and his cheek-bones were marked and pro- 
 minent. The character of his face was quite 
 Scotch; but there was feeling in his eye, and 
 emotion in his now agitated countenance. His 
 northern accent in speaking harmonized with his 
 physiognomy. He was at once proud-looking and 
 homely-looking. 
 
 He laid his hand on the child's uplifted head. 
 She said — 
 
 " Kiss Polly." 
 
 He kissed her. I wished she would utter some 
 
20 VILLETTE. 
 
 hysterical cry, so that I might get relief and be 
 at ease. She made wonderfully little noise: she 
 seemed to have got what she wanted — all she 
 wanted, and to be in a trance of content. Neither 
 in mien nor features was this creature like her 
 sire, and yet she was of his strain: her mind had 
 been filled from his, as the cup from the flagon. 
 
 Indisputably Mr. Home owned manly self-control, 
 however he might secretly feel on some matters. 
 " Polly," he said, looking down on his little girl, 
 "go into the hall; you will see papa's great-coat 
 lying on a chair; put your hand into the pockets, 
 you will find a pocket-handkerchief; bring it to 
 me." 
 
 She obeyed; went and returned deftly and 
 nimbly. He was talking to Mrs. Bretton when 
 she came back, and she waited with the hand- 
 kerchief in her hand. It was a picture, in its way, 
 to see her, with her tiny stature and trim, neat 
 shape, standing at his knee. Seeing that he con- 
 tinued to talk, apparently unconscious of her re- 
 turn, she took his hand, opened the unresisting 
 fingers, insinuated into them the handkerchief, and 
 closed them upon it one by one. He still seemed 
 not to see or feel her; but by-and-by, he lifted 
 
PAULINA. 21 
 
 her to his knee; she nestled against him, and 
 though neither looked at or spoke to the other 
 for an hour following, I suppose both were satis- 
 fied. 
 
 During tea, the minute thing's movements and 
 behaviour gave, as usual, full occupation to the 
 eje. First she directed Warren, as he placed the 
 chairs. 
 
 "Put papa's chair here, and mine near it, be- 
 tween papa and Mrs. Bretton : 1" must hand his 
 tea." 
 
 She took her own seat, and beckoned with her 
 hand to her father. 
 
 * Be near me, as if we were at home, papa." 
 
 And again, as she intercepted his cup in passing, 
 and would stir the sugar and put in the cream her- 
 self, "I always did it for you at home, papa: 
 nobody could do it as well, not even your own 
 self." 
 
 Throughout the meal she continued her atten- 
 tions: rather absurd they were. The sugar-tongs 
 were too wide for one of her hands, and she had 
 to use both in wielding them; the weight of the 
 silver cream-ewer, the bread and butter plates, the 
 very cup and saucer tasked her insufficient strength 
 
22 YILLETTE. 
 
 and dexterity; but she would lift this, hand that, 
 and luckily contrived through it all to break 
 nothing. Candidly speaking, I thought her a little 
 busy-body ; but her father, blind like other parents, 
 seemed perfectly content to let her wait on him, 
 and even wonderfully soothed by her offices. 
 
 " She is my comfort ! " he could not help saying 
 to Mrs. Bretton. That lady had her own " com- 
 fort " and nonpareil on a much larger scale, and 
 for the moment, absent; so she sympathized with 
 his foible. 
 
 This second " comfort" came on the stage in 
 the course of the evening. I knew this day 
 had been fixed for his return, and was aware that 
 Mrs. Bretton had been expecting him through all 
 its hours. We were seated round the fire, after 
 tea, when Graham joined our circle : I should rather 
 say, broke it up — for, of course, his arrival made 
 a bustle; and then, as Mr. Graham was fasting, 
 there was refreshment to be provided. He and 
 Mr. Home met as old acquaintance ; of the little 
 girl he took no notice for a time. 
 
 His meal over, and numerous questions from 
 his mother answered, he turned from the table 
 to the hearth. Opposite where he had placed 
 
PAULINA. 23 
 
 himself was seated Mr. Home, and at his el- 
 bow, the child. When I say child I use an 
 inappropriate and undescriptive term — a term 
 suggesting any picture rather than that of the 
 demure little person in a mourning frock and white 
 chemisette, that might just have fitted a good-sized 
 doll — perched now on a high chair beside a stand, 
 whereon was her toy work-box of white varnished 
 wood, and holding in her hands a shred of a hand- 
 kerchief, which she was professing to hem, and at 
 Avhich she bored perseveringly with a needle, that 
 in her fingers seemed almost a skewer, pricking 
 herself ever and anon, marking the cambric with, 
 a track of minute red dots; occasionally starting 
 when the perverse weapon — swerving from her 
 control — inflicted a deeper stab than usual; but 
 still silent, diligent, absorbed, womanly. 
 
 Graham was at that time a handsome, faithless- 
 looking youth of sixteen. I say faithless-looking, 
 not because he was really of a very perfidious 
 disposition, but because the epithet strikes me as 
 proper to describe the fair, Celtic (not Saxon) 
 character of his good looks; his waved light auburn 
 hair, his supple symmetry, his smile frequent, and 
 destitute neither of fascination nor of subtlety, (in 
 
24 VILLETTE. 
 
 no bad sense.) A spoiled, whimsical boy he was 
 in those days. 1 
 
 " Mother," he said, after eyeing the little figure 
 before him in silence for some time, and when the 
 temporary absence of Mr. Home from the room 
 relieved him from the half-laughing bashfulness, 
 which was all he knew of timidity — " Mother, I 
 see a young lady in the present society to whom 
 I have not been introduced." 
 
 " Mr. Home's little girl, I suppose you mean," 
 said his mother. 
 
 *' Indeed, ma'am," replied her son, " I consider 
 your expression of the least ceremonious: Miss 
 Home / should certainly have said, in venturing 
 to speak of the gentlewoman to whom I allude." 
 
 " Now, Graham, I will not have that child teazed. 
 Don't flatter yourself that I shall suffer you to make 
 her your butt." 
 
 " Miss Home," pursued Graham, undeterred by 
 his mother's remonstrance, " might I have the 
 honour to introduce myself, since no one else seems 
 willing to render you and me that service? Your 
 lave, John Graham Bretton." 
 
 She looked at him; he rose and bowed quite 
 gravely. She deliberately put down thimble, scis- 
 
PAULINA. 25 
 
 sors, work; descended with precaution from her 
 perch, and curtsying with unspeakable seriousness, 
 said, "How do you do?" 
 
 " I have the honour to be in fair health, only in 
 some measure fatigued with a hurried journey. I 
 hope, ma'am, I see you well." 
 
 " Tor-rer-ably well," was the ambitious reply of 
 the little woman ; and she now essayed to regain her 
 former elevation, but finding this could not be done 
 without some climbing and straining — a sacrifice of 
 decorum not to be thought of — and being utterly 
 disdainful of aid in the presence of a strange young 
 gentleman, she relinquished the high chair for a 
 low stool: towards that low stool Graham drew in 
 his chair. 
 
 " I hope, ma'am, the present residence, my 
 mother's house, appears to you a convenient place 
 of abode?" 
 
 " Not par-tic-er-er-ly : I want to go home." 
 
 " A natural and laudable desire, ma'am ; but one 
 which, notwithstanding, I shall do my best to 
 oppose. I reckon on being able to get out of you 
 a little of that precious commodity called amusement, 
 which mama and Mistress Snowe there fail to 
 yield me," 
 
26 VILLETTE. 
 
 " I shall have to go with papa soon : I shall not 
 stay long at your mother's." 
 
 " Yes, ye s; you will stay with me I am sure. I 
 have a pony on which you shall ride, and no end of 
 books with pictures to show you." 
 
 " Are you going to live here now ? " 
 
 " I am. Does that please you ? Do you like 
 me?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " I think you queer." 
 
 " My face, ma'am ?" 
 
 " Your face and all about you. You have long 
 red hair." 
 
 " Auburn hair, if you please : mama calls it 
 auburn, or golden, and so do all her friends. But 
 even with my ' long red hair,' " (and he waved his 
 mane with a sort of triumph — tawny he himself 
 well knew that it was, and he was proud of the 
 leonine hue) " I cannot possibly be queerer than is 
 your ladyship." 
 
 " You call me queer?" 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 (After a pause) " I think I shall go to bed." 
 
 " A little thing like you ought to have been in 
 
PAULINA. 27 
 
 bed many hours since ; but you probably sat up in 
 the expectation of seeing me?" 
 
 " No, indeed." 
 
 " You certainly wished to enjoy the pleasure of 
 my society. You knew I was coming home, and 
 would wait to have a look at me." 
 
 " I sat up for papa, and not for you." 
 
 " Very good, Miss Home. I am going to be a 
 favourite : preferred before papa soon, I dare say." 
 
 She wished Mrs. Bretton and myself good night; 
 she seemed hesitating whether Graham's deserts 
 entitled him to the same attention, when he caught 
 her up with one hand, and with that one hand held 
 her poised aloft above his head. She saw herself 
 thus lifted up on high, in the glass over the fireplace. 
 The suddenness, the freedom, the disrespect of the 
 action were too much. 
 
 " For shame, Mr. Graham ! " was her indignant 
 cry, " put me down!" — and when again on her feet, 
 " I wonder what you would think of me if I were 
 to treat you in that way, lifting you with my hand" 
 (raising that mighty member) " as Warren lifts the 
 little cat?" 
 
 So saying, she departed. 
 
28 VILLETTE. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PLAYMATES. 
 
 Me. Home stayed two days. During his visit 
 he could not be prevailed on to go out : he sat all 
 day long by the fireside, sometimes silent, some- 
 times receiving and answering Mrs. Bretton's chat, 
 which was just of the proper sort for a man in his 
 morbid mood — not over -sympathetic, yet not too 
 uncongenial, sensible ; and even with a touch of the 
 motherly — she was sufficiently his senior to be per- 
 mitted this touch. 
 
 As to Paulina, the child was at once happy and 
 mute, busy and watchful. Her father frequently 
 lifted her to his knee ; she would sit there till she 
 felt or fancied he grew restless ; then it was — 
 
 " Papa, put me down ; I shall tire you with my 
 weight." 
 
 And the mighty burden slid to the rug, and 
 
THE PLAYMATES. 29 
 
 establishing itself on carpet or stool just at "papa's" 
 feet, the white work-box and the scarlet-speckled 
 handkerchief came into play. This handkerchief it 
 seems was intended as a keepsake for "papa," and 
 must be finished before his departure ; consequently 
 the demand on the sempstress's industry (she accom- 
 plished about a score of stitches in half an hour) 
 was stringent. 
 
 The evening, by restoring Graham to the ma- 
 ternal roof (his days were passed at school), brought 
 us an accession of animation — a quality not di- 
 minished by the nature of the scenes pretty sure to 
 be enacted between him and Miss Paulina. 
 
 A distant and haughty demeanour had been the 
 result of the indignity put upon her the first evening 
 of his arrival : her usual answer, when he addressed 
 her, was — 
 
 " I can't attend to you ; I have other things to 
 think about." Being implored to state what things : 
 " Business." 
 
 Graham would endeavour to seduce her attention 
 by opening his desk and displaying its multifarious 
 contents: seals, bright sticks of wax, pen-knives, 
 with a miscellany of engravings — some of them gaily 
 coloured — which he had amassed from time to time. 
 
30 VILLETTE. 
 
 Nor was this powerful temptation wholly unavailing : 
 her eyes, furtively raised from her work, cast many 
 a peep towards the writing-table, rich in scattered 
 pictures. An etching of a child playing with 
 a Blenheim spaniel happened to flutter to the 
 floor. 
 
 " Pretty little dog!" said she, delighted. 
 
 Graham prudently took no notice. Ere long, 
 stealing from her corner, she approached to ex- 
 amine the treasure more closely. The dog's great 
 eyes and long ears, and the child's hat and feathers, 
 were irresistible. 
 
 " Nice picture !" was her favourable criticism. 
 
 " Well — you may have it," said Graham. 
 
 She seemed to hesitate. The wish to possess was 
 strong, but to accept would be a compromise of 
 dignity. No. She put it down and turned away. 
 
 " You wont have it then, Polly ?" 
 
 " I would rather not, thank you." 
 
 " Shall I tell you what I will do with the picture 
 if you refuse it ? " 
 
 She half turned to listen. 
 
 " Cut it into strips for lighting the taper." 
 
 "No!" 
 
 "But I shall." 
 
THE PLAYMATES. 31 
 
 " Please— don't." 
 
 Graham waxed inexorable on hearing the plead- 
 ing tone; he took the scissors from his mother's 
 work-casket. 
 
 " Here goes !" said he, making a menacing 
 flourish. " Right through Fido's head, and splitting 
 little Harry's nose." 
 
 "No! No! NO!" 
 
 " Then come to me. Come quickly, or it is 
 done." 
 
 She hesitated, lingered, but complied. 
 
 ? Now, will you have it ? " he asked, as she stood 
 before him. 
 
 " Please." 
 
 " But I shall want payment." 
 
 "How much?" 
 
 « A kiss." 
 
 " Give the picture first into my hand." 
 
 Polly, as she said this, looked rather faithless in 
 her turn. Graham gave it. She absconded a 
 debtor, darted to her father, and took refuge on his 
 knee. Graham rose in. mimic wrath and followed. 
 She buried her face in Mr. Home's waistcoat. 
 
 " Papa— papa— send him away !" 
 
 " I'll not be sent away," said Grraham. 
 
32 VILLETTE. 
 
 With face still averted, she held out her hand to 
 keep him off. 
 
 " Then, I shall kiss the hand," said he ; but that 
 moment it became a miniature fist, and dealt him 
 payment in a small coin that was not kisses. 
 
 Graham — not failing in his way to be as wily as 
 his little playmate — retreated apparently quite dis- 
 comfited ; he flung himself on a sofa, and resting 
 his head against the cushion, lay like one in pain. 
 Polly, finding him silent, presently peeped at him. 
 His eyes and face were covered with his hands. 
 She turned on her father's knee, and gazed at her 
 foe anxiously and long. Graham groaned. 
 
 " Papa, what is the matter?" she whispered. 
 
 " You had better ask him, Polly." 
 
 "Is he hurt?" (groan second.) 
 
 " He makes a noise as if he were," said Mr. 
 Home. 
 
 " Mother," suggested Graham, feebly, " I think 
 you had better send for the doctor. Oh iny eye ! " 
 (renewed silence broken only by sighs from Graham.) 
 
 "If I were to become blind ?" suggested 
 
 this last. 
 
 His chastiser could not bear the suggestion. She 
 was beside him directly. 
 
THE PLAYMATES. 33 
 
 " Let me see your eye : I did not mean to touch 
 it, only your mouth ; and I did not think I hit so 
 very hard." 
 
 Silence answered her. Her features worked, — 
 " I am sorry ; I am sorry ! " 
 
 Then succeeded emotion, faltering, weeping. 
 
 "Have done trying that child, Graham," said 
 Mrs. Bretton. 
 
 " It is all nonsense, my pet," cried Mr. Home. 
 
 And Graham once more snatched her aloft, and 
 she again punished him; and while she pulled his 
 lion's locks, termed him — 
 
 " The naughtiest, rudest, worst, untruest person 
 that ever was." 
 
 On the morning of Mr. Home's departure, he 
 and his daughter had some conversation in a window- 
 recess by themselves ; I heard part of it. 
 
 "Couldn't I pack my box and go with you, 
 papa?" she whispered earnestly. 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " Should I be a trouble to you ? " 
 
 "Yes, Polly." 
 
 "Because I am little?" 
 
 VOL. I. D 
 
34 VILLETTE. 
 
 "Because you are little and tender. It is only- 
 great, strong people that should travel. But don't 
 look sad, my little girl ; it breaks my heart. Papa 
 will soon come back to his Polly." 
 
 " Indeed, indeed, I am not sad, scarcely at all." 
 
 " Polly would be sorry to give papa pain ; would 
 she not?" 
 
 " Sorrier than sorry." 
 
 " Then Polly must be cheerful : not cry at part- 
 ing; not fret afterwards. She must look forward 
 to meeting again, and try to be happy meanwhile. 
 Can she do this ? " 
 
 " She will try." 
 
 " I see she will. Farewell, then. It is time 
 to go." 
 
 " Now ?— just now ? " 
 
 "Just now." 
 
 She held up quivering lips. Her father sobbed, 
 but she, I remarked, did not. Having put her 
 down, he shook hands with the rest present, and 
 departed. 
 
 When the street-door closed, she dropped on 
 her knees at a chair with a cry — "Papa!" 
 
 It was low and long ; a sort of " Why hast 
 thou forsaken me?" During an ensuing space of 
 
THE PLAYMATES. 35 
 
 some minutes, I perceived she endured agony. 
 She went through, in that brief interval of her 
 infant life, emotions such as some never feel ; it 
 was in her constitution: she would have more of 
 such instants if she lived. Nobody spoke. Mrs. 
 Bretton, being a mother, shed a tear or two. 
 Graham, who was writing, lifted up his eyes and 
 gazed at her. I, Lucy Snowe, was cahn. 
 
 The little creature, thus left unharassed, did 
 for herself what none other could do — contended 
 with an intolerable feeling ; and, ere long, in some 
 degree, repressed it. That day she would accept 
 solace from none ; nor the next day : she grew more 
 passive afterwards. 
 
 On the third evening, as she sat on the floor, 
 worn and quiet, Graham, coming in, took her up 
 gently, without a word. She did not resist: she 
 rather nestled in his arms, as if weary. When he 
 sat down, she laid her head against him ; in a 
 few minutes she slept ; he carried her up stairs to 
 bed. I was not surprised that, the next morning, 
 the first thing she demanded was, "Where is Mr. 
 Graham?" 
 
 It happened that Graham was not coming to the 
 breakfast-table ; he had some exercises to write 
 
36 VILLETTE. 
 
 for that morning's class, and had requested his 
 mother to send a cup of tea into the study. Polly 
 volunteered to carry it : she must be busy about 
 something, look after somebody. The cup was en- 
 trusted to her : for, if restless, she was also careful. 
 As the study was opposite the breakfast-room, the 
 doors facing across the passage, my eye followed her. 
 
 "What are you doing?" she asked, pausing on 
 the threshold. 
 
 " Writing," said Graham. 
 
 " Why don't you come to take breakfast with 
 your mama?" 
 
 " Too busy." 
 
 "Do you want any breakfast?" 
 
 " Of course." 
 
 " There then." 
 
 And she deposited the cup on the carpet, like 
 a jailer putting a prisoner's pitcher of water through 
 his cell-door, and retreated. Presently she re- 
 turned. 
 
 " What will you have besides tea — what to 
 eat?" 
 
 " Anything good. Bring me something particu- 
 larly nice ; that 's a kind little woman." 
 
 She came back to Mrs. Bretton. 
 
THE PLAYMATES. 37 
 
 " Please, ma'am, send your boy something good." 
 
 " You shall choose for him, Polly ; what shall 
 my boy have?" 
 
 She selected a portion of whatever was best on 
 the table, and, ere long, came back with a whispered 
 request for some marmalade, which was not there. 
 Having got it, however (for Mrs. Bretton refused 
 the pair nothing), Graham was shortly after heard 
 lauding her to the skies ; promising that, when he 
 had a house of his own, she should be his house- 
 keeper, and perhaps — if she showed any culinary 
 genius — his cook; and, as she did not return, and 
 I went to look after her, I found Graham and her 
 breakfasting tete-a-tete — she standing at his elbow, 
 and sharing his fare : excepting the marmalade, 
 which she delicately refused to touch ; lest, I sup- 
 pose, it should appear that she had procured it as 
 much on her own account as his. She constantly 
 evinced these nice perceptions and delicate instincts. 
 
 The league of acquaintanceship thus struck up 
 was not hastily dissolved; on the contrary, it ap- 
 peared that time and circumstances served rather 
 to cement than loosen it. Ill-assimilated as the 
 two were in age, sex, pursuits, &c, they somehow 
 found a great deal to say to each other. As to 
 
38 VILLETTE. 
 
 Paulina, I observed that her little character never 
 properly came out, except with young Bretton. 
 As she got settled, and accustomed to the house, 
 she proved tractable enough with Mrs. Bretton; 
 but she would sit on a stool at that lady's feet all 
 day long, learning her task, or sewing, or drawing 
 figures with a pencil on a slate, and never kindling 
 once to originality, or showing a single gleam of 
 the peculiarities of her nature, I ceased to watch 
 her under such circumstances: she was not inte- 
 resting. But the moment Graham's knock sounded 
 of an evening, a change occurred ; she was instantly 
 at the head of the staircase. Usually her welcome 
 was a reprimand or a threat. 
 
 " You have not wiped your shoes properly on 
 the mat. I shall tell your mama." 
 
 "Little busybody! Are you there?" 
 
 "Yes — and you can't reach me: I am higher 
 up than you" (peeping between the rails of the 
 bannister; she could not look over them). 
 
 "Polly!" 
 
 " My dear boy !" (such was one of her terms for 
 him, adopted in imitation of his mother.) 
 
 " I am fit to faint with fatigue," declared Graham, 
 leaning against the passage-wall in seeming ex- 
 
THE PLAYMATES. 39 
 
 haustion. " Dr. Digby" (the head-master) " has 
 quite knocked me up with over-work. Just come 
 down and help me to carry up my books." 
 
 (< Ah! you're cunning!" 
 
 " Not at all, Polly — it is positive fact. I'm as 
 weak as a rush. Come down." 
 
 ■" Your eyes are quiet like the cat's, but you'll 
 spring." 
 
 " Spring ? Nothing of the kind : it is'nt in 
 me. Come down." 
 
 " Perhaps I may — if you'll promise not to touch 
 — not to snatch me up, and not to whirl me 
 round." 
 
 "I? I couldn't do it!" (sinking into a chair.) 
 
 " Then put the books down on the first step, 
 and go three yards oif." 
 
 This being done, she descended warily, and not 
 taking her eyes from the feeble Graham. Of course 
 her approach always galvanized him to new and 
 spasmodic life : the game of romps was sure to be 
 exacted. Sometimes she would be angry ; some- 
 times the matter was allowed to pass smoothly, and 
 we could hear her say as she led him up-stairs : 
 
 " Now, my dear boy, come and take your tea — 
 I am sure you must want something." 
 
40 VILLETTE. 
 
 It was sufficiently comical to observe her as she 
 sat beside Graham, while he took that meal. In 
 his absence she was a still personage, but with 
 him the most officious, fidgetty little body possible. 
 I often wished she would mind herself and be 
 tranquil ; but no — herself was forgotten in him : 
 he could not be sufficiently well waited on, nor 
 carefully enough looked after ; he was more than 
 the Grand Turk in her estimation. She would 
 gradually assemble the various plates before him, 
 and, when one would suppose all he could possibly 
 desire was within his reach, she would find out 
 something else : — 
 
 " Ma'am," she would whisper to Mrs. Bretton, — 
 " perhaps your son would like a little cake — sweet 
 cake, you know — there is some in there" (pointing 
 to the side-board cupboard). Mrs. Bretton, as a 
 rule, disapproved of sweet cake at tea, but still 
 the request was urged, — " One little piece — only 
 for him — as he goes to school : girls — such as me 
 and Miss Snowe — don't need treats, but he would 
 like it." 
 
 Graham did like it very well, and almost always 
 got it. To do him justice, he would have shared 
 his prize with her to whom he owed it: but that 
 
THE PLAYMATES. 41 
 
 was never allowed : to insist, was to ruffle her for 
 the evening. To stand by his knee, and monopolize 
 his talk and notice, was the reward she wanted — 
 not a share of the cake. 
 
 With curious readiness did she adapt herself to 
 such themes as interested him. One would have 
 thought the child had no mind or life of her own, 
 but must necessarily live, move, and have her being 
 in another : now that her father was taken from 
 her, she nestled to Graham, and seemed to feel 
 by his feelings : to exist in his existence. She 
 learned the names of all his school-fellows in a 
 trice ; she got by heart their characters as given 
 from his lips : a single description of an individual 
 seemed to suffice. She never forgot, or confused 
 identities : she would talk with him the whole 
 evening about people she had never seen, and 
 appear completely to realize their aspect, manners, 
 and dispositions. Some she learned to mimic: an 
 under-master, who was an aversion of young Bret- 
 ton's, had, it seems, some peculiarities, which she 
 caught up in a moment from Graham's represen- 
 tation, and rehearsed for his amusement ; this, 
 however, Mrs. Bretton disapproved and forbade. 
 
 The pair seldom quarrelled; yet once a rupture 
 
42 VILLETTE. 
 
 occurred, in which her feelings received a severe 
 shock. 
 
 One day Graham, on the occasion of his birth- 
 day, had some friends — lads of his own age — to 
 dine with him. Paulina took much interest in the 
 coming of these friends ; she had frequently heard 
 of them ; they were amongst those of whom 
 Graham oftenest spoke. After dinner, the young 
 gentlemen were left by themselves in the dining- 
 room, where they soon became very merry and 
 made a good deal of noise. Chancing to pass 
 through the hall, I found Paulina sitting alone 
 on the lowest step of the staircase, her eyes fixed 
 on the glossy panels of the dining-room door, 
 where the reflection of the hall-lamp was shining; 
 her little brow knit in anxious meditation. 
 
 " What are you thinking about, Polly ?" 
 
 " Nothing particular ; only I wish that door 
 was clear glass — that I might see through it. 
 The boys seem very cheerful, and I want to go 
 to them: I want to be with Graham, and watch 
 his friends." 
 
 "What hinders you from going?" 
 
 " I feel afraid : but may I try, do you think ? 
 May I knock at the door, and ask to be let in?" 
 
THE PLAYMATES. 43 
 
 I thought perhaps they might not object to 
 have her as a playmate, and therefore encouraged 
 the attempt. 
 
 She knocked — too faintly at first to be heard, 
 but on a second essay the door unclosed ; Graham's 
 head appeared; he looked in high spirits but im- 
 patient. 
 
 " What do you want, you little monkey?" 
 
 " To come to you." 
 
 " Do you indeed ? As if I would be troubled 
 with you ! Away to mama and Mistress Snowe, 
 and tell them to put you to bed." The auburn 
 head and bright flushed face vanished, — the door 
 shut peremptorily. She was stunned. 
 
 " Why does he speak so ? He never spoke so 
 before," she said in consternation. "What have I 
 done?" 
 
 " Nothing, Polly ; but Graham is busy with his 
 school-friends." 
 
 " And he likes them better than me ! He turns 
 me away now they are here ! " 
 
 I had some thoughts of consoling her, and of 
 improving the occasion by inculcating some of those 
 maxims of philosophy whereof I had ever a tolerable 
 stock ready for application. She stopped me, how- 
 
44 VILLETTE. 
 
 ever, by putting"! her fingers in her ears at the first 
 words I uttered, and then lying down on the mat 
 with her face against the flags; nor could either 
 Warren or the cook root her from that position : 
 she was allowed to lie, therefore, till she chose to 
 rise of her own accord. 
 
 Graham forgot his impatience the same evening, 
 and would have accosted her as usual when his 
 friends were gone, but she wrenched herself from 
 his hand; her eye quite flashed; she would not bid 
 him good-night; she would not look in his face. 
 The next day he treated her with indifference, and 
 she grew like a bit of marble. The day after, he 
 teazed her to know what was the matter ; her lips 
 would not unclose. Of course he could not feel 
 real anger on his side : the match was too unequal 
 in every way ; he tried soothing and coaxing. 
 " Why was she angry ? What had he done ? " 
 By-and-by tears answered him ; he petted her and 
 they were friends. But she was one on whom 
 such incidents were not lost : I remarked that never 
 after this rebuff did she seek him, or follow him, 
 or in any way solicit his notice. I told her once 
 to carry a book or some other article to Graham 
 when he was shut up in his study. 
 
THE PLAYMATES. 45 
 
 " I shall wait till he comes out," said she, proudly ; 
 " I don't choose to give him the trouble of rising to 
 open the door." 
 
 Young Bretton had a favourite pony on which he 
 often rode out ; from the window she always watched 
 his departure and return. It was her ambition to 
 be permitted to have a ride round the court-yard 
 on this pony; but far be it from her to ask such 
 a favour. One day she descended to the yard to 
 watch him dismount ; as she leaned against the gate, 
 the longing wish for the indulgence of a ride glit- 
 tered in her eye. 
 
 " Come, Polly, will you have a canter ? " asked 
 Graham, half carelessly. I suppose she thought he 
 was too careless. 
 
 " No thank you," said she, turning away with the 
 utmost coolness. 
 
 " You 'd better ;" pursued he. " You will like it, 
 I am sure." 
 
 "Don't think I should care a fig about it," was 
 the response. 
 
 " That is not true. You told Lucy Snowe you 
 longed to have a ride." 
 
 " Lucy Snowe is a tatter-\>ox? I heard her say: 
 (her imperfect articulation was the least precocious 
 
46 VILLETTE. 
 
 thing she had about her), and with this, she walked 
 into the house. Graham coming in soon after, ob- 
 served to his mother, — 
 
 " Mama, I believe that creature is a changeling : 
 she is a perfect cabinet of oddities ; but I should be 
 dull without her : she amuses me a great deal more 
 than you or Lucy Snowe." 
 
 " Miss Snowe," said Paulina to me (she had now 
 got into the habit of occasionally chatting with me 
 when we were alone in our room at night), " do 
 you know on what day in the week I like Graham 
 best?" 
 
 " How can I possibly know anything so strange ? 
 Is there one day out of the seven when he is other- 
 wise than on the other six ?" 
 
 " To be sure ! Can't you see ? Don't you know ? 
 I find him the most excellent on a Sunday ; then we 
 have him the whole day, and he is quiet, and, in the 
 evening, so kind." 
 
 This observation was not altogether groundless : 
 going to church, &c, kept Graham quiet on the 
 Sunday, and the evening he generally dedicated to 
 a serene, though rather indolent sort of enjoyment 
 
THE PLAYMATES. 47 
 
 by the parlour fireside. He would take possession 
 of the couch, and then he would call Polly. 
 
 Graham was a boy not quite as other boys are ; 
 all his delight did not lie in action : he was capable 
 of some intervals of contemplation ; he could take a 
 pleasure too in reading, nor was his selection of 
 books wholly indiscriminate : there were glimmer- 
 ings of characteristic preference and even of in- 
 stinctive taste in the choice. He rarely, it is true, 
 remarked on what he read, but I have seen him sit 
 and think of it. 
 
 Polly, being near him, kneeling on a little cushion 
 or the carpet, a conversation would begin in mur- 
 murs, not inaudible, though subdued. I caught a 
 snatch of their tenor now and then ; and, in truth, 
 some influence better and finer than that of every 
 day, seemed to soothe Graham at such times into 
 no ungentle mood. 
 
 " Have you learned any hymns this week, 
 Polly?" 
 
 "I have learned a very pretty one, four verses 
 long. Shall I say it?" 
 
 " Speak nicely, then : don't be in a hurry." 
 
 The hymn being rehearsed, or rather half-chanted, 
 in a little singing voice, Graham would take ex- 
 
48 VILLETTE. 
 
 ceptlons at the manner, and proceed to give a 
 lesson in recitation. She was quick in learning, 
 apt in imitating; and, besides, her pleasure was to 
 please Graham : she proved a ready scholar. To 
 the hymn would succeed some reading — perhaps 
 a chapter in the Bible ; correction was seldom 
 required here, for the child could read any simple 
 narrative chapter very well ; and, when the subject 
 was such as she could understand and take an 
 interest in, her expression and emphasis were some- 
 thing remarkable. Joseph cast into the pit ; the 
 calling of Samuel ; Daniel in the lion's den ; — 
 these were favourite passages : of the first espe- 
 cially she seemed perfectly to feel the pathos. 
 
 "Poor Jacob!" she would sometimes say, with 
 quivering lips. " How he loved his son Joseph ! 
 As much," she once added — " as much, Graham, as 
 I love you : if you were to die " (and she re-opened 
 the book, sought the verse, and read), " I should 
 e refuse to be comforted, and go down into the 
 grave to you mourning.' " 
 
 With these words she gathered Graham in her 
 little arms, drawing his long-tressed head towards 
 her. The action, I remember, struck me as 
 strangely rash; exciting the feeling one might ex- 
 
THE PLAYMATES. 49 
 
 perience on seeing an animal dangerous by nature, 
 and but half-tamed by art, too heedlessly fondled. 
 Not that I feared Graham would hurt, or very 
 roughly check her; but I thought she ran risk 
 of incurring such a careless, impatient repulse, as 
 would be worse almost to her than a blow. On 
 the whole, however, these demonstrations were 
 borne passively : sometimes even a sort of com- 
 placent wonder at her earnest partiality would 
 smile not unkindly in his eyes. Once he said: — 
 
 " You like me almost as well as if you were 
 my little sister, Polly." 
 
 " Oh ! I do like you," said she ; " I do like 
 you very much." 
 
 I was not long allowed the amusement of this 
 study of character. She had scarcely been at 
 Bretton two months, when a letter came from 
 Mr. Home, signifying that he was now settled 
 amongst his maternal kinsfolk on the Continent, 
 that, as England was become wholly distasteful 
 to him, he had no thoughts of returning thither, 
 perhaps, for years; and that he wished his little 
 girl to join him immediately. 
 
 VOL. i. E 
 
50 VILLETTE. 
 
 "I wonder how she will take this news?" said 
 Mrs. Bretton, when she had read the letter. I 
 wondered, too, and I took upon myself to com- 
 municate it. 
 
 Repairing to the drawing-room — in which calm 
 and decorated apartment she was fond of being 
 alone, and where she could be implicitly trusted, 
 for she fingered nothing, or rather soiled nothing 
 she fingered — I found her seated, like a little 
 Odalisque, on a couch, half shaded by the droop- 
 ing draperies of the window near. She seemed 
 happy ; all her appliances for occupation were about 
 her ; the white wood work-box, a shred or two 
 of muslin, an end or two of ribbon, collected for 
 conversion into doll-millinery. The doll, duly 
 night-capped and night-gowned, lay in its cradle; 
 she was rocking it to sleep, with an air of the 
 most perfect faith in its possession of sentient and 
 somnolent faculties ; her eyes, at the same time, 
 being engaged with a picture-book, which lay open 
 on her lap. 
 
 "Miss Snowe," said she in a whisper, "this is 
 a wonderful book. Candace" (the doll, christened 
 by Graham; for, indeed, its begrimed complexion 
 gave it much of an Ethiopian aspect)— " Candace 
 
THE PLAYMATES. 51 
 
 is asleep now, and I may tell you about it ; only 
 we must both speak low, lest she should waken. 
 This book was given me by Graham ; it tells about 
 distant countries, a long, long way from England, 
 which no traveller can reach without sailing thou- 
 sands of miles over the sea. Wild men live in 
 these countries, Miss Snowe, who wear clothes 
 different from ours: indeed, some of them wear 
 scarcely any clothes, for the sake of being cool, 
 you know ; for they have very hot weather. Here 
 is a picture of thousands gathered in a desolate 
 place — a plain, spread with sand — round a man in 
 black, — a good, good Englishman, — a missionary, 
 who is preaching to them under a palm-tree." (She 
 showed a little coloured cut to that effect.) "And 
 here are pictures" (she went on) "more stranger" 
 (grammar was occasionally forgotten) "than that. 
 There is the wonderful Great Wall of China ; here 
 is a Chinese lady, with a foot littler than mine. 
 There is a wild horse of Tartary; and here — most 
 strange of all — is a land of ice and snow, without 
 green fields, woods, or gardens. In this land, they 
 found some mammoth bones: there are no mam- 
 moths now. You don't know what it was; but I 
 can tell you, because Graham told me. A mighty, 
 
52 TILLETTE. 
 
 goblin creature, as high as this room, and as long 
 as the hall; but not a fierce, flesh-eating thing, 
 Graham thinks. • He believes, if I met one in a 
 forest, it would not kill me, unless I came quite 
 in its way ; when it would trample me down amongst 
 the bushes, as I might tread on a grasshopper in 
 a hay-field without knowing it," 
 
 Thus she rambled on. 
 
 " Polly," I interrupted, " should you like to 
 travel?" 
 
 " Not just yet," was the prudent answer ; " but 
 perhaps in twenty years, when I am grown a 
 woman, as tall as Mrs. Bretton, I may travel with 
 Graham. We intend going to Switzerland, and 
 climbing Mount Blanck; and some day we shall 
 sail over to South America, and walk to the top 
 of Kim — kim — borazo." 
 
 " But how would you like to travel now, if your 
 papa was with you?" 
 
 Her reply — not given till after a pause — evinced 
 one of those unexpected turns of temper peculiar to 
 her: — 
 
 " Where is the good of talking in that silly way ?" 
 said she. " Why do you mention papa ? What is 
 papa to you? I was just beginning to be happy, 
 
THE PLAYMATES. 53 
 
 and not think about him so much ; and there it will 
 be all to do over again ! " 
 
 Her lip trembled. I hastened to disclose the 
 fact of a letter having been received, and to men- 
 tion the directions given that she and Harriet 
 should immediately rejoin this dear papa. " Now, 
 Polly, are you not glad ? " I added. 
 
 She made no answer. She dropped her book, 
 and ceased to rock her doll ; she gazed at me with 
 gravity and earnestness. 
 
 " Shall you not like to go to papa ? " 
 
 " Of course," she said at last in that trenchant 
 manner she usually employed in speaking to me; 
 and which was quite different from that she used 
 with Mrs. Bretton, and different again from the one 
 dedicated to Graham. I wished to ascertain more 
 of what she thought ; but no : she would converse 
 no more. Hastening to Mrs. Bretton, she ques- 
 tioned her, and received the confirmation of my 
 news. The weight and importance of these tidings 
 kept her perfectly serious the whole day. In the 
 evening, at the moment Graham's entrance was 
 heard below, I found her at my side. She began 
 to arrange a locket-ribbon about my neck, she dis- 
 placed and replaced the comb in my hair; while 
 thus busied, Graham entered. 
 
54 VILLETTE. 
 
 u Tell him by-and-by," she whispered ; " tell 
 him I am going." 
 
 In the course of tea-time I made the desired com- 
 munication. Graham, it chanced, was at that time 
 greatly preoccupied about some school-prize, for 
 which he was competing. The news had to be told 
 twice before it took proper hold of his attention; 
 and even then he dwelt on it but momently. 
 
 " Polly going ? What a pity ! Dear little Mou- 
 sie, I shall be sorry to lose her : she must come to us 
 again, mama." 
 
 And hastily swallowing his tea, he took a candle 
 and a small table to himself and his books, and was 
 soon buried in study. 
 
 " Little Mousie " crept to his side, and lay down 
 on the carpet at his feet, her face to the floor ; mute 
 and motionless she kept that post and position till 
 bed-time. Once I saw Graham — wholly uncon- 
 scious of her proximity — push her with his restless 
 foot. She receded an inch or two. A minute after 
 one little hand stole out from beneath her face, to 
 which it had been pressed, and softly caressed the 
 heedless foot. When summoned by her nurse she 
 rose and departed very obediently, having bid us all 
 a subdued good-night. 
 
THE PLAYMATES. 55 
 
 I will not say that I dreaded going to-bed, an 
 hour later; yet I certainly went with an unquiet 
 anticipation that I should find that child in no 
 peaceful sleep. The forewarning of my instinct 
 was but fulfilled, when I discovered her, all cold 
 and vigilant, perched like a white bird on the out- 
 side of the bed. I scarcely knew how to accost 
 her ; she was not to be managed like another child. 
 She, however, accosted me. As I closed the door, 
 and put the light on the dressing-table, she turned 
 to me with these words : — 
 
 w I cannot-— cannot sleep ; and in this way I can- 
 not — cannot live ! " 
 
 I asked what ailed her. 
 
 " Dedful miz-er-y ! " said she, with her piteous lisp. 
 
 « Shall I call Mrs. Bretton ? " 
 
 " That is downright silly," was her impatient 
 reply; and, indeed, I well knew that if she had 
 heard Mrs. Bretton's foot approach, she would have 
 nestled quiet as a mouse under the bedclothes. 
 While lavishing her eccentricities regardlessly be- 
 fore me — for whom she professed scarcely the sem- 
 blance of affection — she never showed my god- 
 mother one glimpse of her inner self : for her, she 
 was nothing but a docile, somewhat quaint little 
 
56 VILLETTE. 
 
 maiden. I examined her ; her cheek was crimson ; 
 her dilated eye was both troubled and glowing, and 
 painfully restless : in this state it was obvious she 
 must not be left till morning. I guessed how the 
 case stood. 
 
 " Would you like to bid Graham good - night 
 again?" I asked. "He is not gone to his room 
 
 yet." 
 
 She at once stretched out her little arms to be 
 lifted. Folding a shawl round her, I carried her 
 back to the drawing-room. Graham was just com- 
 ing out. 
 
 " She cannot sleep without seeing and speaking 
 to you once more," I said. " She does not like the 
 thought of leaving you." 
 
 " I 've spoilt her," said he, taking her from me 
 with good humour, and kissing her little hot face 
 and burning lips. "Polly, you care for me more 
 than for papa, now — " 
 
 " I do care for you, but you care nothing for me," 
 was her whisper. 
 
 She was assured to the contrary, again kissed, 
 restored to me, and I carried her away ; but, alas ! 
 not soothed. 
 
 When I thought she could listen to me I said — 
 
THE PLAYMATES. 57 
 
 "Paulina, you should not grieve that Graham 
 does not care for you so much as you care for 
 him. It must be so." 
 
 Her lifted and questioning eyes asked why. 
 
 "Because he is a boy and you are a girl; he 
 is sixteen and you are only six ; his nature is strong 
 and gay, and yours is otherwise." 
 
 "But I love him so much; he should love me 
 a little." 
 
 " He does. He is fond of you. You are his 
 favourite." 
 
 " Am I Graham's favourite ? " 
 
 "Yes, more than any little child I know." 
 
 The assurance soothed her; she smiled in her 
 anguish. 
 
 " But," I continued, " don't fret, and don't expect 
 too much of him, or else he will feel you to be 
 troublesome, and then it is all over." 
 
 "All over!" she echoed softly, "then I'll be 
 good. I '11 try to be good, Lucy Snowe." 
 
 I put her to bed. 
 
 "Will he forgive me this one time?" she asked, 
 as I undressed myself. I assured her that he 
 would ; that as yet he was by no means alienated ; 
 that she had only to be careful for the future. 
 
58 VILLETTE. 
 
 a There is no future," said she : " I am going. 
 Shall I ever — ever — see him again, after I leave 
 England?" 
 
 I returned an encouraging response. The candle 
 being extinguished, a still half-hour elapsed. I 
 thought her asleep, when the little white shape 
 once more lifted itself in the crib, and the small 
 voice asked, — " Do you like Graham, Miss Snowe ? " 
 
 " Like him ! Yes, a little." 
 
 " Only a little ! Do you like him as I do ? " 
 
 " I think not. No. Not as you do." 
 
 " Do you like him much ? " 
 
 " I told you I liked him a little. Where is the 
 use of caring for him so very much : he is full of 
 faults." 
 
 "Is he?" 
 
 " All boys are." 
 
 "More than girls?" 
 
 "Very likely. Wise people say it is folly to 
 think anybody perfect ; and as to likes and dislikes, 
 we should be friendly to all, and worship none." 
 
 " Are you a wise person ? " 
 
 " I mean to try to be so. Go to sleep." 
 
 " I cannot go to sleep. Have you no pain just 
 here " (laying her elfish hand on her elfish breast), 
 
THE PLAYMATES. 59 
 
 " when you think you shall have to leave Graham ; 
 for your home is not here ? " 
 
 " Surely, Polly," said I, " you should not feel so 
 much pain when you are very soon going to rejoin 
 your father. Have you forgotten him? Do you 
 no longer wish to be his little companion?" 
 
 Dead silence succeeded this question. 
 
 " Child, lie down and sleep," I urged. 
 
 a My bed is cold," said she. " I can't warm it." 
 
 I saw the little thing shiver. " Come to me," 
 I said, wishing, yet scarcely hoping, that she would 
 comply : for she was a most strange, capricious, little 
 creature, and especially whimsical with me. She 
 came, however, instantly, like a small ghost gliding 
 over the carpet. I took her in. She was chill ; I 
 warmed her in my arms. She trembled nervously ; 
 I soothed her. Thus tranquillized and cherished she 
 at last slumbered. 
 
 u A very unique child," thought I, as I viewed 
 her sleeping countenance by the fitful moonlight, 
 and cautiously and softly wiped her glittering eye- 
 lids and her wet cheeks with my handkerchief. 
 " How will she get through this world, or battle with 
 this life ? How will she bear the shocks and re- 
 pulses, the humiliations and desolations, which books, 
 
60 VILLETTE. 
 
 and my own reason tell me are prepared for all 
 flesh." 
 
 She departed the next day ; trembling like a leaf 
 when she took leave, but exercising self-com- 
 mand. 
 
MISS MARCHMONT. 61 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MISS MARCHMONT. 
 
 On quitting Bretton, which I did a few weeks after 
 Paulina's departure — little thinking then I was 
 never again to visit it: never more to tread its 
 calm old streets — I betook myself home, having 
 been absent six months. It will be conjectured 
 that I was of course glad to return to the bosom 
 of my kindred. Well ! the amiable conjecture does 
 no harm, and may therefore be safely left uncontra- 
 dicted. Far from saying nay, indeed, I will permit 
 the reader to picture me, for the next eight years, 
 as a bark slumbering through halcyon weather, in a 
 harbour still as glass — the steersman stretched on 
 the little deck, his face up to heaven, his eyes closed : 
 buried, if you will, in a long prayer. A great many 
 women and girls are supposed to pass their lives 
 
62 VILLETTE. 
 
 something in that fashion; why not I with the 
 rest? 
 
 Picture me then idle, basking, plump, and happy, 
 stretched on a cushioned deck, warmed with con- 
 stant sunshine, rocked by breezes indolently soft. 
 However, it cannot be concealed that, in that case, 
 I must somehow have fallen over-board, or that 
 there must have been wreck at last. I too well 
 remember a time — a long time, of cold, of danger, 
 of contention. To this hour, when I have the 
 nightmare, it repeats the rush and saltness of briny 
 waves in my throat, and their icy pressure on my 
 lungs. I even know there was a storm, and that 
 not of one hour nor one day. For many days and 
 nights neither sun nor stars appeared ; we cast with 
 our own hands the tackling out of the ship ; a heavy 
 tempest lay on us ; all hope that we should be saved 
 was taken away. In fine, the ship was lost, the 
 crew perished. 
 
 As far as I recollect, I complained to no one 
 about these troubles. Indeed, to whom could I 
 complain? Of Mrs. Bretton I had long lost sight. 
 Impediments, raised by others, had, years ago, come in 
 the way of our intercourse, and cut it off. Besides, 
 time had brought changes for her too: the hand- 
 
MISS MARCHMONT. 63 
 
 some property of which she was left guardian for 
 her son, and which had been chiefly invested in 
 some joint-stock undertaking, had melted, it was 
 said, to a fraction of its original amount. Graham, 
 I learned from incidental rumours, had adopted a 
 profession ; both he and his mother were gone from 
 Bretton, and were understood to be now in London. 
 Thus, there remained no possibility of dependence 
 on others; to myself alone could I look. I know 
 not that I was of a self-reliant or active nature ; 
 but self-reliance and exertion were forced upon me 
 by circumstances, as they are upon thousands be- 
 sides; and when Miss Marchmont, a maiden lady 
 of our neighbourhood, sent for me, I obeyed her 
 behest, in the hope that she might assign me some 
 task I could undertake. 
 
 Miss Marchmont was a woman of fortune, and 
 lived in a handsome residence ; but she was a rheu- 
 matic cripple, impotent, foot and hand, and had been 
 so for twenty years. She always sat up-stairs : her 
 drawing-room adjoined her bed-room. I had often 
 heard of Miss Marchmont, and of her peculiarities 
 (she had the character of being very eccentric), but 
 till now had never seen her. I found her a fur- 
 rowed, gray-haired woman, grave with solitude. 
 
64 VILLETTE. 
 
 stern with long affliction, irritable also, and perhaps 
 exacting. It seemed that a maid, or rather companion, 
 who had waited on her for some years, was about 
 to be married ; and she, hearing of my bereaved lot, 
 had sent for me, with the idea that I might supply 
 this person's place. She made the proposal to me 
 after tea, as she and I sat alone by her fire- 
 side. 
 
 " It will not be an easy life," said she candidly, 
 a for I require a good deal of attention, and you 
 will be much confined; yet, perhaps, contrasted with 
 the existence you have lately led, it may appear 
 tolerable." 
 
 I reflected. Of course it ought to appear tolerable, 
 I argued inwardly ; but somehow, by some strange 
 fatality, it would not. To live here, in this close 
 room, the watcher of suffering, sometimes, perhaps, 
 the butt of temper, through all that was to come of 
 my youth ; while all that was gone had passed, to say 
 the least, not blissfully ! my heart sunk one mo- 
 ment, then it revived; for though I forced myself 
 to realize evils, I think I was too prosaic to idealize, 
 and consequently to exaggerate them. 
 
 " My doubt is whether I should have strength 
 for the undertaking," I observed. 
 
MISS MAECHMONT. 6 
 
 " That is my own scruple," said she ; " for 
 you look a worn-out creature?" 
 
 So I did. I saw myself in the glass, in my 
 mourning-dress, a faded, hollow-eyed vision. Yet 
 I thought little of the wan spectacle. The blight, 
 I believed, was chiefly external : I still felt life at 
 life's sources. 
 
 " What else have you in view — anything?" 
 
 " Nothing clear as yet : but I may find some- 
 thing." 
 
 " So you imagine : perhaps you are right. Try 
 your own method, then ; and if it does not succeed, 
 test mine. The chance I have offered shall be left 
 open to you for three months." 
 
 This was kind. I told her so, and expressed my 
 gratitude. While I was speaking, a paroxysm of 
 pain came on. I ministered to her; made the 
 necessary applications, according to her directions, 
 and, by the time she was relieved, a sort of in- 
 timacy was already formed between us. I, for my 
 part, had learned from the manner in which she bore 
 this attack, that she was a firm, patient woman 
 (patient under physical pain, though sometimes per- 
 haps excitable under long mental canker) ; and she, 
 from the good-will with which I succoured her, 
 
 VOL. i. F 
 
6Q VILLETTE. 
 
 discovered that she could influence my sympathies 
 (such as they were). She sent for me the next 
 day; for five or six successive days she claimed 
 my company. Closer acquaintance, while it deve- 
 loped both faults and eccentricities, opened, at the 
 same time, a view of a character I could respect. 
 Stern and even morose as she sometimes was, I 
 could wait on her and sit beside her with that 
 calm which always blesses us when we are sensible 
 that our manners, presence, contact, please and 
 soothe the persons we serve. Even when she 
 scolded me — which she did, now and then, very 
 tartly — it was in such a way as did not humiliate, 
 and left no sting; it was rather like an irascible 
 mother rating her daughter, than a harsh mistress 
 lecturing a dependent : lecture, indeed, she could 
 not, though she could occasionally storm. More- 
 over, a vein of reason ever ran through her passion : 
 she was logical even when fierce. Ere lone a 
 growing sense of attachment began to present the 
 thought of staying with her as companion in quite 
 a new light ; in another week I had agreed to 
 remain. 
 
 Two hot, close rooms thus became my world; 
 and a crippled old woman, my mistress, my friend, 
 
MISS MARCHMONT. 67 
 
 my all. Her service was my duty — her pain, my 
 suffering — her relief, my hope — her anger, my 
 punishment — her regard, my reward. I forgot that 
 there were fields, woods, rivers, seas, an ever- 
 changing sky outside the steam-dimmed lattice of 
 this sick-chamber; I was almost content to forget 
 it. All within me became narrowed to my lot. 
 Tame and still by habit, disciplined by destiny, I 
 demanded no walks in the fresh air ; my appetite 
 needed no more than the tiny messes served for 
 the invalid. In addition she gave me the originality 
 of her character to study : the steadiness of her 
 virtues, I will add, the power of her passions, to 
 admire, the truth of her feelings to trust. All 
 these things she had, and for these things I clung 
 to her. 
 
 For these things I would have crawled on with 
 her for twenty years, if for twenty years longer her 
 life of endurance had been protracted. But another 
 decree was written. It seemed I must be stimu- 
 lated into action. I must be goaded, driven, stung, 
 forced to energy. My little morsel of human affec- 
 tion, which I prized as if it were a solid pearl, must 
 melt in my fingers and slip thence like a dissolving 
 hailstone. My small adopted duty must be snatched 
 
68 VILLETTE. 
 
 from my easily contented conscience. I had wanted 
 to compromise with Fate : to escape occasional great 
 agonies by submitting to a whole life of privation 
 and small pains. Fate would not so be pacified; 
 nor would Providence sanction this shrinking sloth 
 and cowardly indolence. 
 
 One February night — I remember it well — 
 there came a voice near Miss Marchmont's house, 
 heard by every inmate, but translated, perhaps, 
 only by one. After a calm winter, storms were 
 ushering in the spring. I had put Miss March- 
 mont to bed; I sat at the fireside sewing. The 
 wind was wailing at the windows: it had wailed 
 all day ; but, as night deepened, it took a new 
 tone — an accent keen, piercing, almost articulate 
 to the ear; a plaint, piteous and disconsolate to 
 the nerves, trilled in every gust. 
 
 " Oh, hush ! hush ! " I said in my disturbed mind, 
 dropping my work, and making a vain effort to 
 stop my ears against that subtle, searching cry. 
 I had heard that very voice ere this, and compulsory 
 observation had forced on me a theory as to what it 
 boded. Three times in the course of my life, events 
 had taught me that these strange accents in the 
 storm — this restless, hopeless cry — denote a coming 
 
MISS MARCHMONT. 69 
 
 state of the atmosphere unpropitious to life. Epi- 
 demic diseases, I believed, were often heralded by 
 a gasping, sobbing, tormented, long-lamenting east 
 wind. Hence, I inferred, arose the legend of the 
 Banshee. I fancied, too, I had noticed — but was 
 not philosopher enough to know whether there was 
 any connection between the circumstances — that we 
 often at the same time hear of disturbed volcanic 
 action in distant parts of the world; of rivers sud- 
 denly rushing above their banks; and of strange 
 high tides flowing furiously in on low sea-coasts. 
 " Our globe," I had said to myself, " seems at 
 such periods torn and disordered ; the feeble amongst 
 us wither in her distempered breath, rushing hot 
 from steaming volcanoes." 
 
 I listened, and trembled; Miss Marchmont slept. 
 
 About midnight, the storm in one half hour fell 
 to a dead calm. The fire, which had been burning 
 dead, glowed up vividly. I felt the air change, and 
 become keen. Raising blind and curtain, I looked 
 out, and saw in the stars the keen sparkle of a 
 sharp frost. 
 
 Turning away, the object that met my eyes was 
 Miss Marchmont awake, lifting her head from the 
 pillow, and regarding me with unusual earnestness. 
 
70 VILLETTE. 
 
 " Is it a fine night?" she asked. 
 
 I replied in the affirmative. 
 
 "I thought so," she said; "for I feel so strong, 
 so well. Raise me. I feel young to-night," she 
 continued ; " young, light-hearted, and happy. 
 What if my complaint be about to take a turn, 
 and I am yet destined to enjoy health? It would 
 be a miracle ! " 
 
 "And these are not the days of miracles," I 
 thought to myself, and wondered to hear her talk 
 so. She went on directing her conversation to the 
 past, and seeming to recall its incidents, scenes, 
 and personages with singular vividness. 
 
 "I love Memory to-night," she said: "I prize 
 her as my best friend. She is just now giving me 
 a deep delight; she is bringing back to my heart, 
 in warm and beautiful life, realities — not mere 
 empty ideas — but what were once realities, and 
 that I long have thought decayed, dissolved, mixed 
 in with grave-mould. I possess just now the hours, 
 the thoughts, the hopes of my youth. I renew 
 the love of my life — its only love — almost its only 
 affection ; for I am not a particularly good woman : 
 I am not amiable. Yet I have had my feelings, 
 strong and concentrated; and these feelings had 
 
MISS MARCHMONT. . 71 
 
 their object; which, in its single self, was dear to 
 me, as, to the majority of men and women, are 
 all the unnumbered points on which they dissipate 
 their regard. While I loved, and while I wa& 
 loved, what an existence I enjoyed! "What a 
 glorious year I can recall — how bright it comes 
 back to me ! What a living spring — what a warm, 
 glad summer — what soft moonlight, silvering the 
 autumn evenings — what strength of hope under 
 the ice-bound waters and frost-hoar fields of that 
 year's winter! Through that year my heart lived 
 with Frank's heart. O my noble Frank — my faith- 
 ful Frank — my good Frank! so much better than 
 myself — his standard in all things so much higher! 
 This I can now see and say — if few women have 
 suffered as I did in his loss, few have enjoyed what 
 I did in his love. It was a far better kind of love 
 than common; I had no doubts about it or him: 
 it was such a love as honoured, protected, and 
 elevated, no less than it gladdened her to whom 
 it was given. Let me now ask, just at this moment, 
 when my mind is so strangely clear, — let me re- 
 flect why it was taken from me? For what crime 
 was I condemned, after twelve months of bliss, to 
 undergo thirty years of sorrow?" 
 
72 VILLETTE. 
 
 " I do not know," she continued, after a pause : 
 " I cannot — cannot see the reason ; yet at this hour 
 I can say with sincerity, what I never tried to 
 say before — Inscrutable God, Thy will be done! 
 And at this moment I can believe that death will 
 restore me to Frank. I never believed it till 
 now." 
 
 " He is dead, then ? " I inquired in a low voice. 
 
 " My dear girl," she said, " one happy Christmas 
 Eve I dressed and decorated myself, expecting my 
 lover, very soon to be my husband, would come that 
 night to visit me. I sat down to wait. Once more 
 I see that moment — I see the snow-twilight stealing 
 through the window over which the curtain was 
 not dropped, for I designed to watch him ride up 
 the white walk; I see and feel the soft firelight 
 warming me, playing on my silk dress, and fitfully 
 showing me my own young figure in a glass. I 
 see the moon of a calm winter night, float full, clear 
 and cold, over the inky mass of shrubbery, and 
 the silvered turf of my grounds. I wait, with 
 some impatience in my pulse, but no doubt in my 
 breast. The flames had died in the fire, but it 
 was a bright mass yet; the moon was mounting 
 high, but she was still visible from the lattice; 
 
MISS MARCHMONT. 73 
 
 the clock neared ten; he rarely tarried later than 
 this, but once or twice he had been delayed so long. 
 " Would he for once fail me ? No — not even 
 for once; and now he was coming — and coming 
 fast — to atone for lost time. ' Frank ! you furious 
 rider,' I said inwardly, listening gladly, yet anxiously, 
 to his approaching gallop, * you shall be rebuked 
 for this: I will tell you it is my neck you are 
 putting in peril ; for whatever is yours is, in a dearer 
 and tenderer sense, mine.' There he was: I saw 
 him; but I think tears were in my eyes my sight 
 was so confused. I saw the horse ; I heard it stamp 
 — I saw at least a mass ; I heard a clamour. Was 
 it a horse ? or what heavy, dragging thing was it, 
 crossing, strangely dark, the lawn? How could 
 I name that thing in the moonlight before me ? or 
 how could I utter the feeling which rose in my 
 soul? 
 
 " I could only run out. A great animal — truly, 
 Frank's black horse — stood trembling, panting, 
 snorting before the door; a man held it: Frank, 
 as I thought. 
 
 " 'What is the matter?' I demanded. Thomas, 
 my own servant, answered by saying sharply, 
 ' Go into the house, madam.' And then calling 
 
74 VILLETTE. 
 
 to another servant, who came hurrying from the 
 kitchen as if summoned by some instinct, 'Ruth, 
 take missis into the house directly.' But I was 
 kneeling down in the snow, beside something that 
 lay there — something that I had seen dragged along 
 the ground — something that sighed, that groaned 
 on my breast, as I lifted and drew it to me. He 
 was not dead; he was not quite unconscious. I 
 had him carried in ; I refused to be ordered about 
 and thrust from him. I was quite collected enough, 
 not only to be my own mistress, but the mistress 
 of others. They had begun by trying to treat me 
 like a child, as they always do with people struck 
 by God's hand; but I gave place to none except 
 the surgeon ; and when he had done what he could, 
 I took my dying Frank to myself. He had strength 
 to fold me in his arms; he had power to speak my 
 name; he heard me as I prayed over him very 
 softly; he felt me as I tenderly and fondly com- 
 forted him. 
 
 " ' Maria,' he said, 1 1 am dying in Paradise.' He 
 spent his last breath in faithful words for me. 
 When the dawn of Christmas morning broke, my 
 Frank was with God. 
 
 " And that," she went on, " happened thirty 
 
MISS MABCHMONT. 75 
 
 years ago. I have suffered since. I doubt if I 
 have made the best use of all my calamities. Soft, 
 amiable natures they would have refined to saint- 
 liness ; of strong, evil spirits they would have made 
 demons ; as for me, I have only been a woe-struck 
 and selfish woman." 
 
 (i You have done much good," I said ; for she was 
 noted for her liberal almsgiving. 
 
 " I have not withheld money, you mean, where it 
 could assuage affliction. What of that? It cost 
 me no effort or pang to give. But I think from 
 this day I am about to enter a better frame of 
 mind, to prepare myself for reunion with Frank. 
 You see I still think of Frank more than of God ; 
 and unless it be counted that in thus loving the 
 creature so much, so long, and so exclusively, I 
 have not at least blasphemed the Creator, small is 
 my chance of salvation. What do you think, Lucy, 
 of these things ? Be my chaplain and tell me." 
 
 This question I could not answer : I had no words. 
 It seemed as if she thought I had answered it. 
 
 " Very right, my child. We should acknowledge 
 God merciful, but not always for us comprehensible. 
 We should accept our own lot whatever it be, 
 and try to render happy that of others. Should we 
 
76 VILLETTE. 
 
 not? "Well, to-morrow I will begin by trying to 
 make you happy. I will endeavour to do some- 
 thing for you, Lucy: something that will benefit 
 you when I am dead. My head aches now with 
 talking too much; still I am happy. Go to bed. 
 The clock strikes two. How late you sit up; or 
 rather how late I, in my selfishness, keep you up. 
 But go now ; have no more anxiety for me : I feel 
 I shall rest well." 
 
 She composed herself as if to slumber. I, too, 
 retired to my crib in a closet within her room. The 
 night passed in quietness; quietly her doom must 
 at last have come : peacefully and painlessly : in the 
 morning she was found without life, nearly cold, 
 but all calm and undisturbed. Her previous ex- 
 citement of spirits and change of mood had been 
 the prelude of a fit; one stroke sufficed to sever 
 the thread of an existence so long fretted by 
 affliction. 
 
TURNING A NEW LEAF. 77 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 TURNING A NEW LEAF. 
 
 My mistress being dead, and I once more alone, 
 I had to look out for a new place. About this time 
 I might be a little — a very little, shaken in nerves. 
 I grant I was not looking well, but on the con- 
 trary, thin, haggard, and hollow-eyed; like a sitter- 
 up at night, like an over-wrought servant, or a place- 
 less person in debt. In debt, however, I was not ; 
 nor quite poor ; for though Miss Marchmont had not 
 had time to benefit me, as, on that last night, she 
 said she intended, yet after the funeral, my wages 
 were duly paid by her second cousin, the heir, an 
 avaricious-looking man, with pinched nose and nar- 
 row temples, who, indeed, I heard long afterwards, 
 turned out a thorough miser : a direct contrast to his 
 generous kinswoman, and a foil to her memory, 
 blessed to this day by the poor and needy. The 
 
78 VILLETTE. 
 
 possessor, then, of fifteen pounds ; of health though 
 worn not broken, and of a spirit in similar con- 
 dition; I might still, in comparison with many- 
 people, be regarded as occupying an enviable posi- 
 tion, An embarrassing one it was, however, at the 
 same time ; as I felt with some acuteness on a certain 
 day, of which the corresponding one in the next 
 week was to see my departure from my present 
 abode, while with another I was not provided. 
 
 In this dilemma I went, as a last and sole re- 
 source, to see and consult an old servant of our 
 family ; once my nurse, now housekeeper at a grand 
 mansion not far from Miss Marchmont's. I spent 
 some hours with her ; she comforted, but knew not 
 how to advise me. Still all inward darkness, I 
 left her about twilight; a walk of two miles lay 
 before me; it was a clear, frosty night. In spite 
 of my solitude, my poverty, and my perplexity, 
 my heart, nourished and nerved with the vigour of 
 a youth that had not yet counted twenty-three sum- 
 mers, beat light and not feebly. Not feebly, I am 
 sure, or I should have trembled in that lonely walk, 
 which lay through still fields, and passed neither 
 village nor farm-house, nor cottage ; I should have 
 quailed in the absence of moonlight, for it was by 
 
TURNING A NEW LEAF. 79 
 
 the leading of stars only I traced the dim path ; I 
 should have quailed still more in the unwonted 
 presence of that which to-night shone in the north, 
 a moving mystery — the Aurora Borealis. But this 
 solemn stranger influenced me otherwise than 
 through my fears. Some new power it seemed 
 to bring. I drew in energy with the keen, low 
 breeze that blew on its path. A bold thought was 
 sent to my mind; my mind was made strong to 
 receive it. 
 
 " Leave this wilderness," it was said to me, " and 
 go out hence." 
 
 " Where ?" was the query. 
 
 I had not very far to look: gazing from this 
 country parish in the flat, rich middle of England — 
 I mentally saw within reach what I had never yet 
 beheld with my bodily eyes ; I saw London. 
 
 The next day I returned to the hall, and asking 
 once more to see the housekeeper, I communicated 
 to her my plan. 
 
 Mrs. Barrett was a grave, judicious woman, 
 though she knew little more of the world than 
 myself; but grave and judicious as she was, she 
 did not charge me with being out of my senses : 
 and, indeed, I had a staid manner of my own which 
 
80 VILLETTE. 
 
 ere now had been as good to me as cloak and hood 
 of hodden gray ; since under its favour I had been 
 enabled to achieve with impunity, and even appro- 
 bation, deeds that if attempted with an excited and 
 unsettled air, would in some minds have stamped me 
 as a dreamer and zealot. 
 
 The housekeeper was slowly propounding some 
 difficulties, while she prepared orange-rind for mar- 
 malade, when a child ran past the window and 
 came bounding into, the room. It was a pretty 
 child, and as it danced, laughing, up to me — for we 
 were not strangers (nor, indeed, was its mother — 
 a young married daughter of the house — a stranger) 
 — I took it on my knee. Different as were our social 
 positions now, this child's mother and I had been 
 schoolfellows, when I was a girl of ten and she a 
 young lady of sixteen ; and I remembered her — 
 good-looking, but dull — in a lower class than mine. 
 
 I was admiring the boy's handsome dark eyes, 
 when the mother, young Mrs. Leigh, entered. 
 What a beautiful and kind-looking woman was the 
 good-natured and comely, but unintellectual girl 
 become ! Wifehood and maternity had changed her 
 thus, as I have since seen them change others even 
 less promising than she. Me she had forgotten. I 
 
TURNING A NEW LEAF. 81 
 
 was changed too ; though not, I fear, for the better. 
 I made no attempt to recall myself to her memory : 
 why should I ? She came for her son to accompany 
 her in a walk, and behind her followed a nurse 
 carrying an infant. I only mention the incident 
 because, in addressing the nurse, Mrs. Leigh spoke 
 French (very bad French, by the way, and with an 
 incorrigibly bad accent, again forcibly reminding me 
 of our school-days) ; and I found the woman was a 
 foreigner. The little boy chattered volubly in French 
 too. When the whole party were withdrawn, Mrs. 
 Barrett remarked that her young lady had brought 
 that foreign nurse home with her two years ago, on 
 her return from a Continental excursion; that she 
 was treated almost as well as a governess, and had 
 nothing to do but walk out with the baby and 
 chatter French with Master Charles ; " and," added 
 Mrs. Barrett, " she says there are many English- 
 women in foreign families as well placed as 
 she." 
 
 I stored up this piece of casual information, as 
 careful housewives store seemingly worthless shreds 
 and fragments for which their prescient minds an- 
 ticipate a possible use some day. Before I left my 
 old friend, she gave me the address of a respectable 
 
 VOL. I. G- 
 
S2 VILLETTE. 
 
 old-fashioned inn in the city, which, she said, my 
 uncles used to frequent in former days. 
 
 In going to London, I ran less risk and evinced 
 less enterprise than the reader may think. In fact, 
 the distance was only fifty miles. My means would 
 suffice both to take me there, to keep me a few days, 
 and also to bring me back if I found no inducement 
 to stay. I regarded it as a brief holiday, permitted 
 for once to work-weary faculties, rather than as an 
 adventure of life and death. There is nothing like 
 taking all you do at a moderate estimate : it keep 
 mind and body tranquil; whereas grandiloquent 
 notions are apt to hurry both into fever. 
 
 Fifty miles were then a day's journey, (for I 
 speak of a time gone by : my hair which till a 
 late period withstood the frosts of time, lies now, 
 at last white, under a white cap, like snow beneath 
 snow.) About nine o'clock of a wet February 
 night I reached London. 
 
 My reader, I know, is one who would not thank 
 me for an elaborate reproduction of poetic first 
 impressions; and it is well, inasmuch as I had 
 neither time nor mood to cherish such ; arriving 
 as I did late, on a dark, raw, and rainy evening, 
 in a Babylon and a wilderness of which the vast- 
 
TURNING A NEW LEAF. 83 
 
 ness and the strangeness tried to the utmost any 
 powers of clear thought and steady self-possession 
 with which, in the absence of more brilliant faculties, 
 Nature might have gifted me. 
 
 When I left the coach, the strange speech of 
 the cabmen and others waiting round, seemed to me 
 odd as a foreign tongue. I had never before heard 
 the English language chopped up in that way. 
 However, I managed to understand and to be 
 understood, so far as to get myself and trunk 
 safely conveyed to the old inn whereof I had the ad- 
 dress. How difficult, how oppressive, how puzzling 
 seemed my flight! In London for the first time; 
 at an inn for the first time ; tired with travelling ;- 
 confused with darkness; palsied with cold; un- 
 furnished with either experience or advice to tell 
 me how to act, and yet — to act obliged. 
 
 Into the hands of Common-sense I confided the 
 matter. Common-sense, however, was as chilled 
 and bewildered as all my other faculties, and it was 
 only under the spur of an inexorable necessity that 
 she spasmodically executed her trust. Thus urged, 
 she paid the porter : considering the crisis, I did 
 not blame her too much that she was hugely 
 cheated; she asked the waiter for a room; she 
 
84 VILLETTE. 
 
 timorously called for the chambermaid ; what is far 
 more, she bore, without being wholly overcome, a 
 highly supercilious style of demeanour from that 
 young lady, when she appeared. 
 
 I recollect this same chambermaid was a pattern 
 of town prettiness and smartness. So trim her 
 waist, her cap, her dress — I wondered how they had 
 all been manufactured. Her speech had an accent 
 which in its mincing glibness seemed to rebuke 
 mine as by authority ; her spruce attire flaunted an 
 easy scorn at my plain country garb. 
 
 * Well, it can't be helped," I thought, * and 
 then the scene is new, and the circumstances ; I shall 
 gain good." 
 
 Maintaining a very quiet manner towards this 
 arrogant little maid, and subsequently observing 
 the same towards the parsonic-looking, black-coated, 
 white-neckclothed waiter, I got civility from them 
 ere long. I believe at first they thought I was a 
 servant ; but in a little while they changed their 
 minds, and hovered in a doubtful state between 
 patronage and politeness. 
 
 I kept up well till I had partaken of some refresh- 
 ment, warmed myself by a fire, and was fairly shut 
 into my own room ; but, as I sat down by the bed 
 
TURNING- A NEW LEAF. 8$ 
 
 and rested my head and arms on the pillow, a 
 terrible oppression overcame me. All at once my 
 position rose on me like a ghost. Anomalous, deso- 
 late, almost blank of hope, it stood. What was I 
 doing here alone in great London? What should I 
 do on the morrow ? What prospects had I in life ? 
 What friends had I on earth ? Whence did I come ? 
 Whither should I go ? What should I do ? 
 
 I wet the pillow, my arms, and my hair, with 
 rushing tears. A dark interval of most bitter 
 thought followed this burst ; but I did not regret 
 the step taken, nor wish to retract it. A strong, 
 vague persuasion, that it was better to go forward 
 than backward, and that I could go forward — that 
 a way, however narrow and difficult, would in time 
 open, predominated over other feelings : its influence 
 hushed them so far, that at last I became sufficiently 
 tranquil to be able to say my prayers and seek my 
 couch. I had just extinguished my candle and lain 
 down, when a deep, low, mighty tone swung through 
 the night* At first I knew it not ; but it was uttered 
 twelve times, and at the twelfth colossal hum and 
 trembling knell, I said: " I lie in the shadow of 
 St. Paul's." 
 
86 VILLETTE. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 LONDON. 
 
 The next day was the first of March, and when 
 I awoke, rose, and opened my curtain, I saw the 
 risen sun struggling through fog. Above my head, 
 above the house-tops, co-elevate almost with the 
 clouds, I saw a solemn, orbed mass, dark-blue and 
 dim — the dome. While I looked, my inner self 
 moved ; my spirit shook its always-fettered wings 
 half loose ; I had a sudden feeling as if I, who 
 had never yet truly lived, were at last about to 
 taste life: in that morning my soul grew as fast 
 as Jonah's gourd. 
 
 " I did well to come," I said, proceeding to dress 
 with speed and care. " I like the spirit of this 
 great London which I feel around me. Who but 
 a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets, and 
 
LONDON. 87 
 
 for ever abandon his faculties to the eating rust 
 of obscurity?" 
 
 Being dressed, I went down, not travel-worn 
 and exhausted, but tidy and refreshed. When the 
 waiter came in with my breakfast, I managed to 
 accost him sedately, yet cheerfully; we had ten 
 minutes' discourse, in the course of which we be- 
 came usefully known to each other. 
 
 He was a gray-haired, elderly man ; and, it seemed, 
 had lived in his present place twenty years. Hav- 
 ing ascertained this, I was sure he must remember 
 my two uncles, Charles and Wihnot, who, fifteen 
 years ago, were frequent visitors here. I men- 
 tioned their names ; he recalled them perfectly, 
 and with respect. Having intimated my connec- 
 tion, my position in his eyes was henceforth clear, 
 and on a right footing. He said I was like my 
 uncle Charles: I suppose he spoke truth, because 
 Mrs. Barrett was accustomed to say the same thing. 
 A ready and obliging courtesy now replaced his 
 former uncomfortably doubtful manner: henceforth 
 I need no longer be at a loss for a civil answer to 
 a sensible question. 
 
 The street on which my little sitting-room win- 
 dow looked was narrow, perfectly quiet, and not 
 
88 VILLETTE. 
 
 dirty : the few passengers were just such as one 
 sees in provincial towns : here was nothing for- 
 midable; I felt sure I might venture out alone. 
 
 Having breakfasted, out I went. Elation and 
 pleasure were in my heart: to walk alone in Lon- 
 don seemed of itself an adventure. Presently I 
 found myself in Paternoster-row — classic ground 
 this. I entered a bookseller's shop, kept by one 
 Jones; I bought a little book — a piece of extra- 
 vagance I could ill afford; but I thought I would 
 one day give or send it to Mrs. Barrett. Mr. 
 Jones, a dried-in man of business, stood behind hisL 
 desk; he seemed one of the greatest, and I one 
 of the happiest, of beings. 
 
 Prodigious was the amount of life I lived that 
 morning. Finding myself before St. Paul's, I went 
 in ; I mounted to the dome : I saw thence London, 
 with its river, and its bridges, and its churches ; 
 I saw antique Westminster, and the green Temple 
 Gardens, with sun upon them, and a glad, blue sky 
 of early spring above ; and, between them and it, 
 not too dense a cloud of haze. 
 
 Descending, I went wandering whither chance 
 might lead, in a still ecstacy of freedom and en- 
 joyment; and I got — I know not how — I got into 
 
LONDON. 89 
 
 the heart of city life. I saw and felt London at 
 last : I got into the Strand ; I went tip Cornhill ; 
 I mixed with the life passing along; I dared the 
 perils of crossings. To do this, and to do it utterly- 
 alone, gave me, perhaps an irrational, but a real 
 pleasure. Since those days, I have seen the West- 
 end, the parks, the fine squares; but I love the 
 city far better. The city seems so much more in 
 earnest: its business, its rush, its roar, are such 
 serious things, sights, and sounds. The city is 
 getting its living — the West-end but enjoying its 
 pleasure. At the West-end you may be amused, 
 but in the city you are deeply excited. 
 
 Faint, at last, and hungry (it was years since I 
 had felt such healthy hunger), I returned, about 
 two o'clock, to my dark, old, and quiet inn. I 
 dined on two dishes — a plain joint, and vegetables ; 
 both seemed excellent (how much better than the 
 small, dainty messes Miss Marchmont's cook used 
 to send up to my kind, dead mistress and me, and 
 to the discussion of which we could not bring half 
 an appetite between us). Delightfully tired, I lay 
 down on three chairs for an hour (the room did 
 not boast a sofa). I slept, then I woke and thought 
 for two hours. 
 
90 VILLETTE. 
 
 My state of mind, and all accompanying circum- 
 stances, were just now such as most to favour the 
 adoption of a new, resolute, and daring — perhaps des- 
 perate — line of action. I had nothing to lose. Un- 
 utterable loathing of a desolate existence past for- 
 bade return. If I failed in what I now designed 
 to undertake, who, save myself, would suffer ? If I 
 died far away from — home, I was going to say, 
 but I had no home — from England, then, who 
 would weep? 
 
 I might suffer ; I was inured to suffering : death 
 itself had not, I thought, those terrors for me which 
 it has for the softly reared. I had, ere this, looked 
 on the thought of death with a quiet eye. Pre- 
 pared, then, for any consequences, I formed a 
 project. 
 
 That same evening I obtained from my friend, 
 the waiter, information respecting the sailing of 
 vessels for a certain continental port, Boue-Marine. 
 No time, I found, was to be lost : that very night 
 I must take my berth. I might, indeed, have 
 waited till the morning before going on board, but 
 would not run the risk of being too late. 
 
 " Better take your berth at once ma'am," coun- 
 selled the waiter. I agreed with him, and having 
 
LONDON. 91 
 
 discharged nay bill, and acknowledged my friend's 
 services at a rate which. I now know was princely, 
 and which in his eyes must have seemed absurd — 
 and indeed, while pocketing the cash, he smiled a 
 faint smile which intimated his opinion of the donor's 
 savoir-faire — he proceeded to call a coach. To the 
 driver he also recommended me, giving at the 
 same time an injunction about taking me, I think, 
 to the wharf, and not leaving me to the watermen; 
 which that functionary promised to observe, but 
 failed in keeping his promise. On the contrary, 
 he offered me up as an oblation, served me as a 
 dripping roast, making me alight in the midst of a 
 throng of watermen. 
 
 This was an uncomfortable crisis. It was a dark 
 night. The coachman instantly drove off as soon as 
 he had got his fare; the watermen commenced a 
 struggle for me and my trunk. Their oaths I hear 
 at this moment : they shook my philosophy more 
 than did the night, or the isolation, or the strange- 
 ness of the scene. One laid hands on my trunk. I 
 looked on and waited quietly ; but when another 
 laid hands on me, I spoke up, shook off his touch, 
 stepped at once into a boat, desired austerely that 
 the trunk should be placed beside me — " Just 
 
92 VILLETTE. 
 
 there," — which was instantly done ; for the owner of 
 the boat I had chosen became now an ally : I was 
 rowed off. 
 
 Black was the river as a torrent of ink : lights 
 glanced on it from the piles of building round, ships 
 rocked on its bosom. They rowed me up to several 
 vessels ; I read by lantern-light their names painted 
 in great, white letters on a dark ground. " The 
 Ocean," "The Phoenix," "The Consort," "The 
 Dolphin," were passed in turns ; but " The Vivid " 
 was my ship, and it seemed she lay further down. 
 
 Down the sable flood we glided; I thought of 
 the Styx, and of Charon rowing some solitary soul 
 to the Land of Shades. Amidst the strange scene, 
 with a chilly wind blowing in my face, and mid- 
 night-clouds dropping rain above my head ; with two 
 rude rowers for companions, whose insane oaths 
 still tortured my ear, I asked myself if I was 
 wretched or terrified. I was neither. Often in my 
 life have I been far more so under comparatively 
 safe circumstances. " How is this ?" said I. " Me- 
 thinks I am animated and alert, instead of being 
 depressed and apprehensive ? " I could not tell how 
 it was. 
 
 " The Vivid" started out, white and glaring, 
 
LONDON. 93 
 
 from the black night at last. " Here you are ! " said 
 the waterman, and instantly demanded six shillings. 
 
 " You ask too much," I said. He drew off from 
 the vessel and swore he would not embark me till 
 I paid it. A young man, the steward as I found 
 afterwards, was looking over the ship's side; he 
 grinned a smile in anticipation of the coming con- 
 test ; to disappoint him, I paid the money. Three 
 times that afternoon I had given crowns where I 
 should have given shillings ; but I consoled myself 
 with the reflection, " It is the price of experience." 
 
 " They've cheated you !" said the steward exult- 
 antly when I got on board. I answered phlegmati- 
 cally that " I knew it," and went below. 
 
 A stout, handsome, and showy woman was in the 
 ladies' cabin ; I asked to be shown my berth ; she 
 looked hard at me, muttered something about its 
 being unusual for passengers to come on board at 
 that hour, and seemed disposed to be less than civil. 
 What a face she had — so comely — so insolent and 
 so selfish ! 
 
 " Now that I ' am on board, I shall certainty 
 stay here," was my answer. " I will trouble you 
 to show me my berth." 
 
 She complied, but sullenly. I took off my bonnet, 
 
94 VILLETTE. 
 
 arranged my things, and lay down. Some difficulties 
 had been passed through; a sort of victory was 
 won : my homeless, anchorless, unsupported mind 
 had again leisure for a brief repose : till the " Vivid " 
 arrived in harbour, no further action would be re- 
 quired of me, but then Oh ! I could not 
 
 look forward. Harassed, exhausted, I lay in a half- 
 trance. 
 
 The stewardess talked all night ; not to me, but 
 to the young steward, her son and her very picture. 
 He passed in and out of the cabin continually : they 
 disputed, they quarrelled, they made it up again 
 twenty times in the course of the night. She pro- 
 fessed to be writing a letter home, — she said to her 
 father ; she read passages of it aloud, heeding me no 
 more^than a stock — perhaps she believed me asleep : 
 several of these passages appeared to comprise 
 family secrets, and bore special reference to one 
 " Charlotte," a younger sister who, from the bear- 
 ing of the epistle, seemed to be on the brink of 
 perpetrating a romantic and imprudent match ; loud 
 was the protest of this elder lady against the dis- 
 tasteful union. The dutiful son laughed his mother's 
 correspondence to scorn. She defended it, and raved 
 at him. They were a strange pair. She might be 
 
LONDON. 95 
 
 thirty-nine or forty, and was buxom and blooming 
 as a girl of twenty. Hard, loud, vain and vulgar, 
 her mind and body alike seemed brazen and im- 
 perishable. I should think, from her childhood, she 
 must have lived in public stations ; and in her youth 
 might very likely have been a bar-maid. 
 
 Towards morning her discourse ran on a new 
 theme: "the Watsons," a certain expected family- 
 party of passengers, known to her, it appeared, and 
 by her much esteemed on account of the handsome 
 profit realized in their fees. She said, " it was as 
 good as a little fortune to her whenever this family 
 crossed." 
 
 At dawn all were astir, and by sunrise the pas- 
 sengers came on board. Boisterous was the wel- 
 come given by the stewardess to the ""Watsons," 
 and great was the bustle made in their honour. 
 They were four in number, two males and two 
 females. Besides them, there was but one other 
 passenger — a young lady, whom a gentlemanly, 
 though languid - looking man escorted. The two 
 groups offered a marked contrast. The Watsons 
 were doubtless rich people, for they had the con- 
 fidence of conscious wealth in their bearing; the 
 women — youthful both of them, and one perfectly 
 
96 VILLETTE. 
 
 handsome, as far as physical beauty went — were 
 dressed richly, gaily, and absurdly out of character 
 for the circumstances. Their bonnets with bright 
 flowers, their velvet cloaks and silk dresses seemed 
 better suited for park or promenade than for a damp 
 packet-deck. The men were of low stature, plain, 
 fat, and vulgar ; the oldest, plainest, greasiest, 
 broadest, I soon found was the husband — the bride- 
 groom I suppose, for she was very young — of the 
 beautiful girl. Deep was my amazement at this 
 discovery ; and deeper still when I perceived that, 
 instead of being desperately wretched in such a 
 union, she was gay even to giddiness. " Her 
 laughter," I reflected, "must be the mere frenzy 
 of despair." And even while this thought was 
 crossing my mind, as I stood leaning quiet and 
 solitary against the ship's side, she came tripping 
 up to me, an utter stranger, with a camp stool in 
 her hand, and smiling a smile of which the levity 
 puzzled and startled me, though it showed a perfect 
 set of perfect teeth, she offered me the accommodation 
 of this piece of furniture. I declined it, of course with 
 all the courtesy I could put into my manner ; she 
 danced off heedless and lightsome. She must have 
 been good-natured ; but what had made her marry 
 
LONDON. 97 
 
 that individual, who was at least as much like an 
 oil-barrel as a man ? 
 
 The other lady-passenger, with the gentleman- 
 companion, was quite a girl, pretty and fair; her 
 simple print dress, untrimmed straw - bonnet, and 
 large shawl, gracefully worn, formed a costume plain 
 to quakerism : yet, for her, becoming enough. Be- 
 fore the gentleman quitted her, I observed him throw- 
 ing a glance of scrutiny over all the passengers, as 
 if to ascertain in what company his charge would be 
 left. With a most dissatisfied air did his eye turn 
 from the ladies with the gay flowers : he looked at 
 me, and then he spoke to his daughter, niece, or 
 whatever she was ; she also glanced in my direction, 
 and slightly curled her short, pretty lip. It might 
 be myself, or it might be my homely mourning- 
 habit that elicited this mark of contempt; more 
 likely, both. A bell rang ; her father (I afterwards 
 knew that it was her father) kissed her and returned 
 to land. The packet sailed. 
 
 Foreigners say that it is only English girls who 
 can thus be trusted to travel alone, and deep is their 
 wonder at the daring confidence of English parents 
 and guardians. As for the " jeunes Miss," by some 
 their intrepidity is pronounced masculine and " in- 
 
 vol. i. n 
 
Vq villette. 
 
 convenant," others regard them as the passive 
 victims of an educational and theological system 
 which wantonly dispenses with proper u surveil- 
 lance." Whether this particular young lady was 
 of the sort that can the most safely be left un- 
 watched, I do not know : or rather did not then 
 know; but it soon appeared that the dignity of 
 solitude was not to her taste. She paced the deck 
 once or twice backwards and forwards ; she looked 
 with a little sour air of disdain at the flaunting silks 
 and velvets, and the bears which thereon danced 
 attendance, and eventually she approached me and 
 spoke. 
 
 "Are you fond of a sea-voyage?" was her ques- 
 tion. 
 
 I explained that my fondness for a sea-voyage had 
 yet to undergo the test of experience : I had never 
 made one. 
 
 " Oh how charming ! " cried she. " I quite envy 
 you the novelty : first impressions, you know, are 
 so pleasant. Now I have made so many, I quite 
 forget the first: I am quite blasee about the sea 
 and all that." 
 
 I could not help smiling. 
 
 " Why do you laugh at me ?" she inquired, with 
 
LONDON. 99 
 
 a frank testiness that pleased me better than her 
 other talk. 
 
 " Because you are so young to be blasee about 
 anything." 
 
 " I am seventeen" (a little piqued). 
 
 " You hardly look sixteen. Do you like travel- 
 ling alone?" 
 
 " Bah ! I care nothing about it. I have crossed 
 the Channel ten times, alone ; but then I take care 
 never to be long alone : I always make friends." 
 
 " You will scarcely make many friends this voy- 
 age, I think" (glancing at the Watson-group, who 
 were now laughing and making a great deal of 
 noise on deck). 
 
 " Not of those odious men and women," said 
 she : * such people should be steerage passengers. 
 Are you going to school ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Where are you going ?" 
 
 " I have not the least idea — beyond, at least, the 
 Port of Bouemarine." 
 
 She stared, then carelessly ran on : 
 
 " I am going to school. Oh the number of foreign 
 schools I have been at in my life ! And yet I am 
 quite an ignoramus. I know nothing — nothing in 
 
] 00 VILLETTE. 
 
 the world — I assure you; except that I play and 
 dance beautifully, — and French and German of 
 course I know, to speak ; but I can't read or write 
 them very well. Do you know they wanted me to 
 translate a page of an easy German book into 
 English the other day, and I couldn't do it. Papa 
 was so mortified : he says it looks as if M. de 
 Bassompierre — my god -papa, who pays all my 
 school-bills — had thrown away all his money. And 
 then, in matters of information — in history, geo- 
 graphy, arithmetic, and so on, I am quite a baby ; 
 and I write English so badly — such spelling and 
 grammar, they tell me. Into the bargain I have 
 quite forgotten my religion ; they call me a Pro- 
 testant, you knoAv, but really I am not sure whether 
 I am one or not : I don't well know the difference 
 between Romanism and Protestantism. However, 
 I don't in the least care for that. I was a Lutheran 
 once at Bonn — dear Bonn ! — charming Bonn ! — 
 where there were so many handsome students. 
 Every nice girl in our school had an admirer; they 
 knew our hours for walking out, and almost always 
 passed us on the promenade : f Schemes M'adchen,' 
 we used to hear them say. I was excessively happy 
 at Bonn!" 
 
LONDON. 101 
 
 " And where are you now?" I inquired. 
 
 " Oh ! at — chose" said she. 
 
 Now Miss Ginevra Fanshawe (such was this 
 young person's name) only substituted this word 
 " chose " in temporary oblivion of the real name. 
 It was a habit she had : " chose " came in at every 
 turn in her conversation — the convenient substitute 
 for any missing word in any language she might 
 chance at the time to be speaking. French girls 
 often do the like ; from them she had caught the 
 custom. " Chose" however, I found, in this instance, 
 stood for Villette — the great capital of the great 
 kingdom of LabassecoUr. 
 
 " Do you like Villette ?" I asked. 
 
 " Pretty well. The natives, you know, are in- 
 tensely stupid and vulgar ; but there are some nice 
 English families." 
 
 " Are you in a school ?" 
 
 « Yes." 
 
 " A good one?" 
 
 " Oh no ! horrid : but I go out every Sunday, 
 and care nothing about the mattresses or the pro- 
 fesseurs, or the eleves, and send lessons au diahle ; 
 (one daren't say that in English, you know, but it 
 sounds quite right in French,) and thus I get on 
 
102 VILLETTE. 
 
 charmingly . . , . You are laughing at me 
 again ?" 
 
 " No — I am only smiling at my own thoughts." 
 
 " What are they?" (without waiting for an 
 answer) — " Now do tell me where you are 
 going." 
 
 " Where Fate may lead me. My business is to 
 earn a living where I can find it." 
 
 " To earn ! " (in consternation) " are you poor 
 then?" 
 
 " As poor as Job." 
 
 (After a pause) " Bah ! how unpleasant ! But 2" 
 know what it is to be poor : they are poor enough 
 at home — papa and mama, and all of them. Papa 
 is called Captain Fanshawe; he is an officer on 
 half-pay, but well-descended, and some of our con- 
 nections are great enough ; but my uncle and god- 
 papa De Bassompierre, who lives in France, is the 
 only one that helps us: he educates us girls. I 
 have five sisters and three brothers. By-and-by 
 we are to marry — rather elderly gentlemen, I 
 suppose, with cash: papa and mama manage that. 
 My sister Augusta is married now to a man much 
 older-looking than papa. Augusta is very beauti- 
 ful — not in my style — but dark; her husband, 
 
LONDON. 103 
 
 Mr. Davies, had the yellow fever in India, and 
 he is still the colour of a guinea; but then he 
 is rich, and Augusta has her carriage and estab- 
 lishment, and we all think she has done perfectly 
 well. Now this is better than ( earning a living,' 
 as you say. By the way, are you clever?" 
 
 " No— not at all." 
 
 " You can play, sing, speak three or four lan- 
 guages?" 
 
 " By no means." 
 
 " Still I think you are clever" (a pause and a 
 yawn). " Shall you be sea-sick?" 
 
 "Shall you?" 
 
 " Oh, immensely ! as soon as ever we get in 
 sight of the sea : I begin, indeed, to feel it already. 
 I shall go below ; and won't I order about that fat, 
 odious stewardess. Heureusement je sais faire aller 
 mon monde." Down she went. 
 
 It was not long before the other passengers fol- 
 lowed her: throughout the afternoon I remained 
 on deck alone. When I recall the tranquil, and 
 even happy mood in which I passed those hours, 
 and remember, at the same time, the position in 
 which I was placed: its hazardous — some would 
 have said its hopeless — character; I feel that, as — 
 
104 VILLETTE. 
 
 " Stone walls do not a prison make, 
 Nor iron bars— a cage." 
 
 so peril, loneliness, an uncertain future, are not 
 oppressive evils, so long as the frame is healthy and 
 the faculties are employed; so long, especially, as 
 Liberty lends us her wings, and Hope guides us 
 by her star. 
 
 I was not sick till long after we passed Margate, 
 and deep was the pleasure I drank in with the sea- 
 breeze ; divine the delight I drew from the heaving 
 channel-waves, from the sea-birds on their ridges, 
 from the white sails on their dark distance, from 
 the quiet, yet beclouded sky, overhanging all. In 
 my reverie, methought I saw the continent of 
 Europe, like a wide dream-land, far away. Sun- 
 shine lay on it, making the long coast one line of 
 gold; tiniest tracery of clustered town and snow- 
 gleaming tower, of woods deep-massed, of heights 
 serrated, of smooth pasturage and veiny stream, 
 embossed the metal-bright prospect. For back- 
 ground, spread a sky, solemn and dark-blue, and — 
 grand with imperial promise, soft with tints of en- 
 chantment — strode from north to south a God-bent 
 bow, an arch of hope. 
 
 Cancel the whole of that, if you please, reader — 
 
LONDON. 105 
 
 or rather let it stand, and draw thence a moral- — 
 an alliterative, text-hand copy — 
 
 " Day-dreams are delusions of the demon." 
 
 Becoming excessively sick, I faltered down into 
 the cabin. 
 
 Miss Fanshawe's berth chanced to be next mine ; 
 and, I am sorry to say, she tormented me with an 
 unsparing selfishness during the whole time of our 
 mutual distress. Nothing could exceed her im- 
 patience and fretfulness. The Watsons, who were 
 very sick too, and on whom the stewardess attended 
 with shameless partiality, were stoics compared 
 with her. Many a time since have I noticed, in 
 persons of Ginevra Fanshawe's light, careless tem- 
 perament, and fair, fragile style of beauty, an entire 
 incapacity to endure : they seem to sour in adver- 
 sity, like small-beer in thunder : the man who takes 
 such a woman for his wife, ought to be prepared to 
 guarantee her an existence all sunshine. Indignant 
 at last with her teazing peevishness, I curtly re- 
 quested her " to hold her tongue." The rebuff did 
 her good, and it was observable that she liked me 
 no worse for it. 
 
 As dark night drew on, the sea roughened : larger 
 
106 VILLETTE. 
 
 waves swayed strong against the vessel's side. It 
 was strange to reflect that blackness and water 
 were round us, and to feel the ship ploughing 
 straight on her pathless way, despite noise, billow, 
 and rising gale. Articles of furniture began to fall 
 about, and it became needful to lash them to their 
 places ; the passengers grew sicker than ever ; Miss 
 Fanshawe declared, with groans, that she must die. 
 
 " Not just yet, honey," said the stewardess. 
 "We're just in port." Accordingly, in another 
 quarter of an hour, a calm fell upon us all; and 
 about midnight the voyage ended. 
 
 I was sorry: yes, I was sorry. My resting-time 
 was past ; my difficulties — my stringent difficulties — 
 recommenced. When I went on deck, the cold air 
 and black scowl of the night seemed to rebuke me 
 for my presumption in being where I was: the 
 lights of the foreign sea-port town, glimmering 
 round the foreign harbour, met me like unnumbered 
 threatening eyes. Friends came on board to wel- 
 come the Watsons ; a whole family of friends sur- 
 rounded and bore away Miss Fanshawe ; I 
 
 but I dared not for one moment dwell on a com- 
 parison of positions. 
 
 Yet where should I go? I must go somewhere. 
 
LONDON. 107 
 
 Necessity dare not be nice. As I gave the 
 stewardess her fee — and she seemed surprised at 
 receiving a coin of more value than, from such a 
 quarter, her coarse calculations had probably reck- 
 oned on — I said : 
 
 "Be kind enough to direct me to some quiet, 
 respectable inn, where I can go for the night." 
 
 She not only gave me the required direction, but 
 called a commissionaire, and bid him take charge 
 of me, and — not my trunk, for that was gone to 
 the custom-house. 
 
 I followed this man along a rudely-paved street, 
 lit now by a fitful gleam of moonlight ; he brought 
 me to the inn. I offered him sixpence, which he 
 refused to take ; supposing it not enough, I changed 
 it for a shilling ; but this also he declined, speaking 
 rather sharply, in a language to me unknown. A 
 waiter, coming forward into the lamp-lit inn-pas- 
 sage, reminded me, in broken English, that my 
 money was foreign money, not current here. I 
 gave him a sovereign to change. This little matter 
 settled, I asked for a bed-room ; supper I could 
 not take : I was still sea-sick and unnerved, and 
 trembling all over. How deeply glad I was when 
 the door of a very small chamber at length closed 
 
108 VILLETTE. 
 
 on me and my exhaustion. Again I might rest : 
 though the cloud of doubt would be as thick to- 
 morrow as ever; the necessity for exertion more 
 urgent, the peril (of destitution) nearer, the conflict 
 (for existence) more severe. 
 
VILLETTE. 109 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 I awoke next morning with courage revived and 
 spirits refreshed : physical debility no longer ener- 
 vated my judgment; my mind felt prompt and 
 clear. 
 
 Just as I finished dressing, a tap came to the door ; 
 I said, "Come in," expecting the chambermaid, 
 whereas a rough man walked in and said, — 
 
 " Gif me your keys, Meess." 
 
 "Why?" I asked. 
 
 "Gif!" said he impatiently; and as he half- 
 snatched them from my hand, he added, " All 
 right ! haf your tronc soon." 
 
 Fortunately it did turn out all right: he was 
 from the custom-house. Where to go to get some 
 breakfast I could not tell; but I proceeded, not 
 without hesitation, to descend. 
 
110 VILLETTE. 
 
 I now observed, what I had not noticed in my 
 extreme weariness last night, viz., that this inn was, 
 in fact, a large hotel; and as I slowly descended the 
 broad staircase, halting on each step (for I was in 
 wonderfully little haste to get down), I gazed at 
 the high ceiling above me, at the painted walls 
 around, at the wide windows which filled the house 
 with light, at the veined marble I trode (for the 
 steps were all of marble, though uncarpeted and 
 not very clean), and contrasting all this with the 
 dimensions of the closet assigned to me as a chamber, 
 with the extreme modesty of its appointments, I fell 
 into a philosophizing mood. 
 
 Much I marvelled at the sagacity evinced by 
 waiters and chambermaids in proportioning the ac- 
 commodation to the guest. How could inn-servants 
 and ship-stewardesses everywhere tell at a glance that 
 I, for instance, was an individual of no social signi- 
 ficance and little burdened by cash ? They did know 
 it, evidently : I saw quite well that they all, in a 
 moment's calculation, estimated me at about the 
 same fractional value. The fact seemed to me curi- 
 ous and pregnant : I would not disguise from my- 
 self what it indicated, yet managed to keep up my 
 spirits pretty well under its pressure. 
 
VILLETTE. Ill 
 
 Having at last landed in a great hall, full of sky- 
 light glare, I made my way somehow to what 
 proved to be the coffee-room. It cannot be denied 
 that on entering this room I trembled somewhat; 
 felt uncertain, solitary, wretched ; wished to Heaven 
 I knew whether I was doing right or wrong ; felt 
 convinced it was the last, but could not help my- 
 self. Acting in the spirit and with the calm of a 
 fatalist, I sat down at a small table, to which a 
 waiter presently brought me some breakfast ; and I 
 partook of that meal in a frame of mind not greatly 
 calculated to favour digestion. There were many 
 other people breakfasting at other tables in the 
 room; I should have felt rather more happy if 
 amongst them all I could have seen any women ; 
 however, there was not one — all present were men. 
 But nobody seemed to think I was doing any- 
 thing strange; one or two gentlemen glanced 
 at me occasionally, but none stared obtrusively : 
 I suppose if there was anything eccentric in the 
 business, they accounted for it by this word 
 " Anglaise ! " 
 
 Breakfast over, I must again move — in what 
 direction ? " Go to Villette," said an inward voice ; 
 prompted doubtless by the recollection of this slight 
 
112 VILLETTE. 
 
 sentence uttered carelessly and at random by Miss 
 Fanshawe, as she bid me good-bye : 
 
 " I wish you would come to Madame Beck's ; she 
 has some marmots whom you might look after : she 
 wants an English gouvernante, or was wanting one 
 two months ago." 
 
 "Who Madame Beck was, where she lived, I knew 
 not ; I had asked, but the question passed unheard : 
 Miss Fanshawe, hurried away by her friends, left it 
 unanswered. I presumed Villette to be her resi- 
 dence — to Villette I would go. The distance was 
 forty miles. I knew I was catching at straws ; but 
 in the wide and weltering deep where I found my- 
 self, I would have caught at cobwebs. Having in- 
 quired about the means of travelling to Villette, and 
 secured a seat in the Diligence, I departed on the 
 strength of this outline — this shadow of a project. 
 Before you pronounce on the rashness of the pro- 
 ceeding, reader, look back to the point whence I 
 started; consider the desert I had left, note how 
 little I perilled: mine was the game where the 
 player cannot lose and may win. 
 
 Of an artistic temperament, I deny that I am; 
 yet I must possess something of the artist's faculty 
 of making the most of present pleasure : that is to 
 
VILLETTE. 113 
 
 say, when it is of the kind to my taste ; I en- 
 joyed that day, though we travelled slowly, though 
 it was cold, though it rained. Somewhat bare, 
 flat, and treeless was the ^route along which our 
 journey lay; and slimy canals crept, like half-torpid 
 green snakes, beside the road; and formal pollard 
 willows edged level fields, tilled like kitchen-garden 
 beds. The sky too was monotonously gray ; the 
 atmosphere was stagnant and humid ; yet amidst all 
 these deadening influences, my fancy budded fresh 
 and my heart basked in sunshine. These feelings, 
 however, were well kept in check by the secret but 
 ceaseless consciousness of anxiety lying in wait on 
 enjoyment, like a tiger crouched in a jungle. The 
 breathing of that beast of prey was 'in my ear 
 always ; his fierce heart panted close against mine ; 
 he never stirred in his lair but I felt him : I knew 
 he waited only for sun* down to bound ravenous 
 from his ambush. 
 
 I had hoped we might reach Villette ere night 
 set in, and that thus I might escape the deeper 
 embarrassment which obscurity seems to throw 
 round a first arrival at an unknown bourne ; but, 
 what with our slow progress and long stoppages — 
 what with a thick fog and small, dense rain — dark- 
 
 VOL. I. I 
 
114 VILLETTE. 
 
 ness that might almost be felt, had settled on the 
 city by the time we gained its suburbs. 
 
 I know we passed through a gate where soldiers 
 were stationed — so much I could see by lamplight ; 
 then, having left behind us the miry Chaussee, we 
 rattled over a pavement of strangely rough and 
 flinty surface. At a bureau, the diligence stopped, 
 and the passengers alighted. My first business was 
 to get my trunk : a small matter enough, but im- 
 portant to me. Understanding that it was best not 
 to be importunate or over-eager about luggage, but 
 to wait and watch quietly the delivery of other 
 boxes till I saw my own, and then promptly claim 
 and secure it, I stood apart ; my eye fixed on that 
 part of the* vehicle in which I had seen my little 
 portmanteau safely stowed, and upon which, piles of 
 additional bags and boxes were now heaped. One by 
 one, I saw these removed, lowered, and seized on. 
 I was sure mine ought to be by this time visible : 
 it was not. I had tied on the direction card with 
 a piece of green ribbon, that I might know it at a 
 glance : not a fringe or fragment of green was 
 perceptible. Every package was removed ; every 
 tin-case and brown paper parcel ; the oil-cloth cover 
 was lifted ; I saw with distinct vision that not 
 
VILLETTE. 1 1 5 
 
 an umbrella, cloak, cane, hat-box or band-box 
 remained. 
 
 And my portmanteau, with my few clothes and 
 little pocket-book enclasping the remnant of my 
 fifteen pounds, where were they ? 
 
 I ask this question now, but I could not ask it 
 then. I could say nothing whatever; not possessing 
 a phrase of speaking French : and it was French, and 
 French only, the whole world seemed now gabbling 
 round me. What should I do? Approaching the 
 conductor, I just laid my hand on his arm, pointed 
 to a trunk, then to the diligence-roof, and tried to 
 express a question .with my eyes. He misunder- 
 stood me, seized the trunk indicated, and was about 
 to hoist it on the vehicle. 
 
 " Let that alone — will you ? " said a voice in 
 good English ; then, in correction, " Qu' est ce que 
 vous faites done ? Cette malle est a, moi." 
 
 But I had heard the Fatherland accents; they 
 rejoiced my heart; I turned: 
 
 " Sir," said I, appealing to the stranger, with- 
 out in my distress noticing what he was like, " I 
 cannot speak French. May I entreat you to ask 
 this man what he has done with my trunk ? " 
 
 "Without discriminating, for the moment, what 
 
116 VILLETTE. 
 
 sort of face it was to which my eyes were raised 
 and on which they were fixed, I felt in its expression 
 half-surprise at my appeal and half-doubt of the 
 wisdom of interference. 
 
 " Do ask him ; I would do as much for you," 
 said I. 
 
 I don't know whether he smiled, but he said in a 
 gentlemanly tone ; that is to say, a tone not hard nor 
 terrifying, — 
 
 "What sort of trunk was yours?" 
 
 I described it, including in my description the 
 green ribbon. And forthwith he took the con- 
 ductor under hand, and I felt, through all the storm 
 of French which followed, that he raked him fore 
 and aft. Presently he returned to me. 
 
 " The fellow avers he was overloaded,' and con- 
 fesses that he removed your trunk after you saw it 
 put on, and has left it behind at Boue-Marine with 
 other parcels ; he has promised, however, to for- 
 ward it to-morrow; the day after, therefore, you 
 will find it safe at this bureau." 
 
 " Thank you," said I : but my heart sank. 
 
 Meantime what should I do ? Perhaps this Eng- 
 lish gentleman saw the failure of courage in my 
 face ; he inquired kindly, 
 
VILLETTE. 117 
 
 " Have you any friends in this city?" 
 
 " No, and I don't know where to go." 
 
 There was a little pause, in the course of which, 
 as he turned more fully to the light of a lamp above 
 him, I saw that he was a young, distinguished, and 
 handsome man ; he might be a lord, for anything I 
 knew : nature had made him good enough for a 
 prince, I thought. His face was very pleasant; he 
 looked high but not arrogant, manly but not over- 
 bearing, I was turning away, in the deep conscious- 
 nesss of all absence of claim to look for further help 
 from such a one as he. 
 
 ""Was all your money in your trunk?" he asked, 
 stopping me. 
 
 How thankful was I to be able to answer with 
 truth, — 
 
 " No. I have enough in my purse" (for I had near 
 twenty francs) " to keep me at a quiet inn till the 
 day after to-morrow ; but I am quite a stranger in 
 Villette, and don't know the streets and the inns." 
 
 K I can give you the address of such an inn as 
 you want," said he ; " and it is not far off: with my 
 direction you will easily find it." 
 
 He tore a leaf from his pocket-book, wrote a few 
 words and gave it to me. I did think him kind ; and 
 
118 VILLETTE. 
 
 as to distrusting him, or his advice, or his address, I 
 should almost as soon have thought of distrusting 
 the Bible. There was goodness in his countenance, 
 and honour in his bright eyes. 
 
 " Your shortest way will be to follow the boule- 
 vard, and cross the park," he continued ; " but 
 it is too late and too dark for a woman to go 
 through the park alone ; I will step with you thus 
 far." 
 
 He moved on, and I followed him, through the 
 darkness and the small soaking rain. The Boule- 
 vard was all deserted, its path miry, the water 
 dripping from its trees; the park was black as 
 midnight. In the double gloom of trees and fog, 
 I could not see my guide ; I could only follow his 
 tread. Not the least fear had I : I believe I would 
 have followed that frank tread, through continual 
 night, to the world's end. 
 
 " Now," said he, when the park was traversed, 
 " you will go along this broad street till you come 
 to steps; two lamps will show you where they are : 
 these steps you will descend : a narrower street lies 
 below ; following that, at the bottom you will find 
 your inn. They speak English there, so your diffi- 
 culties are now pretty well over. Good-night." 
 
VILLETTE. 119 
 
 " Good-night, sir," said I : " accept my sincerest 
 thanks." And we parted. 
 
 The remembrance of his countenance, which I am 
 sure wore a light not unbenignant to the friendless — 
 the sound in my ear of his voice, which spoke a 
 nature chivalric to the needy and feeble, as well as 
 the youthful and fair — were a sort of cordial to me 
 long after. He was a true young English gentleman. 
 
 On I went, hurrying fast through a magnificent 
 street and square, with the grandest houses round, 
 and amidst them the huge outline of more than 
 one overbearing pile; which might be palace, or 
 church — I could not tell. Just as I passed a 
 portico, two moustachioed men came suddenly from 
 behind the pillars ; they were smoking cigars, their 
 dress implied pretensions to the rank of gentlemen, 
 but, poor things! they were very plebeian in soul. 
 They spoke with insolence, and, fast as I walked, 
 they kept pace with me a long way. At last I 
 met a sort of patrol, and my dreaded hunters were 
 turned from the pursuit; but they had driven me 
 beyond my reckoning: when I could collect my 
 faculties, I no longer knew where I was; the 
 staircase I must long since have passed ; puzzled, 
 out of breath, all my pulses throbbing in inevitable 
 
120 VILLETTE. 
 
 agitation, I knew not where to turn. It was ter- 
 rible to think of again encountering those bearded, 
 sneering simpletons; yet the ground must be re- 
 traced, and the steps sought out. 
 
 I came at last to an old and worn flight, and, 
 taking it for granted that this must be the one 
 indicated, I descended them. The street into which 
 they led was indeed narrow, but it contained no 
 inn. On I wandered. In a very quiet and com- 
 paratively clean and well-paved street, I saw a 
 light burning over the door of a rather large house, 
 loftier by a storey than those round it. This 
 might be the inn at last. I hastened on : my 
 knees now trembled under me : I was getting quite 
 exhausted. 
 
 No inn was this. A brass-plate embellished the 
 great Porte-cochere : " Pensionnat de Demoiselles " 
 was the inscription ; and beneath, a name, " Madame 
 Beck." 
 
 I started. About a hundred thoughts volleyed 
 through my mind in a moment. Yet I planned 
 nothing, and considered nothing : I had not time. 
 Providence said, " Stop here ; this is your inn." 
 Fate took me in her strong hand; mastered my 
 will; directed my actions: I rung the door-bell. 
 
VILLETTE. 121 
 
 While I waited, I would not reflect. I fixedly- 
 looked at the street-stones, where the door-lamp 
 shone, and counted them, and noted their shapes, 
 and the glitter of wet on their angles. I rang 
 again. They opened at last. A bonne in a smart 
 cap stood before me. 
 
 " May I see Madame Beck ? " I inquired. 
 
 I believe if I had spoken French she would not 
 have admitted me; but, as I spoke English, she 
 concluded I was a foreign teacher come on business 
 connected with the Pensionnat, and, even at that 
 late hour, she let me in, without a word of reluc- 
 tance or a moment of hesitation. 
 
 The next moment I sat in a cold, glittering salon, 
 with porcelain stove unlit, and gilded ornaments, 
 and polished floor. A pendule on the mantel-piece 
 struck nine o'clock. 
 
 A quarter of an hour passed. How fast beat 
 every pulse in my frame! How I turned cold 
 and hot by turns ! I sat with my eyes fixed on 
 the door — a great white folding-door, with gilt 
 mouldings : I watched to see a leaf move and open. 
 All had been quiet: not a mouse had stirred; the 
 white doors were closed and motionless. 
 
 " You ayre Engliss ? " said a voice at my elbow. 
 
122 VILLETTE. 
 
 I almost bounded, so unexpected was the sound ; 
 so certain had I been of solitude. 
 
 No ghost stood beside me, nor anything of spec- 
 tral aspect ; merely a motherly, dumpy little woman, 
 in a large shawl, a wrapping-gown, and a clean, 
 trim night-cap. 
 
 I said I was English, and immediately, without 
 further prelude, we fell to a most remarkable con- 
 versation. Madame Beck (for Madame Beck it 
 was — she had entered by a little door behind me, 
 and, being shod with the shoes of silence, I had 
 heard neither her entrance nor approach) — Madame 
 Beck had exhausted her command of insular speech 
 when she said "You ayre Engliss," and she now 
 proceeded to work away volubly in her own tongue. 
 I answered in mine. She partly understood me, 
 but as I did not at all understand her — though we 
 made together an awful clamour (anything like 
 madame's gift of utterance I had not hitherto heard 
 or imagined) — we achieved little progress. She 
 rang, ere long, for aid ; which arrived in the shape 
 of a "maitresse," who had been partly educated 
 in an Irish convent, and was esteemed a perfect 
 adept in the English language. A bluff little per- 
 sonage this maitresse was — Labassecourienne from 
 
VILLETTE. 123 
 
 top to toe: and how she did slaughter the speech 
 of Albion ! However, I told her a plain tale, which 
 she translated. I told her how I had left my own 
 country, intent on extending my knowledge, and 
 gaining my bread; how I was ready to turn my 
 hand to any Useful thing, provided it was not 
 wrong or degrading: how I would be a child's- 
 nurse or a lady's-maid, and would not refuse even 
 housework adapted to my strength. Madame 
 heard this; and, questioning her countenance, I 
 almost thought the tale won her ear: 
 
 " II n'y a que les Anglaises pour ces sortes 
 d'entreprises," said she : " sont-elles done intrepides 
 ces femmes la!" 
 
 She asked my name, my age ; she sat and looked 
 at me — not pityingly, not with interest : never a 
 gleam of sympathy, or a shade of compassion, crossed 
 her countenance during the interview. I felt she 
 was not one to be led an inch by her feelings : grave 
 and considerate, she gazed, consulting her judgment 
 and studying my narrative. A bell rang. 
 
 " Voila pour la priere du soir ! " said she, and 
 rose. Through her interpreter, she desired me to 
 depart now, and come back on the morrow; but 
 this did not suit me : I could not bear to return to 
 
124 VILLETTE. 
 
 the perils of darkness and the street. With energy, 
 yet with a collected and controlled manner, I said, 
 addressing herself personally, and not the maitresse : 
 
 " Be assured, madame, that by instantly securing 
 my services, your interests will be served and not 
 injured: you will find me one who will wish to 
 give, in her labour, a full equivalent for her wages ; 
 and if you hire me, it will be better that I should 
 stay here this night : having no acquaintance in 
 Villette, and not possessing the language of the 
 country, how can I secure a lodging ? " 
 
 " It is true ; " said she, " but at least you can 
 give a reference ? " 
 
 " None." 
 
 She inquired after my luggage : I told her when 
 it would arrive. She mused. At that moment a 
 man's step was heard in the vestibule, hastily pro- 
 ceeding to the outer door. (I shall go on with this 
 part of my tale as if I had understood all that 
 passed; for though it was then scarce intelligible 
 to me, I heard it translated afterwards). 
 
 u Who goes out now ? " demanded Madame Beck, 
 listening to the tread. 
 
 " M. Paul," replied the teacher. " He came 
 this evening to give a reading to the first class." 
 
VILLETTB. 125 
 
 " The very man I should at this moment most 
 wish to see. Call him." 
 
 The teacher ran to the salon door. M. Paul 
 was summoned. He entered: a small, dark and 
 spare man, in spectacles. 
 
 " Mon cousin," began madame, " I want your 
 opinion. We know your skill in physiognomy ; 
 use it now. Read that countenance." 
 
 The little man fixed on me his spectacles. A 
 resolute compression of the lips, and gathering of 
 the brow, seemed to say that he meant to see 
 through me, and that a veil would be no veil for 
 him. 
 
 " I read it," he pronounced. 
 
 " Et qu 'en dites vous ? " 
 
 " Mais — bien des choses," was the oracular 
 answer. 
 
 "Bad or good?" 
 
 " Of each kind, without doubt," pursued the 
 diviner. 
 
 " May one trust her word ? " 
 
 " Are you negotiating a matter of importance ? " 
 
 " She wishes me to engage her as bonne or 
 gouvernante ; tells a tale full of integrity, but gives 
 no reference." 
 
126 VILLETTE. 
 
 " She is a stranger ? " 
 
 " An Englishwoman, as one may see." 
 
 « She speaks French?" 
 
 " Not a word." 
 
 " She understands it ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " One may then speak plainly in her presence ? " 
 
 " Doubtless." 
 
 He gazed steadily. " Do you need her services?" 
 
 " I could do with them. You know I am dis- 
 gusted with Madame Svini." 
 
 Still he scrutinized. The judgment, when it 
 at last came, was as indefinite as what had gone 
 before it. 
 
 " Engage her. If good predominates in that 
 nature, the action will bring its own reward ; if evil 
 — eh bien ! ma cousine, ce sera toujours une bonne 
 ceuvre." And with a bow and a "bon soir," this 
 vague arbiter of my destiny vanished. And madame 
 did engage me that very night — by God's blessing 
 I was spared the necessity of passing forth again 
 into the lonesome, dreary, hostile street. 
 
MADAME BECK. 127 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 MADAME BECK. 
 
 Being delivered into the charge of the maitresse, 
 I was led through a long, narrow passage into a 
 foreign kitchen, very clean but very strange. It 
 seemed to contain no means of cooking — neither 
 fireplace nor oven; I did not understand that the 
 great black furnace which filled one corner, was an 
 efficient substitute for these. Surely pride was not 
 already beginning its whispers in my heart ; yet I 
 felt a sense of relief when, instead of being left 
 in the kitchen, as I half-anticipated, I was led for- 
 ward to a small inner room termed a "cabinet." 
 A cook in a jacket, a short petticoat and sabots, 
 brought my supper : to wit, — some meat, nature 
 unknown, served in an odd and acid, but pleasant 
 sauce; some chopped potatoes, made savoury with, 
 I know not what : vinegar and sugar, I think ; a 
 
128 VILLETTE. 
 
 tartine, or slice of bread and butter, and a baked 
 pear. Being hungry, I ate and was grateful. 
 
 After the " Priere du Soir," madame herself came 
 to have another look at me. She desired me to 
 follow her up-stairs. Through a series of the queer- 
 est little dormitories — which, I heard afterwards, had 
 once been nuns' cells : for the premises were in part 
 of ancient date — and through the oratory — a long, 
 low, gloomy room, where a crucifix hung, pale, 
 against the wall, and two tapers kept dim vigils — she 
 conducted me to an apartment where three children 
 were asleep in three tiny beds. A heated stove 
 made the air of this room oppressive ; and, to mend 
 matters, it was scented with an odour rather strong 
 than delicate: a perfume, indeed, altogether sur- 
 prising and unexpected under the circumstances, 
 being like the combination of smoke with some 
 spirituous essence — a smell, in short, of whiskey. 
 
 Beside a table, on which flared the remnant of a 
 candle guttering to waste in the socket, a coarse 
 woman, heterogeneously clad in a broad-striped 
 showy silk dress and a stuff apron, sat in a chair 
 fast asleep. To complete the picture, and leave 
 no doubt as to the state of matters, a bottle and 
 an empty glass stood at the sleeping beauty's elbow. 
 
MADAME BECK. 129 
 
 Madame contemplated this remarkable tableau 
 with great calm ; she neither smiled nor scowled : 
 no impress of anger, disgust, or surprise, ruffled the 
 equality of her grave aspect; she did not even 
 wake the woman. Serenely pointing to a fourth 
 bed, she intimated that it was to be mine ; then, 
 having extinguished the candle and substituted for 
 it a night-lamp, she glided through an inner door, 
 winch she left ajar : the entrance to her own 
 chamber, a large, well-furnished apartment ; as was 
 discernible through the aperture. 
 
 My devotions that night were all thanksgiving : 
 strangely had I been led since morning — unex- 
 pectedly had I been provided for. Scarcely could 
 I believe that not forty-eight hours had elapsed since 
 I left London, under no other guardianship than 
 that which protects the passenger-bird — with no 
 prospect but the dubious cloud-tracery of hope. 
 
 I was a light sleeper ; in the dead of night I 
 suddenly awoke. All was hushed, but a white 
 figure stood in the room — Madame in her night- 
 dress. Moving without perceptible sound, she 
 visited the three children in the three beds ; she 
 approached me : I feigned sleep, and she studied 
 me long. A small pantomime ensued, curious 
 
 VOL. I. K 
 
130 VILLETTE. 
 
 enough. I dare say she sat a quarter of an hour 
 on the edge of my bed, gazing at my face. She 
 then drew nearer, bent close over me ; slightly 
 raised my cap, and turned back the border so as 
 to expose my hair ; she looked at my hand lying 
 on the bed-clothes. This done, she turned to the 
 chair where my clothes lay: it was at the foot 
 of the bed. Hearing her touch and lift them, I 
 opened my eyes with precaution* for I own I felt 
 curious to see how far her taste for research would 
 lead her. It led her a good way : every article 
 did she inspect. I divined her motive for this pro- 
 ceeding, viz., the wish to form from the garments 
 a judgment respecting the wearer, her station, 
 means, neatness, &c, The end was not bad, but 
 the means were hardly fair or justifiable. In my 
 dress was a pocket ; she fairly turned it inside out : 
 she counted the money in my purse; she opened 
 a little memorandum-book, coolly perused its con- 
 tents, and took from between the leaves a small 
 plaited lock of Miss Marchmont's grey hair. To a 
 bunch of three keys, being those of my trunk, 
 desk, and work-box, she accorded special attention : 
 with these, indeed, she withdrew a moment to her 
 own room. I softly rose in my bed and followed 
 
MADAME BECK. 131 
 
 her with my eye : these keys, reader, were not 
 brought back till they had left on the toilet of the 
 adjoining room the impress of their wards in wax. 
 All being thus done decently and in order, my 
 property was returned to its place, my clothes 
 were carefully refolded. Of what nature were the 
 conclusions deduced from this scrutiny ? Were 
 they favourable or otherwise ? Vain question. 
 Madame's face of stone (for of stone in its present 
 night-aspect it looked: it had been human and, as 
 I said before, motherly, in the salon) betrayed no 
 response. 
 
 Her duty done — I felt that in her eyes this busi- 
 ness was a duty — she rose, noiseless as a shadow : 
 she moved towards her own chamber; at the door 
 she turned, fixing her eye on the heroine of the 
 bottle, who still slept and loudly snored. Mrs. 
 Svini (I presume this was Mrs. Svini, Anglice or 
 Hibernice, Sweeny) — Mrs. Sweeny's doom was in 
 Madame Beck's eye — an immutable purpose that eye 
 spoke : madame's visitations for shortcomings might 
 be slow, but they were sure. All this was very un- 
 English : truly I was in a foreign land. 
 
 The morrow made me further acquainted with 
 Mrs. Sweeny. It seems she had introduced herself 
 
132 VILLETTE. 
 
 to her present employer as an English lady in re- 
 duced circumstances : a native, indeed, of Middlesex, 
 professing to speak the English tongue with the 
 purest metropolitan accent. Madame — reliant on her 
 own infallible expedients for finding out the truth 
 in time — had a singular intrepidity in hiring service 
 off-hand (as indeed seemed abundantly proved in my 
 own case). She received Mrs. Sweeny as nursery- 
 governess to her three children. I need hardly ex- 
 plain to the reader that this lady was in effect a 
 native of Ireland ; her station I do not pretend to 
 fix : she boldly declared that she had " had the 
 bringing-up of the son and daughter of a marquis." 
 I think, myself, she might possibly have been 
 hanger-on, nurse, fosterer, or washer- woman, in some 
 Irish family : she spoke a smothered brogue, curi- 
 ously overlaid with mincing cockney inflections. 
 By some means or other she had acquired, and now 
 held in possession, a wardrobe of rather suspicious 
 splendour — gowns of stiff and costly silk, fitting her 
 indifferently and apparently made for other propor- 
 tions than those they now adorned ; caps with real 
 lace borders, and — the chief item in the inventory, 
 the spell by which she struck a certain awe through 
 the household, quelling the otherwise scornfully dis- 
 
MADAME BECK. 133 
 
 posed teachers and servants, and, so long as her 
 broad shoulders wore the folds of that majestic dra- 
 pery, even influencing madame herself — a real In- 
 dian shaivl — "un veritable Cachmire," as Madame 
 Beck said, with mixed reverence and amaze. I feel 
 quite sure that without this " Cachmire" she would 
 not have kept her footing in the pensionnat for two 
 days : by virtue of it, and it only, she maintained 
 the same a month. 
 
 But when Mrs. Sweeny knew that I was come to 
 fill her shoes, then it was that she declared herself — 
 then did she rise on Madame Beck in her full power 
 — then come down on me with her concentrated 
 weight. Madame bore this revelation and visitation 
 so well, so stoically, that I for very shame could not 
 support it otherwise than with composure. For one 
 little moment Madame Beck absented herself from 
 the room ; ten minutes after, an agent of the police 
 stood in the midst of us. Mrs. Sweeny and her 
 effects were removed. Madame's brow had not been 
 ruffled during the scene — her lips had not dropped 
 one sharply accented word. 
 
 This brisk little affair of the dismissal was all 
 settled before breakfast : order to march given, 
 policeman called, mutineer expelled, tf chambre 
 
134 VILLETTE. 
 
 d'enfans" fumigated and cleansed, windows thrown 
 open, and every trace of the accomplished Mrs. 
 Sweeny — even to the fine essence and spiritual fra- 
 grance which gave token so subtle and so fatal of 
 the head and front of her offending — was annihilated 
 from the Rue Fossette : all this, I say, was done be- 
 tween the moment of Madame Beck's issuing like 
 Aurora from her chamber, and that in which she 
 coolly sat down to pour out her first cup of 
 coffee. 
 
 About noon, I was summoned to dress madame. 
 (It appeared my place was to be a hybrid between 
 gouvernante and lady's-maid). Till noon, she haunted 
 the house in her wrapping-gown, shawl, and sound- 
 less slippers. How would the lady- chief of an 
 English school approve this custom? 
 
 The dressing of her hair puzzled me ; she had 
 plenty of it ; auburn, unmixed with grey : though 
 she was forty years old. Seeing my embarrassment, 
 she said, " You have not been a femme de chambre 
 in your own country ? " And taking the brush from 
 my hand and setting me aside, not ungently or dis- 
 respectfully, she arranged it herself. In performing 
 other offices of the toilet, she half-directed, half-aided 
 me, without the least display of temper or impatience. 
 
MADAME BECK. 135 
 
 N.B. that was the first and last time I was required 
 to dress her. Henceforth, on Rosine, the portress, 
 devolved that duty. 
 
 When attired, Madame Beck appeared a person- 
 age of a figure rather short and stout, yet still 
 graceful in its own peculiar way : that is, with the 
 grace resulting from proportion of parts. Her com- 
 plexion was fresh and sanguine, not too rubicund ; 
 her eye, blue and serene ; her dark silk dress fitted 
 her as a French sempstress alone can make a dress 
 fit ; she looked well, though a little bourgeoise : as 
 bourgeoise, indeed, she was. I know not what of har- 
 mony pervaded her whole person ; and yet her face 
 offered contrast, too : its features Avere by no means 
 such as are usually seen in conjunction with a com- 
 plexion of such blended freshness and repose : their 
 outline was stern ; her forehead was high but narrow ; 
 it expressed capacity and some benevolence, but no 
 expanse ; nor did her peaceful yet watchful eye ever 
 know the fire which is kindled in the heart or the 
 softness which flows thence. Her mouth was hard : 
 it could be a little grim ; her lips were thin. For 
 sensibility and genius, with all their tenderness and 
 temerity, I felt somehow that madame would be the 
 right sort of Minos in petticoats, 
 
136 VILLETTE. 
 
 In the long run, I found that she was something 
 else in petticoats too. Her name was Modeste Maria 
 Beck, nee Kint : it ought to have been Ignacia. 
 She was a charitable woman, and did a great deal of 
 good. There never was a mistress whose rule was 
 milder. I was told that she never once remonstrated 
 with the intolerable Mrs. Sweeny, despite her tipsi- 
 ness, disorder, and general neglect ; yet Mrs. Sweeny 
 had to go, the moment her departure became con- 
 venient. I was told, too, that neither masters nor 
 teachers were found fault with in that establishment ; 
 yet both masters and teachers were often changed : 
 they vanished and others filled their places, none 
 could well explain how. 
 
 The establishment was both a pensionnat and an 
 externat : the externes or day -pupils exceeded one 
 hundred in number ; the boarders were about a 
 score. Madame must have possessed high adminis- 
 trative powers : she ruled all these, together with 
 four teachers, eight masters, six servants, and three 
 children, managing at the same time to perfection 
 the pupil's parents and friends ; and that without 
 apparent effort ; without bustle, fatigue, fever, or 
 any symptom of undue excitement : occupied she 
 always was — busy, rarely. It is true that madame 
 
MADAME BECK. 137 
 
 had her own system for managing and regulating 
 this mass of machinery ; and a very pretty system 
 it was : the reader has seen a specimen of it, in 
 that small affair of turning my pocket inside out, 
 and reading my private memoranda. " Surveil- 
 lance," u espionage," — these were her watch-words. 
 
 Still, madame knew what honesty was, and liked 
 it — that is, when it did not obtrude its clumsy 
 scruples in the way of her will and interest. She 
 had a respect for " Angleterre " ; and as to " les 
 Anglaises," she would have the women of no other 
 country about her own children, if she could help it. 
 
 Often in the evening, after she had been plotting 
 and counter - plotting, spying and receiving the 
 reports of spies all day, she would come up to my 
 room — a trace of real weariness on her brow — and 
 she would sit down and listen while the children 
 said then little prayers to me in English : the 
 Lord's Prayer, and the hymn beginning " Gentle 
 Jesus," these little Catholics were permitted to repeat 
 at my knee ; and, when I had put them to bed, 
 she would talk to me (I soon gained enough French 
 to be able to understand, and even answer her) 
 about England and Englishwomen, and the reasons 
 for what she was pleased to term their superior 
 
138 VILLETTE. 
 
 intelligence, and more real and reliable probity. 
 Very good sense she often showed ; very sound 
 opinions she often broached : she seemed to know 
 that keeping girls in distrustful restraint, in blind 
 ignorance, and under a surveillance that left them 
 no moment and no corner for retirement, was not 
 the best way to make them grow up honest and 
 modest women; but she averred that ruinous con- 
 sequences would ensue if any other method were 
 tried with continental children — they were so 
 accustomed to constraint, that relaxation, however 
 guarded, would be misunderstood and fatally pre- 
 sumed on : she was sick, she would declare, of the 
 means she had to use, but use them she must ; and 
 after discoursing, often with dignity and delicacy, 
 to me, she would move away on her " souliers de 
 silence," and glide ghost-like through the house, 
 watching and spying everywhere, peering through 
 every key-hole, listening behind every door. 
 
 After all, madame's system was not bad — 
 let me do her justice. Nothing could be better 
 than all her arrangements for the physical well- 
 being of her scholars. No minds were overtasked ; 
 the lessons were well distributed and made incom- 
 parably easy to the learner ; there was a liberty of 
 
MADAME BECK. 139 
 
 amusement, and a provision for exercise which kept 
 the girls healthy ; the food was abundant and good : 
 neither pale nor puny faces were anywhere to be 
 seen in the Rue Fossette. She never grudged a 
 holiday ; she allowed plenty of time for sleeping, 
 dressing, washing, eating ; her method in all these 
 matters was easy, liberal, salutary, and rational: 
 many f an austere English school -mistress would do 
 vastly well to imitate it — and I believe many would 
 be glad to do so, if exacting English parents would 
 let them. 
 
 As Madame Beck ruled by espionage, she of 
 course had her staff of spies : she perfectly knew 
 the quality of the tools she used, and while she 
 would not scruple to handle the dirtiest for a dirty 
 occasion — flinging this sort from her like refuse 
 rind, after the orange has been duly squeezed — I 
 have known her fastidious in seeking pure metal 
 for clean uses ; and when once a bloodless and 
 rustless instrument was found, she was careful of 
 the prize, keeping it in silk and cotton-wool. Yet, 
 woe be to that man or woman who relied on her 
 one inch beyond the point where it was her interest 
 to be trustworthy: interest was the master-key of 
 madame's nature — the mainspring of her motives— 
 
140 VILLETTE. 
 
 the alpha and omega of her life. I have seen her 
 feelings appealed to, and I have smiled in half-pity, 
 half-scorn at the appellants. None ever gained her 
 ear through that channel, or swayed her purpose 
 by that means. On the contrary, to attempt to 
 touch her heart was the surest way to rouse her 
 antipathy, and to make of her a secret foe. It 
 proved to her that she had no heart to be touched : 
 it reminded her where she was impotent and dead. 
 Never was the distinction between charity and 
 mercy better exemplified than in her. While de- 
 void of sympathy, she had a sufficiency of rational 
 benevolence : she would give in the readiest manner 
 to people she had never seen — rather, however, to 
 classes than to individuals. " Pour les pauvres," 
 she opened her purse freely — against the poor man, 
 as a rule, she kept it closed. In philanthropic 
 schemes, for the benefit of society at large, she took 
 a cheerful part ; no private sorrow touched her : no 
 force or mass of suffering concentrated in one heart 
 had power to pierce hers. Not the agony in Geth- 
 semane, not the death on Calvary, could have wrung 
 from her eyes one tear. 
 
 I say again, madame was a very great and a very 
 capable woman. That school offered for her powers 
 
MADAME BECK. 141 
 
 too limited a sphere ; she ought to have swayed a 
 nation : she should have been the leader of a tur- 
 bulent legislative assembly. Nobody could have 
 brow-beaten her, none irritated her nerves, ex- 
 hausted her patience, or over-reached her astute- 
 ness. In her own single person, she could have 
 comprised the duties of a first minister and a 
 superintendent of police. Wise, firm, faithless ; 
 secret, crafty, passionless ; watchful and inscrut- 
 able ; acute and insensate — withal perfectly decor- 
 ous — what more could be desired ? 
 
 The sensible reader will not suppose that I gained 
 all the knowledge here condensed for his benefit in 
 one month, or in one half-year. No! what I saw 
 at first was the thriving outside of a large and 
 flourishing educational establishment. Here was 
 a great house, full of healthy, lively girls, all well- 
 dressed and many of them handsome, gaining 
 knowledge by a marvellously easy method, with- 
 out painful exertion or useless waste of spirits ; not, 
 perhaps, making very rapid progress in anything ; 
 taking it easy, but still always employed, and never 
 oppressed. Here was a corps of teachers and mas- 
 ters more stringently tasked, as all the real head- 
 labour was to be done by them, in order to save 
 
142 VILLETTE. 
 
 the pupils, yet having their duties so arranged 
 that they relieved each other in quick succession 
 whenever the work was severe ; here, in short, 
 was a foreign school ; of which the life, movement, 
 and variety made it a complete and most charming 
 contrast to many English institutions of the same 
 kind. 
 
 Behind the house was a large garden, and, 
 in summer, the pupils almost lived out of doors 
 amongst the rose-bushes and the fruit-trees. Under 
 the vast and vine-draped berceau, madame would 
 take her seat on summer afternoons, and send for 
 the classes, in turns, to sit round her and sew and 
 read. Meantime, masters came and went, deliver- 
 ing short and lively lectures, rather than lessons, 
 and the pupils made notes of their instructions, or 
 did not make them — just as inclination prompted ; 
 secure that, in case of neglect, they could copy the 
 notes of their companions. Besides the regular 
 monthly jours de sortie, the Catholic fete-days brought 
 a succession of holidays all the year round; and 
 sometimes on a bright summer morning, or soft 
 summer evening, the boarders were taken out for a 
 long walk into the country, regaled with gaufres and 
 vin hlanc, or new milk and pain bis, or pistolets au 
 
MADAME BECK. 143 
 
 beurre (rolls) and coffee. All tills seemed very- 
 pleasant, and madame appeared goodness itself; 
 and the teachers not so bad, but they might be 
 worse; and the pupils, perhaps, a little noisy and 
 rough, but types of health and glee. 
 
 Thus did the view appear, seen through the 
 enchantment of distance; but there came a time 
 when distance was to melt for me, when I was to 
 be called down from my watch-tower of the nursery, 
 whence I had hitherto made my observations, and 
 was to be compelled into closer intercourse with 
 this little world of the Rue Fossette. 
 
 I was one day sitting upstairs, as usual, hearing 
 the children their English lessons, and at the same 
 time turning a silk dress for madame, when she 
 came sauntering into the room with that absorbed 
 air and brow of hard thought she sometimes wore, 
 and which made her look so little genial. Drop- 
 ping into a seat opposite mine, she remained some 
 minutes silent. Desiree, the eldest girl, was read- 
 ing to me some little essay of Mrs. Barbauld's, 
 and I was making her translate currently from 
 English to French as she proceeded, by way of 
 iscertaining that she comprehended what she read : 
 madame listened. 
 
144 VILLETTE. 
 
 Presently, without preface or prelude, she said, 
 almost in the tone of one making an accusation, 
 t( Meess, in England you were a governess." 
 
 " No, madame," said I smiling, " you are mis- 
 taken." 
 
 " Is this your first essay at teaching — this attempt 
 with my children ? " 
 
 I assured her it was. Again she became silent; 
 but looking up, as I took a pin from the cushion, 
 I found myself an object of study: she held me 
 under her eye; she seemed turning me round in 
 her thoughts — measuring my fitness for a purpose, 
 weighing my value in a plan. Madame had, ere 
 this, scrutinized all I had, and I believe she es- 
 teemed herself cognizant of much that I was; but 
 from that day, for the space of about a fortnight, 
 she tried me by new tests. She listened at the 
 nursery door when I was shut in with the children ; 
 she followed me at a cautious distance when I 
 walked out with them, stealing within ear-shot 
 whenever the trees of park or boulevard afforded 
 a sufficient screen : a strict preliminary process 
 having thus been observed, she made a move for- 
 ward. 
 
 One morning, coming on me abruptly, and with 
 
MADAME BECK. 145 
 
 the semblance of hurry, she said she found herself 
 placed in a little dilemma. Mr. Wilson, the Eng- 
 lish master, had failed to come at his hour, she 
 feared he was ill; the pupils were waiting in classe; 
 there was no one to give a lesson; should I, for 
 once, object to giving a short dictation exercise, 
 just that the pupils might not have it to say they 
 had missed their English lesson ? 
 " In classe, madam ? " I asked. 
 " Yes, in classe : in the second division." 
 " Where there are sixty pupils," said I'; for I 
 knew the number, and with my usual base habit 
 of cowardice, I shrank into my sloth, like a snail 
 into its shell, and alleged incapacity and impractica- 
 bility as a pretext to escape action, If left to 
 myself, I should infallibly have let this chance slip. 
 Inadventurous, unstirred by impulses of practical 
 ambition, I was capable of sitting twenty years 
 teaching infants the hornbook, turning silk dresses, 
 and making children's frocks. Not that true con- 
 tentment dignified this infatuated resignation: my 
 work had neither charm for my taste, nor hold on 
 my interest; but it seemed to me a great thing 
 to be without heavy anxiety, and relieved from 
 intimate trial ; the negation of severe suffering 
 
 VOL. I. L 
 
146 VILLETTE. 
 
 was the nearest approach to happiness I expected 
 to know. Besides, I seemed to hold two lives — 
 the life of thought, and that of reality; and, pro- 
 vided the former was nourished with a sufficiency 
 of the strange necromantic joys of fancy, the 
 privileges of the latter might remain limited to 
 daily bread, hourly work, and a roof of shelter. 
 
 " Come," said madame, as I stooped more busily 
 than ever over the cutting out of a child's pinafore, 
 "leave that work." 
 
 "But Fifine wants it, madame." 
 " Fifine must want it, then, for / want you." 
 And as Madame Beck did really want and was 
 resolved to have me — as she had long been dis- 
 satisfied with the English master, with his short- 
 comings in punctuality, and his careless method of 
 tuition — as, too, she did not lack resolution and 
 practical activity, whether / lacked them or not — she, 
 without more ado, made me relinquish thimble and 
 needle ; my hand was taken into hers, and I was 
 conducted down stairs. When we reached the 
 carre, a large square hall between the dwelling- 
 house and the pensionnat, she paused, dropped my 
 hand, faced, and scrutinized me. I was flushed, 
 and tremulous from head to foot; tell it not in 
 
MADAME BECK. 147 
 
 Gath, I believe I was crying. In fact, the dif- 
 ficulties before me were far from being wholly 
 imaginary; some of them were real enough; and 
 not the least substantial lay in my want of mastery 
 over the medium through which I should be obliged 
 to teach. I had, indeed, studied French closely 
 since my arrival in Yillette ; learning its practice 
 by day, and its theory in every leisure moment at 
 night, to as late an hour as the rule of the house 
 would allow candle-light, but I was far from yet 
 being able to trust my powers of correct oral ex- 
 pression. 
 
 " Dites done," said madame sternly, " vous sentez 
 vous reellement trop faible?" 
 
 I might have said "Yes," and gone back to 
 nursery obscurity, and there, perhaps, mouldered 
 for the rest of my life ; but, looking up at madame, 
 I saw in her countenance a something that made 
 me think twice ere I decided. At that instant, 
 she did not wear a woman's aspect, but rather a 
 man's. Power of a particular kind strongly limned 
 itself in all her traits, and that power was not my 
 kind of power : neither sympathy, nor congeniality, 
 nor submission, were the emotions it awakened. 
 I stood — not soothed, nor won, nor overwhelmed-. 
 
148 VILLETTE. 
 
 It seemed as if a challenge of strength between 
 opposing gifts was given, and I suddenly felt all 
 the dishonour of my diffidence — all the pusillanimity 
 of my slackness to aspire. 
 
 "Will you," said she, "go backward or forward?" 
 indicating with her hand, first, the small door of 
 communication with the dwelling-house, and then 
 the great double portals of the classes or school- 
 rooms. 
 
 "En avant," I said. 
 
 "But," pursued she, cooling as I warmed, and 
 continuing the hard look, from very antipathy to 
 which I drew strength and determination, " can 
 you face the classes, or are you over-excited?" 
 
 She sneered slightly in saying this — nervous 
 excitability was not much to madame's taste. 
 
 "I am no more excited than this stone," I said, 
 tapping the flag with my toe: "or than you," I 
 added, returning her look. 
 
 " Bon ! But let me tell you these are not quiet, 
 decorous English girls you are going to encounter. 
 Ce sont des Labassecouriennes, rondes, franches, 
 brusques, et tant soit peu rebelles." 
 
 I said : " I know ; and I know, too, that though 
 I have studied French hard since I came here, 
 
MADAME BECK. 149 
 
 yet I still speak it with far too much hesitation — 
 too little accuracy to be able to command their 
 respect: I shall make blunders that will lay me 
 open to the scorn of the most ignorant. Still I 
 mean to give the lesson." 
 
 <f They always throw over timid teachers/' said she. 
 
 "I know that, too, madame; I have heard how 
 they rebelled agakist and persecuted Miss Tur- 
 ner" — a poor, friendless English teacher, whom 
 madame had employed, and lightly discarded; and 
 to whose piteous history I was no stranger. 
 
 " C'est vrai," said she, coolly. " Miss Turner 
 had no more command over them than a servant 
 from the kitchen would have had. She was weak 
 and wavering ; she had neither tact nor intelli- 
 gence, decision nor dignity. Miss Turner would 
 not do for these girls at all." 
 
 I made no reply, but advanced to the closed 
 school-room door. 
 
 " You will not expect aid from me, or from any 
 one," said madame. " That would at once set you 
 down as incompetent for your office." 
 
 I opened the door, let her pass with courtesy, 
 and followed her. There were three school-rooms,, 
 all lar^e. That dedicated to the second division. 
 
150 VILLETTE. 
 
 where I was to figure, was considerably the largest, 
 and accommodated an assemblage more numerous, 
 more turbulent, and infinitely more unmanageable 
 than the other two. In after days, when I knew 
 the ground better, I used to think sometimes (if 
 such a comparison may be permitted), that the 
 quiet, polished, tame first division, was to the robust, 
 riotous, demonstrative second division, what the 
 English House of Lords is to the House of Com- 
 mons. 
 
 The first glance informed me that many of the 
 pupils were more than girls — quite young women; 
 I knew that some of them were of noble family 
 (as nobility goes in Labassecour), and I was 
 well convinced that not one amongst them was 
 ignorant of my position in madame's household. 
 As I mounted the estrade (a low platform, raised 
 a step above the flooring), where stood the teacher's 
 chair and desk, I beheld opposite to me a row of 
 eyes and brows that threatened stormy weather — 
 eyes full of an insolent light, and brows hard and 
 unblushing as marble. The continental "female" 
 is quite a different being to the insular "female" 
 of the same age and class: I never saw such eyes 
 and brows in England. Madame Beck introduced 
 
MADAME BECK. 151 
 
 me in one cool phrase, sailed from the room, and 
 left me alone in my glory. 
 
 I shall never forget that first lesson, nor all the 
 under-current of life and character it opened up to 
 me. Then first did I begin rightly to see the wide 
 difference that lies between the novelist's and poet's 
 ideal "jeune fille," and the said "jeune fille" as 
 she really is. 
 
 It seems that three titled belles in the first row 
 had sat down predetermined that a bonne d'enfants 
 should not give them lessons in English. They 
 knew they had succeeded in expelling obnoxious 
 teachers before now ; they knew that madame would 
 at any time throw overboard a professeur or maitresse 
 who became unpopular with the school — that she 
 never assisted a weak official to retain his place — 
 that if he had not strength to fight, or tact to win 
 his way — down he went : looking at " Miss Snowe " 
 they promised themselves an easy victory. 
 
 Mesdemoiselles Blanche, Virginie, and Angelique 
 opened the campaign by a series of titterings and 
 whisperings ; these soon swelled into murmurs and 
 short laughs, which the remoter benches caught up 
 and echoed more loudly. This growing revolt of 
 sixty against one, soon became oppressive enough; 
 
152 VILLETTE. 
 
 my command of French being so limited, and exer- 
 cised under such cruel constraint. 
 
 Could I but have spoken in my own tongue, I 
 felt as if I might have gained a hearing ; for, in the 
 first place, though I knew I looked a poor creature, 
 and in many respects actually was so, yet nature had 
 given me a voice that could make itself heard, if lifted 
 in excitement or deepened by emotion. In the second 
 place, while I had no flow, only a hesitating trickle 
 of language, in ordinary circumstances, yet — under 
 stimulus such as was now rife through the mutinous 
 mass — I could, in English, have rolled out readily 
 phrases stigmatizing their proceedings as such pro- 
 ceedings deserved to be stigmatized; and then with 
 some sarcasm, flavoured with contemptuous bitter- 
 ness, for the ringleaders, and relieved with easy 
 banter for the weaker, but less knavish followers, 
 it seemed to me that one might possibly get 
 command over this wild herd and bring them into 
 training, at least. All I could now do was to walk 
 up to Blanche — Mademoiselle de Melcy, a young 
 baronne — the eldest, tallest, handsomest, and most 
 vicious — stand before her desk, take from under her 
 hand her exercise-book, remount the estrade, de- 
 liberately read the composition, which I found very 
 
MADAME BECK. 153 
 
 stupid, and as deliberately, and in the face of the 
 whole school, tear the blotted page in two. 
 
 This action availed to draw attention and check 
 noise. One girl alone, quite in the background, 
 persevered in the riot with undiminished energy. 
 I looked at her attentively. She had a pale face, 
 hair like night, broad strong eyebrows, decided 
 features, and a dark, mutinous, sinister eye : I noted 
 that she sat close by a little door, which door, I was 
 well aware, opened into a small closet where books 
 were kept. She was standing up for the purpose of 
 conducting her clamour with freer energies. I 
 measured her stature and calculated her strength. 
 She seemed both tall and wiry ; but, so the conflict 
 were brief and the attack unexpected, I thought I 
 might manage her. 
 
 Advancing up the room, looking as cool and care- 
 les as I possibly could, in short, ay ant Vair de rien ; 
 I slightly pushed the door and found it was ajar. 
 In an instant, and with sharpness, I had turned on 
 her. In another instant she occupied the closet, 
 the door was shut, and the key in my pocket. 
 
 It so happened that this girl, Dolores by name 
 and a Catalonian by race, was the sort of character 
 at once dreaded and hated by all her associates ; the 
 
154 VILLETTE. 
 
 act of summary justice above noted, proved popular : 
 there was not one present but, in her heart, liked to 
 see it done. They were stilled for a moment ; then 
 a smile — not a laugh — passed from desk to desk : 
 then — when I had gravely and tranquilly returned to 
 the estrade, courteously requested silence, and com- 
 menced a dictation as if nothing at all had happened 
 —the pens travelled peacefully over the pages, and 
 the remainder of the lesson passed in order and 
 industry. 
 
 " C'est bien," said Madame Beck, when I came 
 out of class, hot and a little exhausted. " Qa ira." 
 
 She had been listening and peeping through a 
 spy-hole the whole time. 
 
 From that day I ceased to be nursery-governess, 
 and became English teacher. Madame raised my 
 salary ; but she got thrice the work out of me she 
 had extracted from Mr. Wilson, at half the expense. 
 
ISIDORE. 155 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ISIDORE. 
 
 My time was now well and profitably filled up. 
 What with teaching others and studying closely 
 myself, I had hardly a spare moment. It was 
 pleasant. I felt I was getting on ; not lying the 
 stagnant prey of mould and rust, but polishing my 
 faculties and whetting them to a keen edge with 
 constant use. Experience of a certain kind lay 
 before me, on no narrow scale. Villette is a cos- 
 mopolitan city, and in this school were girls of 
 almost every European nation, and likewise of very 
 varied rank in life. Equality is much practised 
 in Labassecour ; though not republican in form, it 
 is nearly so in substance, and at the desks of 
 Madame Beck's establishment the young countess 
 and the young bourgeoise sat side by side : nor 
 could you always by outward indications decide 
 
156 VILLETTE. 
 
 which was noble and which plebeian ; except that, 
 indeed, the latter had often franker and more 
 courteous manners, while the former bore away 
 the bell for a delicately balanced combination of 
 insolence and deceit. In the former there was 
 often quick French blood mixed with their marsh- 
 phlegm: I regret to say that the effect of this 
 vivacious fluid chiefly appeared in the oilier glib- 
 ness with which flattery and fiction ran from the 
 tongue, and in a manner lighter and livelier, but 
 quite heartless and insincere. 
 
 To do all parties justice, the honest aboriginal 
 Labassecouriennes had an hypocrisy of their own 
 too ; but it was of a coarse order, such as could 
 deceive few. Whenever a lie was necessary for 
 their occasions, they brought it out with a careless 
 ease and breadth altogether untroubled by the re- 
 buke of conscience. Not a soul in Madame Beck's 
 house, from the scullion to the directress herself, 
 but was above being ashamed of a lie ; they thought 
 nothing of it: to invent might not be precisely a 
 virtue, but it was the most venial of faults. te J'ai 
 menti plusieurs fois" formed an item of every girl's 
 and woman's monthly confession: the priest heard 
 unshocked, and absolved unreluctant. If they had 
 
ISIDOKE. 157 
 
 missed going to mass, or read a chapter of a novel, 
 that was another thing : these were crimes whereof 
 rebuke and penance were the unfailing meed. 
 
 While yet but half-conscious of this state of 
 things, and unlearned in its results, I got on in my 
 new sphere very well. After the first few difficult 
 lessons, given amidst peril and on the edge of a 
 moral volcano, that rumbled under my feet and 
 sent sparks and hot fumes into my eyes, the erup- 
 tive spirit seemed to subside, as far as I was con- 
 cerned. My mind was a good deal bent on success : 
 I could not bear the thought of being baffled by mere 
 undisciplined disaffection and wanton indocility, in 
 this first attempt to get on in life. Many hours 
 of the night I used to lie awake, thinking what plan 
 I had best adopt to get a reliable hold on these 
 mutineers, to bring this stiff-necked tribe under 
 permanent influence. In the first place, I saw 
 plainly that aid in no shape was to be expected 
 from Madame : her righteous plan was to main- 
 tain an unbroken popularity with the pupils, at 
 any and every cost of justice or comfort to the 
 teachers. For a teacher to seek her alliance in any 
 crisis of insubordination was equivalent to securing 
 her own expulsion. In intercourse with her pupils, 
 
158 VILLETTE. 
 
 Madame only took to herself what was pleasant, 
 amiable, and recommendatory ; rigidly requiring 
 of her lieutenants sufficiency for every annoying 
 crisis, where to act with adequate promptitude was 
 to be unpopular. Thus, I must look only to myself. 
 
 Imprimis — it was clear as the day that this 
 swinish multitude were not to be driven by force. 
 They were to be humoured, borne with very 
 patiently : a courteous though sedate manner im- 
 pressed them ; a very rare flash of raillery did good. 
 Severe or continuous mental application they could 
 not, or would not, bear : heavy demand on the 
 memory, the reason, the attention, they rejected 
 point-blank. Where an English girl of not more 
 than average capacity and docility, would quietly 
 take a theme and bind herself to the task of com- 
 prehension and mastery, a Labassecourienne would 
 laugh in your face, and throw it back to you with 
 the phrase, — " Dieu que c'est difficile ! Je n'en veux 
 pas. Cela m' ennuie trop." 
 
 A teacher who understood her business would 
 take it back at once, without hesitation, contest, or 
 expostulation — proceed with even exaggerated care 
 to smoothe every difficulty, to reduce it to the level 
 of their understandings, return it to them thus mo- 
 
ISIDOKE. 159 
 
 dified, and lay on the lash of sarcasm with un- 
 sparing hand. They would feel the sting, perhaps 
 wince a little under it, but they bore no malice 
 against this sort of attack, provided the sneer was 
 not sour but hearty , and that it held well up to them, 
 in a clear light and bold type, so that she who ran 
 might read, their incapacity, ignorance, and sloth. 
 They would riot for three additional lines to a 
 lesson; but I never knew them rebel against a 
 wound given to their self-respect: the little they 
 had of that quality was trained to be crushed, and 
 it rather liked the pressure of a firm heel, than 
 otherwise. 
 
 By degrees, as I acquired fluency and freedom 
 in their language, and could make such applica- 
 tion of its more nervous idioms as suited their 
 case, the elder and more intelligent girls began 
 rather to like me, in their way: I noticed that 
 whenever a pupil had been roused to feel in her 
 soul the stirring of worthy emulation, or the 
 quickening of honest shame, from that date she 
 was won. If I could but once make their (usually 
 large) ears burn under their thick, glossy hair, all 
 was comparatively well. By-and-by bouquets be- 
 gan to be laid on my desk in the morning : by way 
 
160 VILLETTE. 
 
 of acknowledgment for this little foreign attention, 
 I used sometimes to walk with a select few during 
 recreation. In the course of conversation it befel 
 once or twice that I made an unpremeditated attempt 
 to rectify some of their singularly distorted notions 
 of principle, especially I expressed my ideas of the 
 evil and baseness of a lie. In an unguarded moment, 
 I chanced to say that, of the two errors, I considered 
 falsehood worse than an occasional lapse in church- 
 attendance. The poor girls were tutored to report 
 in Catholic ears whatever the Protestant teacher 
 said. An edifying consequence ensued. Some- 
 thing — an unseen, an indefinite, a nameless some- 
 thing — stole between myself and these my best 
 pupils: the bouquets continued to be offered, but 
 conversation thenceforth became impracticable. As 
 I paced the alleys or sat in the berceau, a girl never 
 came to my right hand but a teacher, as if by 
 magic, appeared at my left. Also,'wonderful to re- 
 late, Madame's shoes of silence brought her con- 
 tinually to my back, as quick, noiseless, and unex- 
 pected, as some wandering zephyr. 
 
 The opinion of my Catholic acquaintance con- 
 cerning my spiritual prospects was somewhat naively 
 expressed to me on one occasion. A pensionnaire, 
 
ISIDOEE. 161 
 
 to whom I had rendered some little service, ex- 
 claimed one day as she sat beside me : 
 
 " Mademoiselle, what a pity you are a Protes- 
 tant!" 
 
 "Why,Isabelle?" 
 
 " Parceque, quand vous serez morte — vous 
 brulerez tout de suite dans l'Enfer." 
 
 " Croyez-vous ?" 
 
 " Certainement que j'y crois : tout le monde le 
 sait ; et d'ailleurs le pretre me l'a dit." 
 
 Isabelle was an odd, blunt little creature. She 
 added, sotto voce: 
 
 " Pour assurer votre salut la-haut, on ferait bien 
 de vous bruler toute vive ici-bas." 
 
 I laughed, as, indeed, it was impossible to do 
 otherwise. 
 
 Has the reader forgotten Miss Ginevra Fan- 
 shawe? If so, I must be allowed to re-introduce 
 that young lady as a thriving pupil of Madame 
 Beck's, for such she was. On her arrival in the 
 Hue Fossette, two or three days after my sudden 
 settlement there, she encountered me with very 
 little surprise. She must have had good blood in 
 
 vol. i. M 
 
162 VILLETTE. 
 
 her veins, for never was any duchess more perfectly, 
 radically, unaffectedly nonchalante than she : a weak, 
 -transient amaze was all she knew of the sensa- 
 tion of wonder. Most of her other faculties 
 seemed to be in the same flimsy condition: her 
 liking and disliking, her love and hate, were mere 
 cobweb and gossamer ; but she had one thing about 
 her that seemed strong and durable enough, and 
 that was — her selfishness. 
 
 She was not proud; and — bonne d'enfants as I 
 was — she would forthwith have made of me a sort 
 of friend and confidant. She teased me with a 
 thousand vapid complaints about school-quarrels 
 and household economy : the cookery was not to 
 her taste — the people about her, teachers and 
 pupils, she held to be despicable, because they were 
 foreigners. I bore with her abuse of the Friday's 
 salt-fish and hard eggs — with her invective against 
 the soup, the bread, the coffee — with some patience 
 for a time; but at last, wearied by iteration, I 
 turned crusty and put her to rights — a thing I 
 ought to have done in the very beginning, for a 
 salutary setting down always agreed with her. 
 
 Much longer had I to endure her demands on 
 me in the way of work. Her wardrobe, so far as 
 
ISIDORE. 163 
 
 concerned articles of external wear, was well and 
 elegantly supplied ; but there were other habiliments 
 not so carefully provided: what she had, needed 
 frequent repair. She hated needle-drudgery her- 
 self, and she would bring her hose, &c, to me in 
 heaps, to be mended. A compliance of some weeks 
 threatening to result in the establishment of an 
 intolerable bore — I at last distinctly told her she 
 must make up her mind to mend her own garments. 
 She cried on receiving this information, and accused 
 me of having ceased to be her friend ; but I held by 
 my decision, and let the hysterics pass as they could. 
 Notwithstanding these foibles, and various others 
 needless to mention — but by no means of a refined 
 or elevating character — how pretty she was ! How 
 charming she looked, when she came down on a 
 sunny Sunday morning, well-dressed and well- 
 humoured, robed in pale lilac silk, and with her 
 fair long curls reposing on her white shoulders. 
 Sunday was a holiday which she always passed 
 with friends resident in town ; and amongst these 
 friends she speedily gave me to understand was 
 one who would fain become something more. By 
 glimpses and .. hints it was shown me, and by the 
 general buoyancy of her look and maimer it was 
 
164 VILLETTE. 
 
 ere long proved that ardent admiration — perhaps 
 genuine love — was at her command. She called her 
 suitor " Isidore": this, however, she intimated was 
 not his real name, but one by which it pleased her 
 to baptize him — his own, she hinted, not being 
 <e very pretty." Once, when she had been bragging 
 about the vehemence of "Isidore's" attachment, I 
 asked if she loved him in return. 
 
 " Comme cela," said she : " he is handsome, and 
 he loves me to distraction, so that I am well 
 amused. Qa suffit." 
 
 Finding that she carried the thing on longer 
 than, from her very fickle tastes, I had anticipated, 
 I one day took it upon me to make serious inquiries 
 as to whether the gentleman was such as her 
 parents, and especially her uncle — on whom, it ap- 
 peared, she was dependent — would be likely to ap- 
 prove. She allowed that this was very doubtful, as 
 she did not believe " Isidore " had much money. 
 
 " Do you encourage him ?" I asked. 
 
 " Furieusement, sometimes," said she. 
 
 " Without being certain that you will be per- 
 mitted to marry him?" 
 
 " Oh how dowdyish you are ! I don't want to be 
 married. I am too young." 
 
ISIDOKE. 165 
 
 " But if he loves you as much as you say, and 
 yet it comes to nothing in the end, he will be made 
 miserable." 
 
 " Of course he will break his heart. I should 
 be shocked and disappointed if he didn't." 
 
 " I wonder whether this M. Isidore is a fool?' 
 said I. 
 
 " He is, about me ; but he is wise in other things, 
 a ce qu' on dit. Mrs. Cholmondeley considers him 
 extremely clever : she says he will push his way by 
 his talents ; all I know is, that he does little more 
 than sigh in my presence, and that I can wind him 
 round my little finger." 
 
 Wishing to get a more definite idea of this 
 love-stricken M. Isidore, whose position seemed to 
 me of the least secure, I requested her to favour 
 me with a personal description; but she could not 
 describe : she had neither words, nor the power of 
 putting them together so as to make graphic 
 phrases. She even seemed not properly to have 
 noticed him : nothing of his looks, of the changes 
 in his countenance, had touched her heart or dwelt 
 in her memory — that he was " beau, mais plutot bel 
 homme, que joli gargon," was all she could assert. 
 My patience would often have failed, and my in- 
 
166 VILLETTE. 
 
 terest flagged, in listening to her, but for one thing. 
 All the hints she dropped, all the details she gave, 
 went unconsciously to prove, to my thinking, that 
 M. Isidore's homage was offered with great delicacy 
 and respect. I informed her very plainly that I 
 believed him much too good for her, and intimated 
 with equal plainness my impression that she was 
 but a vain coquette. She laughed, shook her curls 
 from her eyes, and danced away as if I had paid 
 her a compliment. 
 
 Miss Ginevra's school-studies were little better 
 than nominal ; there were but three things she prac- 
 tised in earnest, viz., music, singing, and dancing ; 
 also embroidering the fine cambric handkerchiefs, 
 which she could not afford to buy ready -worked : 
 such mere trifles as lessons in history, geography, 
 grammar, and arithmetic, she left undone, or got 
 others to do for her. Very much of her time was 
 spent in visiting. Madame, aware that her stay 
 at school was now limited to a certain period which 
 would not be extended whether she made progress 
 or not, allowed her great license in this particular. 
 Mrs. Cholmondeley — her chaperon — a gay, fashion- 
 able lady, invited her whenever she had company 
 at her own house, and sometimes took her to 
 
ISIDORE. 167 
 
 evening parties at the houses of her acquaintance. 
 Ginevra perfectly approved this mode of procedure — 
 it had but one inconvenience; she was obliged to 
 be well dressed, and she had not money to buy 
 variety of dresses. All her thoughts turned on 
 this difficulty ; her whole soul was occupied with 
 expedients for effecting its solution. It was wonder- 
 ful to witness the activity of her otherwise indolent 
 mind on this point, and to see the much-daring 
 intrepidity to which she was spurred by a sense of 
 necessity, and the wish to shine. 
 
 She begged boldly of Mrs. Cholmondeley — boldly, 
 I say : not with an air of reluctant shame, but in 
 this strain : — 
 
 "My darling Mrs. C, I have nothing in the 
 world fit to wear for your party next week; you 
 must give me a book-muslin dress, and then a 
 ceinture bleu celeste: do — there 's an angel! will 
 
 you?" 
 
 The "darling Mrs. C." yielded at first; but find- 
 ing that applications increased as they were complied 
 with, she was soon obliged, like all Miss Fanshawe's 
 friends, to oppose resistance to encroachment. After 
 a while I heard no more of Mrs. Cholmondeley 's 
 presents ; but still, visiting went on, and the abso- 
 
168 VILLETTE. 
 
 lutely necessary dresses continued to be supplied: 
 also many little expensive etcetera — gloves, bouquets, 
 even trinkets. These things, contrary to her cus- 
 tom, and even nature — for she was not secretive — 
 were most sedulously kept out of sight for a time ; 
 but one evening, when she was going to a large 
 party, for which particular care and elegance of 
 costume were demanded, she could not resist com- 
 ing to my chamber to show herself in all her 
 splendour. 
 
 Beautiful she looked : so young, so fresh, and with 
 a delicacy of skin and flexibility of shape altogether 
 English, and not found in the list of continental 
 female charms. Her dress was new, costly, and 
 perfect. I saw at a glance that it lacked none of 
 those finishing details which cost so much, and give 
 to the general effect such an air of tasteful com- 
 pleteness. 
 
 I viewed her from top to toe. She turned airily 
 round that I might survey her on all sides. Con- 
 scious of her charms, she was in her best humour: 
 ner rather small blue eyes sparkled gleefully; she 
 was going to bestow on me a kiss, in her school- 
 girl fashion of showing her delight: but I said, 
 " Steady ! Let us be steady, and know what we 
 
ISIDORE. 169 
 
 are about, and find the meaning of our magnifi- 
 cence" — and so put her off at arm's length, to 
 undergo cooler inspection. 
 
 "Shall I do?" was her question. 
 
 "Do?" said I. "There are different ways of 
 doing; and, by my word, I don't understand 
 yours." 
 
 "But how do I look?" 
 
 " You look well dressed." 
 
 She thought the praise not warm enough, and 
 proceeded to direct attention to the various deco- 
 rative points of her attire. " Look at this parure" 
 said she. " The brooch, the ear-rings, the bracelets : 
 no one in the school has such a set — not madame 
 herself." 
 
 " I see them all." (Pause.) " Did M. de Bas- 
 sompierre give you those jewels ?" 
 
 " My uncle knows nothing about them." 
 
 "Were they presents from Mrs. Cholmondeley?" 
 
 " Not they, indeed. Mrs. Cholmondeley is a 
 mean, stingy creature; she never gives me any- 
 thing now." 
 
 I did not choose to ask any further questions, 
 but turned abruptly away. 
 
 "Now, old Crusty — old Diogenes" (these were 
 
170 VILLETTE. 
 
 her familiar terms for me when we disagreed), 
 " what is the matter now?" 
 
 tf Take yourself away. I have no pleasure in 
 looking at you or your parure." 
 
 For an instant, she seemed taken by surprise. 
 
 " What now, Mother Wisdom ? I have not got 
 into debt for it — that is, not for the jewels, nor the 
 gloves, nor the bouquet. My dress is certainly not 
 paid for, but uncle de Bassompierre will pay it 
 in the bill : he never notices items, but just looks 
 at the total; and he is so rich, one need not care 
 about a few guineas more or less." 
 
 " Will you go ? I want to shut the door. . . . 
 Ginevra, people may tell you you are very hand- 
 some in that ball-attire; but, in my eyes, you will 
 never look so pretty as you did in the gingham 
 gown and plain straw bonnet you wore when I 
 first saw you." 
 
 " Other people have not your puritanical tastes :" 
 was her angry reply. "And, besides, I see no 
 right you have to sermonize me." 
 
 " Certainly! I have little right; and you, per- 
 haps, have still less to come flourishing and flutter- 
 ing into my chamber — a mere jay in borrowed 
 plumes. I have not the least respect for your 
 
ISIDORE. 171 
 
 feathers, Miss Fanshawe; and especially the pea- 
 cock's eyes, you call a parure : very pretty things, 
 if you had bought them with money which was 
 your own, and which you could well spare, but 
 not at all pretty under present circumstances." 
 
 " On est la pour Mademoiselle Fanshawe ! " was 
 announced by the portress, and away she tripped. 
 
 This semi-mystery of the parure was not solved 
 till two or three days afterwards, when she came 
 to make a voluntary confession. 
 
 " You need not be sulky with me," she began, 
 " in the idea that I am running somebody, papa 
 or M. de Bassompierre, deeply into debt. I assure 
 you nothing remains unpaid for, but the few dresses 
 I have lately had : all the rest is settled. " 
 
 " There," I thought, " lies the mystery, con- 
 sidering that they were not given you by Mrs. 
 Cholmondeley, and that your own means are limited 
 to a few shillings, of which I know you to be ex- 
 cessively careful." 
 
 " Ecoutez !" she went on, drawing near and speak- 
 ing in her most confidential and coaxing tone ; for 
 my " sulkiness " was inconvenient to her : she liked 
 me to be in a talking and listening mood, even if 
 I only talked to chide, and listened to rail. " Ecou- 
 
172 VILLETTE. 
 
 tez, chere grogneuse ! I will tell you^ all how and 
 about it ; and you will then see, not only how right 
 the whole thing is, but how cleverly managed. In 
 the first place, I must go out. Papa himself said 
 that he wished me to see something of the world: 
 he particularly remarked to Mrs. Cholmondeley, 
 that, though I was a sweet creature enough, I had 
 rather a bread-and-butter-eating, school-girl air ; of 
 which it was his special desire that I should get 
 rid, by an introduction to society here, before I 
 make my regular debut in England. Well, then, 
 if I go out, I must dress. Mrs. Cholmondeley is 
 turned shabby, and will give nothing more; it 
 would be too hard upon uncle to make him pay for 
 all the things I need : that you can't deny — that 
 agrees with your own preachments. Well, but 
 somebody who heard me (quite by chance, I assure 
 you) complaining to Mrs. Cholmondeley of my dis- 
 tressed circumstances, and what straits I was put 
 to for an ornament or two: somebody, far from 
 grudging one a present, was quite delighted at the 
 idea of being permitted to offer some trifle. You 
 should have seen what a blanc-bec he looked when 
 he first spoke of it : how he hesitated and blushed, 
 and positively trembled from fear of a repulse." 
 
ISIDORE. 173 
 
 " That will do, Miss Fanshawe. I suppose I am 
 to understand that M. Isidore is the benefactor: 
 that it is from him you have accepted that costly 
 parure; that he supplies your bouquets and your 
 gloves ? " 
 
 " You express yourself so disagreeably," said she, 
 " one hardly knows how to answer ; what I mean 
 to say is, that I occasionally allow Isidore the plea- 
 sure and honour of expressing his homage, by the 
 offer of a trifle." 
 
 " It comes to the same thing . . . Now, Ginevra, 
 to speak the plain truth, I don't very well under- 
 stand these matters; but I believe you are doing 
 very wrong — seriously wrong. Perhaps, however, 
 you now feel certain that you will be able to marry 
 M. Isidore — your parents and uncle have given 
 their consent — and, for your part, you love him 
 entirely?" 
 
 " Mais pas du tout ! " (she always had recourse 
 to French, when about to say something specially 
 heartless and perverse). " Je suis sa reine, mais 
 il n' est pas mon roi." 
 
 " Excuse me, I must believe this language is 
 mere nonsense and coquetry. There is nothing 
 great about you, yet you are above profiting by 
 
174 VILLETTE. 
 
 the good nature and the purse of a man to whom 
 you feel absolute indifference. You love M. Isidore 
 far more than you think, or will avow." 
 
 " No. I danced with a young officer the other 
 night, whom I love a thousand times more than 
 he. I often wonder why I feel so very cold to 
 Isidore, for everybody says he is handsome, and 
 other ladies admire him; but, somehow, he bores 
 me : let me see now how it is .... " 
 
 And she seemed to make an effort, to reflect. In 
 this I encouraged her. " Yes ! " I said, " try to 
 get a clear idea of the state of your mind. To me, 
 it seems in a great mess — chaotic as a rag-bag." 
 
 " It is something in this fashion," she cried out 
 ere long : " the man is too romantic and devoted, 
 and he expects something more of me than I find 
 it convenient to be. He thinks I am perfect : fur- 
 nished with all sorts of sterling qualities and solid 
 virtues, such as I never had, nor intend to have. 
 Now, one can't help, in his presence, rather trying 
 to justify his good opinion ; and it does so tire one 
 to be goody, and to talk sense, — for he really thinks 
 I am sensible. I am far more at my ease with 
 you, old lady — you, you dear crosspatch — who 
 take me at my lowest, and know me to be coquettish, 
 
ISIDORE. 175 
 
 and ignorant, and flirting, and fickle, and silly, and 
 selfish, and all the other sweet things you and I 
 have agreed to be a part of my character." 
 
 " This is all very well," I said, making a stren- 
 uous effort to preserve that gravity and severity 
 which ran risk of being shaken by this whimsical 
 candour, " but it does not alter that wretched 
 business of the presents. Pack them up, Ginevra, 
 like a good, honest girl, and send them back." 
 
 " Indeed, I won't," said she stoutly. 
 
 " Then you are deceiving M. Isidore. It stands 
 to reason that by accepting his presents you give 
 him to understand he will one day receive an equi- 
 valent, in your regard . . . . " 
 
 " But he won't," she interrupted : " he has his 
 equivalent now, in the pleasure of seeing me wear 
 them — quite enough for him : he is only bourgeois." 
 
 This phrase, in its senseless arrogance, quite cured 
 me of the temporary weakness which had made me 
 relax my tone and aspect. She rattled on : 
 
 " My present business is to enjoy youth, and 
 not to think of fettering myself, by promise or 
 vow, to this man or that. When first I saw Isi- 
 dore, I believed he would help me to enjoy it. I 
 believed he would be content with my being a 
 
176 VILLETTE. 
 
 pretty girl ; and that we should meet and part and 
 flutter about like two butterflies, and be happy. 
 Lo, and behold! I find him at times as grave as 
 a judge, and deep-feeling and thoughtful. Bah ! 
 Les penseurs, les hommes profonds et passiones, ne 
 sont pas a mon gout. Le Colonel Alfred de Ha- 
 mal suits me far better. Ya pour les beaux fats et 
 les jolis fripons ! Vive les joies et les plaisirs ! A 
 bas les grandes passions et les severes vertus ! " 
 
 She looked for an answer to this tirade. I gave 
 none. 
 
 « J'aime mon beau colonel, " she went on : " Je 
 n' aimerai jamais son rival. Je ne serai jamais 
 femme de bourgeois, moi ! " 
 
 I now signified that it was imperatively necessary 
 my apartment should be relieved of the honour of 
 her presence : she went away laughing. 
 
DE. JOHN, 177 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 DE. JOHN. 
 
 Madame Beck was a most consistent character; 
 forbearing with all the world, and tender to no 
 part of it. Her own children drew her into no 
 deviation from the even tenor of her stoic calm. 
 She was solicitous about her family, vigilant for 
 their interests, and physical well-being ; but she 
 never seemed to know the wish to take her little 
 children upon her lap, to press their rosy lips with 
 her own, to gather them in a genial embrace, to 
 shower on them softly the benignant caress, the 
 loving word. 
 
 I have watched her sometimes sitting in the 
 garden, viewing the little ones afar off, as they 
 walked in a distant alley with Trinette, their bonne ; 
 in her mien spoke care and prudence : I know she 
 often pondered anxiously what she called " leur 
 avenir ; " but if the youngest, a puny and delicate, 
 
 VOL. I. N 
 
178 VILLETTE. 
 
 but engaging child, chancing to spy her, broke from 
 its nurse, and toddling down 'the walk, came all 
 eager and laughing and panting to clasp her knee, 
 madame would just calmly put out one hand, so as 
 to prevent inconvenient concussion from the child's 
 sudden onset : " Prends garde, mon enfant ! " she 
 would say unmoved, patiently permit it to stand 
 near her a few moments, and then, without smile 
 or kiss, or endearing syllable, rise and lead it back 
 to Trioette. 
 
 Her demeanour to the eldest girl was equally 
 characteristic in another way. This was a vicious 
 child. " Quelle peste que cette Desiree ! Quel 
 poison que cet enfant la ! " were the expressions 
 dedicated to her, alike in kitchen and in school- 
 room. Amongst her other endowments she boasted 
 an exquisite skill in the art of provocation, some- 
 times driving her bonne and the servants almost 
 wild. She would steal to their attics, open their 
 drawers and boxes, wantonly tear their best caps 
 and soil their best shawls ; she would watch her 
 opportunity to get at the beaufet of the salle a 
 manger, where she would smash articles of porce- 
 lain or glass — or to the cupboard of the store-room, 
 where she would plunder the preserves, drink the 
 
DK. JOHN. 179 
 
 sweet wine, break jars and bottles, and so contrive 
 as to throw the onus of suspicion on the cook and 
 the kitchen-maid. All this when madame saw, and 
 of which when she received report, her sole observa- 
 tion, uttered with matchless serenity, was : 
 
 " Desiree a besoin d'une surveillance toute par- 
 ticuliere." Accordingly she kept this promising 
 olive-branch a good deal at her side. Never once, 
 I believe, did she tell her faithfully of her faults, 
 explain the evil of such habits, and show the results 
 which must thence ensue. Surveillance must work 
 the whole cure. It failed of course. Desiree was 
 kept in some measure from the servants, but she 
 teased and pillaged her mama instead. Whatever, 
 belonging to madame's work-table or toilet, she 
 could lay her hands on, she stole and hid. Ma- 
 dame saw all this, but she still pretended not to 
 see : she had not rectitude of soul to confront the 
 child with her vices. When an article disappeared 
 whose value rendered restitution necessary, she 
 would profess to think that Desiree had taken it 
 away in play, and beg her to restore it. Desiree 
 was not to be so cheated : she had learned to bring 
 falsehood to the aid of theft, and would deny having 
 touched the brooch, ring, or scissors. Carrying on 
 
180 VILLETTE. 
 
 the hollow system, the mother would calmly assume 
 an air of belief, and afterwards ceaselessly watch 
 and dog the child till she tracked her to her hiding- 
 places — some hole in the garden-wall — some chink 
 or cranny in garret or out-house. This done, ma- 
 dame would send Desire e out for a walk with her 
 lonne, and profit by her absence to rob the robber. 
 Desiree proved herself the true daughter of her 
 astute parent, by never suffering either her coun- 
 tenance or manner to betray the least sign of 
 mortification on discovering the loss. 
 
 The second child Fifine, was said to be like its 
 dead father. Certainly, though the mother had 
 given it her healthy frame, her blue eye and ruddy 
 cheek, not from her was derived its moral being. It 
 was an honest, gleeful little soul : a passionate, warm- 
 tempered, bustling creature it was too, and of the 
 sort likely to blunder often into perils and diffi- 
 culties. One day it bethought itself to fall from 
 top to bottom of a steep flight of stone steps ; and 
 when madame, hearing the noise (she always heard 
 every noise), issued from the salle a manger and 
 picked it up, she said quietly, — 
 
 " Cet enfant a un os de casse." 
 
 At first we hoped this was not the case. It was 
 
DR. JOHN. 181 
 
 however, but too true : one little plump arm hung 
 powerless. 
 
 " Let meess" (meaning me) " take her," said 
 madame ; " et qu'on aille tout de suite chercher un 
 fiacre." 
 
 In a fiacre she promptly, but with admirable cool- 
 ness and self-possession, departed to fetch a surgeon. 
 
 It appeared she did not find the family -surgeon at 
 home ; but that mattered not : she sought until she 
 laid her hand on a substitute to her mind, and 
 brought him back with her. Meantime I had cut 
 the child's sleeve from its arm, undressed and put it 
 to bed. 
 
 We none of us, I suppose (by we I mean the 
 bonne, the cook, the portress, and myself, all which 
 personages were now gathered in the small and 
 heated chamber), looked very scrutinizingly at the 
 new doctor when he came into the room. I, at least, 
 was taken up with endeavouring to soothe Fifine ; 
 whose cries (for she had good lungs) were appalling 
 to hear. These cries redoubled in intensity as the 
 stranger approached her bed ; when he took her up, 
 " Let alone ! " she cried passionately, in her broken 
 English (for she spoke English as did the other 
 children). " I will not you : I will Dr. Pillule ! " 
 
182 VILLETTE. 
 
 te And Dr. Pillule is ray very good friend," was 
 the answer, in perfect English ; " but he is busy at 
 a place three leagues off, and I am come in his stead. 
 So now, when we get a little calmer, we must com- 
 mence business ; and we will soon have that unlucky 
 little arm bandaged and in right order." 
 
 Hereupon he called for a glass of eau sucree, fed 
 her with some teaspoonsful of the sweet liquid (Fifine 
 was a frank gourmande; any body could win her 
 heart through her palate), promised her more when 
 the operation should be over, and promptly went to 
 work. Some assistance being needed, he demanded 
 it of the cook, a robust, strong-armed woman, but 
 she, the portress, and the nurse instantly fled. I 
 did not like to touch that small, tortured limb, but, 
 thinking there was no alternative, my hand was 
 already extended to t do what was requisite. I was 
 anticipated : Madame Beck had put out her own 
 hand — hers was steady while mine trembled. 
 
 " Qa vaudra mieux," said the doctor, turning from 
 me to her. 
 
 He showed wisdom in his choice. Mine would 
 have been feigned stoicism, forced fortitude. Hers 
 was neither forced nor feigned. 
 
 "Merci Madame: tr£s bien, fort bien!" said the 
 
DE. JOHN. 183 
 
 operator when he had finished. " Voila un sang-froid 
 bien opportun, et qui vaut mille elans de sensibilite 
 deplacee." 
 
 He was pleased with her firmness, she with his 
 compliment. It is likely too that his whole general 
 appearance, his voice, mien, and manner wrought 
 impressions in his favour. Indeed, when you looked 
 well at him, and when a lamp was brought in — for it 
 was evening and now waxing dusk — you saw that, 
 unless Madame Beck had been less than woman, it 
 could not well be otherwise. This young doctor 
 (he was young) had no common aspect. His stature 
 looked imposingly tall in that little chamber, and 
 amidst that group of Dutch-made women ; his pro- 
 file was clear, fine, and expressive : perhaps his eye 
 glanced from face to face rather too vividly, too 
 quickly, and too often, but it had a most pleasant 
 character, and so had his mouth ; his chin was full, 
 cleft, Grecian, and perfect. As to his smile, one 
 could not in a hurry make up one's mind as to the 
 descriptive epithet it merited ; there was something 
 in it that pleased, but something too that brought 
 surging up into the mind all one's foibles and weak 
 points : all that could lay one open to a laugh ; yet 
 Fifine liked this doubtful smile, and thought the 
 
184 VILLETTE. 
 
 owner genial: much as he had hurt her, she held 
 out her hand to bid him a friendly good-night. He 
 patted the little hand kindly, and then he and 
 madame went down stairs together ; she talking in 
 her highest tide of spirits and volubility ; he listen- 
 ing with an air of good-natured amenity, dashed 
 with that unconscious roguish archness I find it 
 difficult to describe. 
 
 I noticed that though he spoke French well, he 
 spoke English better ; he had, too, an English com- 
 plexion, eyes, and form. I noticed more. As he 
 passed me in leaving the room, turning his face 
 in my direction one moment — not to address me, 
 but to speak to madame, yet so standing, that I 
 almost necessarily looked up at him — a recollection 
 which had been struggling to form in my memory, 
 since the first moment I heard his voice, started up 
 perfected. This was the very gentleman to whom 
 I had spoken at the bureau ; who had helped me in 
 the matter of the trunk ; who had been my guide 
 through the dark, wet park. Listening, as he 
 passed down the long vestibule out into the street, 
 I recognized his very tread: it was the same firm 
 and equal stride I had followed under the dripping 
 trees. 
 
DE. JOHN. 185 
 
 It was to be concluded that this young surgeon- 
 physician's first visit to the Rue Fossette would be 
 his last. The respectable Dr. Pillule being ex- 
 pected home the next day, there appeared no reason 
 why his temporary substitute should again repre- 
 sent him ; but the Fates had written their decree 
 to the contrary. 
 
 Dr. Pillule had been summoned to see a rich old 
 hypochondriac at the antique university town of 
 Bouquin-Moisi, and upon his prescribing change of 
 air and travel as remedies, he was retained to accom- 
 pany the timid patient on a tour of some weeks ; it 
 but remained, therefore, for the new doctor to con- 
 tinue his attendance at the Rue Fossette. 
 
 I often saw him when he came, for madame would 
 not trust the little invalid to Trinette, but required 
 me to spend much of my time in the nursery. I 
 think he was skilful. Fifine recovered rapidly 
 under his care, yet even her convalescence did not 
 hasten his dismissal. Destiny and Madame Beck 
 seemed in league, and both had ruled that he should 
 make deliberate acquaintance with the vestibule, 
 the private staircase, and upper chambers of the 
 Rue Fossette. 
 
 No sooner did Fifine emerge from his hands than 
 
186 VILLETTE. 
 
 Desiree declared herself ill. That possessed child 
 had a genius for simulation, and captivated by the 
 attentions and indulgences of a sick-room, she came 
 to the conclusion that an illness would perfectly 
 accommodate her tastes, and took her bed accord- 
 ingly. She acted well, and her mother still better ; 
 for while the whole case was transparent to Madame 
 Beck as the day, she treated it with an astonish- 
 ingly well-assured air of gravity and good faith. 
 
 What surprised me was that Dr. John (so the 
 young Englishman had taught Fifine to call him, 
 and we all took from her the habit of addressing 
 him by this name, till it became an established 
 custom, and he was known by no other in the 
 Rue Fossette) — that Dr. John consented tacitly to 
 adopt madame's tactics, and to fall in with her 
 manoeuvres. He betrayed, indeed, a period of comic 
 doubt, cast one or two rapid glances from the child 
 to the mother, indulged in an interval of self-con- 
 sultation, but finally resigned himself with a good 
 grace to play his part in the farce. Desiree eat 
 like a raven, gambolled day and night in her bed, 
 pitched tents with the sheets and blankets, lounged 
 like a Turk amidst pillows and bolsters, diverted 
 herself with throwing her shoes at her bonne and 
 
DR. JOHN. 187 
 
 grimacing at her sisters — overflowed, in short, with 
 unmerited health and evil spirits — only languishing 
 when her mama and the physician paid their diurnal 
 visit. Madame Beck, I knew, was glad, at any 
 price, to have her daughter in hed out of the way 
 of mischief; but I wondered that Dr. John did 
 not tire of the business. 
 
 Every day, on this mere pretext of a motive, 
 he gave punctual attendance; madame always re- 
 ceived him with the same empressement, the same 
 sunshine for himself, the same admirably counter- 
 feited air of concern for her child. Dr. John 
 wrote harmless prescriptions for the patient, and 
 viewed her mother with a shrewdly sparkling eye. 
 Madame caught his rallying looks without resenting 
 them — she had too much good sense for that. Supple 
 as the young doctor seemed, one could not despise 
 him — this pliant part was evidently not adopted in 
 the design to curry favour with his employer : 
 while he liked his office at the Pensionnat, and 
 lingered strangely about the Rue Fossette, he was 
 independent, almost careless in his carriage there ; 
 and yet, too, he was often thoughtful and pre- 
 occupied. 
 
 It was not perhaps my business to observe the 
 
188 VILLETTE. 
 
 mystery of his bearing, or search out its origin or 
 aim ; but, placed as* I was, I could hardly help it. 
 He laid himself open to my observation, according 
 to my presence in the room just that degree of 
 notice and consequence a person of my exterior 
 habitually expects : that is to say, about what is 
 given to unobtrusive articles of furniture, chairs of 
 ordinary joiner's work, and carpets of no striking 
 pattern. Often, while waiting for madame, he 
 would muse, smile, watch, or listen like a man who 
 thinks himself alone. I, meantime, was free to 
 puzzle over his countenance and movements, and 
 wonder what could be the meaning of that peculiar 
 interest and attachment — all mixed up with doubt 
 and strangeness, and inexplicably ruled by some 
 presiding spell — which wedded him to this demi- 
 convent, secluded in the built-up core of a capital. 
 He, I believe, never remembered that I had eyes 
 in my head; much less a brain behind them. 
 
 Nor would he ever have found this out, but that 
 one day, while he sat in the sunshine, and I was 
 observing the colouring of his hair, whiskers, and 
 complexion — the whole being of such a tone as a 
 strong light brings out with somewhat perilous force 
 (indeed I recollect I was driven to compare his 
 
DR. JOHN. 189 
 
 beamy head in my thoughts to that of the " golden 
 image" which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up), 
 an idea new, sudden, and startling, riveted my 
 attention with an overmastering strength and power 
 of attraction. I know not to this day how I looked 
 at him — the force of surprise, and also of con- 
 viction, made me forget myself — and I only re- 
 covered wonted consciousness when I saw that his 
 notice was arrested, and that it had caught my 
 movement in a clear little oval mirror fixed in the 
 side of the window recess — by the aid of which 
 reflector madame often secretly spied persons walk- 
 ing in the garden below. Though of so gay and 
 sanguine a temperament, he was not without a 
 certain nervous sensitiveness which made him ill at 
 ease under a direct, inquiring gaze. On surprising 
 me thus, he turned and said in a tone which, though 
 courteous, had just so much dryness in it as to mark 
 a shade of annoyance, as well as to give to what was 
 said the character of rebuke : — 
 
 " Mademoiselle does not spare me : I am not 
 vain enough to fancy that it is my merits which 
 attract her attention ; it must then be some defect. 
 Dare I ask — what?" 
 
 I was confounded, as the reader may suppose, yet 
 
190 VILLETTE. 
 
 not with an irrecoverable confusion, being conscious 
 that it was from no emotion of incautious admira- 
 tion, nor yet in a spirit of unjustifiable inquisi- 
 tiveness, that I had incurred this reproof. I might 
 have cleared myself on the spot, but would not. 
 I did not speak. I was not in the habit of speaking 
 to him. Suffering him, then, to think what he chose, 
 and accuse me of what he would, I resumed some 
 work I had dropped, and kept my head bent over 
 it during the remainder of his stay. There is a 
 perverse mood of the mind which is rather soothed 
 than irritated by misconstruction ; and in quarters 
 where we can never be rightly known, we take 
 pleasure, I think, in being consummately ignored. 
 What honest man on being casually taken for a 
 housebreaker, does not feel rather tickled than 
 vexed at the mistake ? 
 
THE PORTEESSE'S CABINET. 191 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE POETEESSE'S CABINET. 
 
 It was summer and very hot. Georgette, the 
 youngest of Madame Beck's children, took a fever. 
 Desiree, suddenly cured of her ailments, was, to- 
 gether with Fifine, packed off to Bonne-Maman in 
 the country, by way of precaution against infection. 
 Medical aid was now really needed, and Madame, 
 choosing to ignore the return of Dr. Pillule, who 
 had been at home a week, conjured his English 
 rival to continue his visits. One or two of the 
 pensionnaires complained of headache, and in other 
 respects seemed slightly to participate Georgette's 
 ailment. " Now, at last," I thought, " Dr. Pillule 
 must be recalled : the prudent directress will never 
 venture to permit the attendance of so young a 
 man on the pupils." 
 
 The directress was very prudent, but she could 
 
192 VILLETTE. 
 
 also be intrepidly venturous. She actually intro- 
 duced Dr. John to the school-division of the 
 premises, and established him in attendance on the 
 proud and handsome Blanche de Melcy, and the 
 vain, flirting Angelique, her friend. Dr. John, I 
 thought, testified a certain gratification at this mark 
 of confidence ; and if discretion of bearing could have 
 justified the step, it would by him have been amply 
 justified. Here, however, in this land of convents 
 and confessionals, such a presence as his was not to 
 be suffered with impunity in a " Pensionnat de de- 
 moiselles." The school gossiped, the kitchen whis- 
 pered, the town caught the rumour, parents wrote 
 letters and paid visits of remonstrance. Madame, 
 had she been weak, would now have been lost : a 
 dozen rival educational houses were ready to im- 
 prove this false step — if false step it were — to her 
 ruin ; but Madame was not weak, and little Jesuit 
 though she might be, yet I clapped the hands of my 
 h eart, and with its voice cried " brava ! " as I 
 watched her able bearing, her skilled management, 
 her temper and her firmness on this occasion. 
 
 She met the alarmed parents with a good-humoured, 
 easy grace : for nobody matched her in, I know not 
 whether to say the possession or the assumption of a 
 
THE POETEESSE'S CABINET. 193 
 
 certain " rondeur et franchise de bonne femme," which 
 on various occasions gained the point aimed at with 
 instant and complete success, where severe gravity 
 and serious reasoning would probably have failed. 
 
 " Ce pauvre Docteur Jean ! " she would say, 
 chuckling and rubbing joyously her fat, little, white 
 hands ; " ce cher jeune homme ! le meilleur creature 
 du monde !" and go on to explain how she happened 
 to be employing him for her own children, who were 
 so fond of him they would scream themselves into 
 fits at the thought of another doctor ; how where 
 she had confidence for her own, she thought it natural 
 to repose trust for others, and au reste it was only 
 the most temporary expedient in the world : Blanche 
 and Angelique had the migraine; Dr. John had 
 written a prescription ; voila tout ! 
 
 The parents' mouths were closed. Blanche and 
 Angelique saved her all remaining trouble by 
 chanting loud duets in their physician's praise ; the 
 other pupils echoed them, unanimously declaring 
 that when they were ill they would have Dr. John 
 and nobody else ; and madame laughed, and the 
 parents laughed too. The Labassecouriens must 
 have a large organ of philoprogenitiveness : at least 
 the indulgence of offspring is carried by them to 
 
 VOL. i. o 
 
194 VILLETTE. 
 
 excessive lengths ; the law of most households being 
 the children's will. Madame now got credit for 
 having acted on this occasion in a spirit of motherly 
 partiality : she came off with flying colours ; people 
 liked her as a directress better than ever. 
 
 To this day I never fully understood why she 
 thus risked her interest for the sake of Dr. John. 
 What people said, of course I know well: the 
 whole house — pupils, teachers, servants included — 
 affirmed that she was going to marry him. So they 
 had settled it : difference of age seemed to make 
 no obstacle in their eyes ; it was to be so. 
 
 It must be admitted that appearances did not 
 wholly discountenance this idea; madame seemed 
 so bent on retaining his services, so oblivious of her 
 former protege, Pillule. She made, too, such a point 
 of personally receiving his visits, and was so un- 
 failingly cheerful, blithe, and benignant in her man- 
 ner to him. Moreover, she paid, about this time, 
 marked attention to dress : the morning deshabille, 
 the night- cap and shawl, were discarded ; Dr. John's 
 early visits always found her with auburn braids all 
 nicely arranged, silk dress trimly fitted on, neat 
 laced brodequins in lieu of slippers: in short the 
 whole toilette complete as a model, and fresh as a 
 
THE PORTEESSE'S CABINET. 195 
 
 flower. I scarcely think, however, that her inten- 
 tion in this went further than just to show a very- 
 handsome man that she was not quite a plain 
 woman : and plain she was not. Without beauty 
 of feature or elegance of form, she pleased. With- 
 out youth and its gay graces, she cheered. One 
 never tired of seeing her: she was never monoto- 
 nous, or insipid, or colourless, or flat. Her unfaded 
 hair, her eye with its temperate blue light, her 
 cheek with its wholesome fruit-like bloom — these 
 things pleased in moderation, but with constancy. 
 
 Had she, indeed, floating visions of adopting Dr. 
 John as a husband, taking him to her well-furnished 
 home, endowing him with her savings, which were 
 said to amount to a moderate competency, and 
 making him comfortable for the rest of his life ? 
 Did Dr. John suspect her of such visions ? I have 
 met him coining out of her presence with a mis- 
 chievous half-smile about his lips, and in his eyes a 
 look as of masculine vanity elate and tickled. With 
 all his good looks and good-nature, he was not per- 
 fect ; he must have been very imperfect if he 
 roguishly encouraged aims he never intended to 
 be successful. But did he not intend them to be 
 successful ? People said he had no money, that he 
 
196 VILLETTE. 
 
 was wholly dependent upon his profession. Madame 
 — though perhaps some fourteen years his senior — 
 was yet the sort of woman never to grow old, never 
 to wither, never to break down. They certainly 
 were on good terms. He perhaps was not in love ; 
 but how many people ever do love, or at least marry 
 for love in this world ? We waited the end. 
 
 For what he waited I do not know, nor for what 
 he watched ; but the peculiarity of his manner, his 
 expectant, vigilant, absorbed, eager look, never wore 
 off: it rather intensified. He had never been quite 
 within the compass of my penetration, and I think 
 he ranged farther and farther beyond it. 
 
 One morning little Georgette had been more 
 feverish and consequently more peevish ; she was 
 crying and would not be pacified. I thought a par- 
 ticular draught ordered, disagreed with her, and I 
 doubted whether it ought to be continued ; I waited 
 impatiently for the doctor's coming in order to con- 
 sult him. 
 
 The door-bell rung, he was admitted ; I felt sure 
 of this, for I heard his voice addressing the portresse. 
 It was his custom to mount straight to the nursery, 
 taking about three degrees of the staircase at once, 
 and coming upon us like a cheerful surprise. Five 
 
THE PORTRESSE'S CABINET. 197 
 
 minutes elapsed — ten — and I saw and heard nothing 
 of him. What could he be doing ? Possibly 
 waiting in the corridor below. Little Georgette 
 still piped her plaintive wail, appealing to me by 
 her familiar term, " Minnie, Minnie, me very 
 poorly ! " till my heart ached. I descended to ascer- 
 tain why he did not come. The corridor was empty. 
 Whither was he vanished? Was he with madame 
 in the salle a manger ? Impossible : I had left her but 
 a short time since, dressing in her own chamber. 
 I listened. Three pupils were just then hard at 
 work practising in three proximate rooms — the dining 
 room and the greater and lesser drawing-rooms, 
 between which and the corridor there was but the 
 portresse's cabinet communicating with the salons, 
 and intended originally for a boudoir. Farther off, 
 at a fourth instrument in the oratory, a whole class 
 of a dozen or more were taking a singing lesson, 
 and just then joining in a " barcarole" (I think they 
 called it), whereof I yet remember these words 
 "fraiche brise" and " Venise." Under these circum- 
 stances what could I hear ? A great deal, certainly ; 
 had it only been to the purpose. 
 
 Yes ; I heard a giddy treble laugh in the above- 
 mentioned little cabinet, close by the door of which 
 
198 VILLETTE. 
 
 I stood — that door half-unclosed ; a man's voice in 
 a soft, deep, pleading tone, uttered some words, 
 whereof I only caught the adjuration, "For God's 
 sake ! " Then, after a second's pause, forth issued 
 Dr. John, his eye full-shining, but not with either 
 joy or triumph ; his fair English cheek high-coloured ; 
 a baffled, tortured, anxious, and yet a tender meaning 
 on his brow. 
 
 The open door served me as a screen ; but had I 
 been full in his way I believe he would have passed 
 without seeing me. Some mortification, some strong 
 vexation had hold of his soul: or rather, to write 
 my impressions now as I received them at the time, 
 I should say some sorrow, some sense of injustice. 
 I did not so much think his pride was hurt, as that 
 his affections had been wounded — cruelly wounded 
 it seemed to me. But who was the torturer? 
 What being in that house had him so much in her 
 power ? Madame I believed to be in her chamber ; 
 the room whence he had stepped was dedicated to 
 the portresse's sole use; # and she, Rosine Matou, 
 an unprincipled though pretty little French grisette, 
 airy, fickle, dressy, vain, and mercenary — it was not, 
 surely, to her hand he owed the ordeal through 
 which he seemed to have passed ? 
 
THE PORTRESSE'S CABINET. 199 
 
 But while I pondered, her voice, clear though 
 somewhat sharp, broke out in a lightsome French 
 song, trilling through the door still ajar : I glanced 
 in, doubting my senses. There at the table she sat 
 in a smart dress of " jaconas rose," trimming a tiny 
 blond cap : not a living thing save herself was in the 
 room, except indeed some gold-fish in a glass globe, 
 some flowers in pots, and a broad July sun- 
 beam. 
 
 Here was a problem : but I must go up stairs to 
 ask about the medicine. 
 
 Dr. John sat in a chair at Georgette's bedside; 
 madame stood before him; the little patient had 
 been examined and soothed, and now lay composed 
 in her crib. Madame Beck, as I entered, was dis- 
 cussing the physician's own health, remarking on 
 some real or fancied change in his looks, charging 
 him with over-work, and recommending rest and 
 change of air. He listened good-naturedly, but 
 with laughing indifference, telling her that she was 
 ts trop bonne," and that he felt perfectly well. 
 Madame appealed to me — Dr. John following her 
 movement with a slow glance which seemed to express 
 languid surprise at reference being made to a quarter 
 so insignificant. 
 
200 VILLETTE. 
 
 " What do you think, Miss Lucie ? " asked ma- 
 dame. " Is he not paler and thinner ? " 
 
 It was very seldom that I uttered more than 
 monosyllables in Dr. John's presence ; he was the 
 kind of person with whom I was likely ever to 
 remain the neutral, passive thing he thought 
 me. Now, however, I took license to answer in a 
 phrase : and a phrase I purposely made quite sig- 
 nificant. 
 
 " He looks ill at this moment ; but perhaps it is 
 owing to some temporary cause : Dr. John may 
 have been vexed or harassed." I cannot tell how he 
 took this speech, as I never sought his face for 
 information. Georgette here began to ask me in 
 her broken English if she might have a glass of 
 eau sucrte. I answered her in English. For the 
 first time, I fancy, he noticed that I spoke his 
 language; hitherto he had always taken me for a 
 foreigner, addressing me as " mademoiselle," and 
 giving in French the requisite directions about the 
 children's treatment. He seemed on the point of 
 making a remark, but thinking better of it, held his 
 tongue. 
 
 Madame recommenced advising him; he shook 
 his head laughing, rose and bid her good morning,. 
 
THE PORTRESSE'S CABINET. 201 
 
 with courtesy, but still with the regardless air of one 
 whom too much unsolicited attention was surfeiting 
 and spoiling. 
 
 When he was gone, madame dropped into the 
 chair he had just left ; she rested her chin in her 
 hand ; all that was animated and amiable vanished 
 from her face : she looked stony and stern, almost 
 mortified and morose. She sighed ; a single, but a 
 deep sigh. A loud bell rang for morning school. 
 She got up ; as she passed a dressing-table with a 
 glass upon it, she looked at her reflected image. 
 One single white hair streaked her nut-brown 
 tresses ; she plucked it out with a shudder. In the 
 full summer daylight, her face, though it still had 
 the colour, could plainly be seen to have lost the 
 texture of youth ; and then, where were youth's 
 contours ? Ah, madame ! wise as you were, even 
 you knew weakness. Never had I pitied madame 
 before, but my heart softened towards her, when she 
 turned darkly from the glass. A calamity had 
 come upon her. That hag disappointment was greet- 
 ing her with a grisly " all-hail ! " and her soul re- 
 jected the intimacy. 
 
 But Rosine! My bewilderment there surpasses 
 description. I embraced five opportunities of pass- 
 
202 VILLETTE. 
 
 ing her cabinet that day, with a view to contem- 
 plating her charms, and finding out the secret of 
 their influence. She was pretty, young, and wore a 
 well-made dress. All very good points, and, I sup- 
 pose, amply sufficient to account, in any philosophic 
 mind, for any amount of agony and distraction in a 
 young man like Dr. John. Still, I could not help 
 forming half a wish that the said doctor were my 
 brother ; or at least that he had a sister or a mother 
 who would kindly sermonize him. I say half a 
 wish ; I broke it and flung it away before it became 
 a whole one, discovering in good time its exquisite 
 folly. " Somebody," I argued, " might as well 
 sermonize madame about her young physician : and 
 what good would that do ?" 
 
 I believe madame sermonized herself. She did 
 not behave weakly, or make herself in any shape 
 ridiculous. It is true she had neither strong feelings 
 to overcome, nor tender feelings by which to be 
 miserably pained. It is true likewise that she had 
 an important avocation, a real business to fill her 
 time, divert her thoughts, and divide her interest. 
 It is especially true that she possessed a genuine 
 good sense which is not given to all women nor to 
 all men ; and by dint of these combined advantages 
 
THE POBTRESSE S CABINET. 203 
 
 she behaved wisely, she behaved well. Brava! 
 once more, Madame Beck. I saw you matched 
 against an Apollyon of a predilection ; you fought 
 a good fight, and you overcame ! 
 
204 VILLETTE. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE CASKET. 
 
 Behind the house at the Rue Fossette there was 
 a garden — large, considering that it lay in the heart 
 of a city, and to my recollection at this day it seems 
 pleasant: but time, like distance, lends to certain 
 scenes an influence so softening ; and where all is 
 stone around, blank wall and hot pavement, how 
 precious seems one shrub, how lovely an enclosed 
 and planted spot of ground ! 
 
 There went a tradition that Madame Beck's house 
 had in old days been a convent. That in years gone 
 by — how long gone by I cannot tell, but I think 
 some centuries — before the city had overspread this 
 quarter, and when it was tilled ground and avenue, 
 and such deep and leafy seclusion as ought to em- 
 bosom a religious house — that something had hap- 
 pened on this site which, rousing fear and inflicting 
 
THE CASKET. 205 
 
 horror, had left to the place the inheritance of a 
 ghost story. A vague tale went of a black and 
 white nun, sometimes, on some night or nights of 
 the year, seen in some part of this vicinage. The 
 ghost must have been built out some ages ago, for 
 there were houses all round now ; but certain con- 
 vent-relics, in the shape of old and huge fruit-trees, 
 yet consecrated the spot ; and, at the foot of one — a 
 Methuselah of a pear-tree, dead, all but a few boughs 
 which still faithfully renewed their perfumed snow 
 in spring, and their honey-sweet pendants in autumn 
 — you saw, in scraping away the mossy earth be- 
 tween the half-bared roots, a glimpse of slab, smooth, 
 hard, and black. The legend went, unconfirmed 
 and unaccredited, but still propagated, that this was 
 the portal of a vault, emprisoning deep beneath that 
 ground, on whose surface grass grew and flowers 
 bloomed, the bones of a girl whom a monkish con- 
 clave of the drear middle ages had here buried 
 alive, for some sin against her vow. Her shadow it 
 was that tremblers had feared, through long genera- 
 tions after her poor frame was dust ; her black robe 
 and white veil that, for timid eyes, moonlight and 
 shade had mocked, as they fluctuated in the night- 
 wind through the garden-thicket. 
 
206 VILLETTE. 
 
 Independently of romantic rubbish, however, that 
 old garden had its charms. On summer mornings 
 I used to rise early, to enjoy them alone ; on summer 
 evenings, to linger solitary, to keep tryste with the 
 rising moon, or taste one kiss of the evening breeze, 
 or fancy rather than feel the freshness of dew de- 
 scending. The turf was verdant, the gravelled 
 walks were white ; sun-bright nasturtiums clustered 
 beautiful about the roots of the doddered orchard 
 giants. There was a large berceau, above which 
 spread the shade of an acacia ; there was a smaller, 
 more sequestered bower, nestled in the vines which 
 ran all along a high and gray wall, and gathered 
 their tendrils in a knot of beauty, and hung their 
 clusters in loving profusion about the favoured 
 spot where jasmine and ivy met, and married 
 them. 
 
 Doubtless at high noon, in the broad, vulgar 
 middle of the day, when Madame Beck's large 
 school turned out rampant, and externes and pen- 
 sionnaires were spread abroad, vying with the 
 denizens of the boys' college close at hand, in the 
 brazen exercise of their lungs and limbs — doubtless 
 then the garden was a trite, trodden -down place 
 enough. But at sunset or the hour of salut, when 
 
THE CASKET. 207 
 
 the externes were gone home, and the boarders quiet 
 at their studies; pleasant was it then to stray down 
 the peaceful alleys, and hear the bells of St. Jean 
 Baptiste peal out with their sweet, soft, exalted sound. 
 
 I was walking thus one evening, and had been 
 detained, farther within the verge of twilight than 
 usual, by the still-deepening calm, the mellow cool- 
 ness, the fragrant breathing with which flowers no 
 sunshine could win now answered the persuasion of 
 the dew. I saw by a light in the oratory window 
 that the Catholic household were then gathered to 
 evening prayer — a rite, from attendance on which, 
 I now and then, as a Protestant, exempted myself. 
 
 " One moment longer," whispered solitude and 
 the summer moon, el stay with us : all is truly 
 quiet now ; for another quarter of an hour your 
 presence will not be missed: the day's heat and 
 bustle have tired you ; enjoy these precious 
 minutes." 
 
 The windowless backs of houses built in this 
 garden, and in particular the whole of one side 
 was skirted by the rear of a long line of premises 
 — being the boarding-houses of the neighbouring 
 college. This rear, however, was all blank stone, 
 with the exception of certain attic loop-holes high 
 
208 VILLETTE. 
 
 up, opening from the sleeping-rooms of the women- 
 servants, and also one casement in a lower story- 
 said to mark the chamber or study of a master. 
 But, though thus secure, an alley, which ran parallel 
 with the very high wall on that side the garden, 
 was forbidden to be entered by the pupils. It 
 was called indeed "l'allee def endue," and any girl 
 setting foot there would have rendered herself liable 
 to as severe a penalty as the mild rules of Madame 
 Beck's establishment permitted. Teachers might 
 indeed go there with impunity ; but as the walk was 
 narrow, and the neglected shrubs were grown very 
 thick and close on each side, weaving overhead a 
 roof of branch and leaf which the sun's rays pene- 
 trated but in rare chequers, this alley was seldom 
 entered even during day, and after dusk was care- 
 fully shunned. 
 
 From the first I was tempted to make an ex- 
 ception to this rule of avoidance: the seclusion, 
 the very gloom of the walk attracted me. For 
 a long time the fear of seeming singular scared 
 me away; but by degrees, as people became ac- 
 customed to me and my habits, and to such shades 
 of peculiarity as were engrained in my nature — 
 shades, certainly not striking enough to interest, 
 
THE CASKET. 209 
 
 and perhaps not prominent enough to offend, but 
 born in and with me, and no more to be parted 
 with than my identity — by slow degrees I became 
 a frequenter of this strait and narrow path. I 
 made myself gardener of some tintless flowers that 
 grew between its closely-ranked shrubs ; I cleared 
 away the relics of past autumns, choking up a 
 rustic seat at the far end. Borrowing of Goton, 
 the cuisiniere, a pail of water and a scrubbing- 
 brush, I made this seat clean. Madame saw me 
 at work and smiled approbation : whether sincerely 
 or not I don't know ; but she seemed sincere. 
 
 " Voyez-vous ! " cried she, "comme elle est propre 
 cette demoiselle Lucie? Vous aimez done cette 
 allee, meess?" 
 
 " Yes," I said, " it is quiet and shady." 
 
 " C'est juste," cried she with her air of bonte ; 
 and she kindly recommended me to confine my- 
 self to it as much as I chose, saying, that as I 
 was not charged with the surveillance, I need not 
 trouble myself to walk with the pupils : only I 
 might permit her children to come there, to talk 
 English with me. 
 
 On the night in question, I was sitting on the 
 hidden seat reclaimed from fungi and mould, lis- 
 
 vol. i. p 
 
210 TILLETTE. 
 
 tening to what seemed the far-off sounds of the 
 city. Far - off, in truth, they were not : this 
 school was in the city's centre ; hence, it was but 
 five minutes' walk to the park, scarce ten — to build- 
 ings of palatial splendour. Quite near were wide 
 streets brightly lit, teeming at this moment with 
 life: carriages were rolling through them, to balls 
 or to the opera. The same hour which tolled curfew 
 for our convent, which extinguished each lamp, 
 and dropped the curtain round each couch, rung 
 for the gay city about us the summons to festal 
 enjoyment. Of this contrast I thought not, how- 
 ever : gay instincts my nature had few ; ball or 
 opera I had never seen ; and though often I had 
 heard them described, and even wished to see 
 them, it was not the wish of one who hopes to 
 partake a pleasure if she could only reach it — who 
 feels fitted to shine in some bright distant sphere, 
 could she but thither win her way ; it was no yearn- 
 ing to attain, no hunger to taste ; only the calm 
 desire to look on a new thing. 
 
 A moon was in the sky, not a full moon but a 
 young crescent. I saw her through a space in the 
 boughs over-head. She and the stars, visible be- 
 side her, were no strangers where all else was 
 
THE CASKET. 211 
 
 strange : my childhood knew them. I had seen 
 that golden sign with the dark globe in its curve 
 leaning back on azure, beside an old thorn at the 
 top of an old field, in Old England, in long past 
 days, just as it now leaned back beside a stately 
 spire in this continental capital. 
 
 Oh, my childhood ! I had feelings : passive as 
 I lived, little as I spoke, cold as I looked, when 
 I thought of past days, I could feel. About the 
 present, it was better to be stoical ; about the 
 future — such a future as mine — to be dead. And 
 in catalepsy and a dead trance, I studiously held 
 the quick of my nature. 
 
 At that time, I well remember whatever could ex- 
 cite — certain accidents of the weather, for instance, 
 were almost dreaded by me, _because they woke the 
 being I was always lulling, and stirred up a crav- 
 ing cry I could not satisfy. One night a thunder- 
 storm broke; a sort of hurricane shook us in our 
 beds: the Catholics rose in panic and prayed to 
 their saints. As for me, the tempest took hold of 
 me with tyranny : I was roughly roused and obliged 
 to live. I got up and dressed myself, and creep- 
 ing outside the casement close by my bed, sat on 
 its ledge, with my feet on the roof of a lower ad- 
 
212 VILLETTE. 
 
 joining building. It was wet, it was wild, it was 
 pitch-dark. Within the dormitory they gathered 
 round the night-lamp in consternation, praying loud. 
 I could not go in: too resistless was the delight 
 of staying with the wild hour, black and full of 
 thunder, pealing out such an ode as language never 
 delivered to man — too terribly glorious, the spectacle 
 of clouds, split and pierced by white and blinding 
 bolts. 
 
 I did long, achingly, then and for four-and- 
 twenty hours afterwards, for something to fetch me 
 out of my present existence, and lead me upwards 
 and onwards. This longing, and all of a similar 
 kind, it was necessary to knock on the head ; which 
 I did, figuratively, after the manner of Jael to 
 Sisera, driving a nail through their temples. Un- 
 like Sisera, they did not die : they were but tran- 
 siently stunned, and at intervals would turn on the 
 nail with a rebellious wrench ; then did the temples 
 bleed, and the brain thrill to its core. 
 
 To night, I was not so mutinous, nor so miserable. 
 My Sisera lay quiet in the tent, slumbering ; and if 
 his pain ached through his slumbers, something like 
 an angel — the Ideal — knelt near, dropping balm on 
 the soothed temples, holding before the sealed eyes a 
 
THE CASKET. 213 
 
 magic glass, of which the sweet, solemn visions 
 were repeated in dreams, and shedding a reflex 
 from her moonlight wings and robe over the trans- 
 fixed sleeper, over the tent threshold, over all the 
 landscape lying without. Jael, the stern woman, 
 sat apart, relenting somewhat over her captive ; but 
 more prone to dwell on the faithful expectation of 
 Heber coming home. By which words I mean that 
 the cool peace and dewy sweetness of the night 
 filled me with a mood of hope : not hope on any 
 definite point, but a general' sense of encourage- 
 ment and heart-ease. 
 
 Should not such a mood, so sweet, so tranquil, 
 so unwonted, have been the harbinger of good? 
 Alas, no good came of it ! Presently the rude 
 Real burst coarsely in — all evil, grovelling, and re- 
 pellent as she too often is. 
 
 Amid the intense stillness of that pile of stone 
 overlooking the walk, the trees, the high wall, I 
 heard a sound ; a casement [all the windows here 
 are casements, opening on hinges] creaked. Ere I 
 had time to look up and mark where, in which story, 
 or by whom unclosed, a tree overhead shook, as if 
 struck by a missile ; some object dropped prone a^ 
 my feet. 
 
214 VILLETTE. 
 
 Nine was striking by St. Jean Baptiste's clock; 
 day was fading, but it was not dark : the crescent- 
 moon aided little, but the deep gilding of that point 
 in heaven where the sun beamed last, and the 
 crystalline clearness of a wide space above, sustained 
 the summer twilight; even in my dark walk I 
 could, by approaching an opening, have managed 
 to read print of a small type. Easy was it to see 
 then that the missile was a box, a small box of 
 white and coloured ivory : its loose lid opened in 
 my hand; violets lay within, violets smothering a 
 closely-folded bit of pink paper, a note, super- 
 scribed, " Pour la robe grise." I wore indeed a 
 dress of French gray. 
 
 Good. "Was this a billet-doux? A thing I had 
 heard of, but hitherto had not had the honour of 
 seeing or handling. "Was it this sort of commodity 
 I held between my finger and thumb at this 
 moment ? 
 
 Scarcely : I did not dream it for a moment. 
 Suitor or admirer my very thoughts had not con- 
 ceived. All the teachers had dreams of some lover ; 
 one (but she was naturally of a credulous turn) 
 believed in a future husband. All the pupils above 
 fourteen knew of some prospective bridegroom; 
 
THE CASKET. 215 
 
 two or three were already affianced by their parents, 
 and had been so from childhood : but into the 
 realm of feelings and hopes which such prospects 
 open, my speculations, far less my presumptions, 
 had never once had warrant to intrude. If the 
 other teachers went into town, or took a walk on 
 the boulevards, or only attended mass, they were 
 very certain (according to the accounts brought 
 back) to meet with some individual of the " opposite 
 sex," whose rapt, earnest gaze assured them of their 
 power to strike and to attract. I can't say that my 
 experience tallied with theirs, in this respect. I 
 went to church and I took walks, and am very well 
 convinced that nobody minded me. There was not 
 a girl or woman in the Rue Fossette who could not, 
 and did not testify to having received an admiring 
 beam from our young doctor's blue eyes, at one 
 time or other. I am obliged, however humbling 
 it may sound, to except myself: as far as I was 
 concerned, those blue eyes were guiltless, and calm 
 as the sky, to whose tint theirs seemed akin. So it 
 came to pass that I heard the others talk, wondered 
 often at their gaiety, security and self-satisfaction, 
 but did not trouble myself to look up and gaze 
 along the path they seemed so certain of treading. 
 
216 VILLETTE. 
 
 This then was no billet-doux ; and it was in settled 
 conviction to the contrary that I quietly opened it. 
 Thus it ran — I translate : — 
 
 " Angel of my dreams ! A thousand, thousand 
 thanks for the promise kept : scarcely did I venture 
 to hope its fulfilment. I believed you, indeed, to 
 be half in jest; and then you seemed to think the 
 enterprise beset with such danger — the hour so 
 untimely, the alley so strictly secluded — often, you 
 said, haunted by that dragon, the English teacher — 
 une veritable begueule Britannique a ce que vous 
 dites — espece de monstre, brusque et rude comme 
 un vieux caporal de grenadiers, et rev£che comme 
 une religieuse " (the reader will excuse my modesty 
 in allowing this flattering sketch of my amiable self 
 to retain the slight veil of the original tongue.) 
 " You are aware," went on this precious effusion, 
 " that little Gustave, on account of his illness, has 
 been removed to a master's chamber — that favoured 
 chamber, whose lattice overlooks your prison-ground. 
 There, I, the best uncle in the world, am admitted 
 to visit him. How tremblingly I approached the 
 window and glanced into your Eden — an Eden for 
 me, though a desert for you! — how I feared to 
 behold vacancy, or the dragon aforesaid ! How my 
 
THE CASKET. 217 
 
 heart palpitated with delight when, through aper- 
 tures in the envious boughs, I at once caught the 
 gleam of your graceful straw-hat, and the waving 
 of your gray dress — dress that I should recognize 
 amongst a thousand. But why, my angel, will you 
 not look up ? Cruel, to deny me one ray of those 
 adorable eyes!— how a single glance would have 
 revived me ! I write this in fiery haste ; while the 
 physician examines Gustave, I snatch an oppor- 
 tunity to enclose it in a small casket, together with 
 a bouquet of flowers, the sweetest that blow — yet 
 less sweet than thee, my Peri — my all-charming ! 
 Ever thine — thou well knowest whom ! " 
 
 " I wish I did know whom," was my comment ; and 
 the wish bore even closer reference to the person 
 addressed in this choice document, than to the 
 writer thereof. Perhaps it was from the fiance 
 of one of the engaged pupils; and, in that case, 
 there was no great harm done or intended — only a 
 small irregularity. Several of the girls, the majority 
 indeed, had brothers or cousins at the neighbouring 
 college. But, " la robe grise, le chapeau de paille," 
 here surely was a clue — a very confusing one. 
 The straw-hat was an ordinary garden head-screen, 
 common to a score besides myself. The gray dress 
 
218 VILLETTE. 
 
 hardly gave more definite indication. Madame 
 Beck herself ordinarily wore a gray dress just now ; 
 another teacher, and three of the pensionnaires, had 
 had gray dresses purchased of the same shade and 
 fabric as mine: it was a sort of every-day wear 
 which happened at that time to be in vogue. 
 
 Meanwhile, as I pondered, I knew I must go in. 
 Lights, moving in the dormitory, announced that 
 prayers were over, and the pupils going to bed. 
 Another half hour and all doors would be locked — 
 all lights extinguished. The front door yet stood 
 open, to admit into the heated house the coolness of 
 the summer night; from the portresse's cabinet 
 close by shone a lamp, showing the long vesti- 
 bule with the two - leaved drawing-room doors 
 on one side, the great street-door closing the 
 vista. 
 
 All at once, quick rang the bell — quick, but not 
 loud — a cautious tinkle — a sort of warning, metal 
 whisper. Rosine darted from her cabinet and ran 
 to open. The person she admitted stood with her 
 two minutes in parley: there seemed a demur, a 
 delay. Kosine came to the garden door, lamp in 
 hand; she stood on the steps, lifting her lamp, 
 looking round vaguely. 
 
THE CASKET. 219 
 
 " Quel conte ! " she cried with a coquettish laugh. 
 1 ' Personne n'y a ete." 
 
 ' •' Let me pass," pleaded a voice I knew : " I ask 
 but five minutes ;" and a familiar shape, tall and 
 grand (as we of the Rue Fossette all thought it), 
 issued from the house, and strode down amongst 
 the beds and walks. It was sacrilege — the intrusion 
 of a man into that spot, at that hour ; but he knew 
 himself privileged, and perhaps he trusted to the 
 friendly night. He wandered down the alleys, 
 looking on this side and on that — he was lost in the 
 shrubs, trampling flowers and breaking branches 
 in his search — he penetrated at last the " forbidden 
 walk." There I met him, like some ghost, I sup- 
 pose. 
 
 " Dr. John ! it is found." 
 
 He did not ask by whom, for with his quick eye 
 he perceived that I held it in my hand. 
 
 " Do not betray her," he said, looking at me as 
 if I were indeed a dragon. 
 
 " Were I ever so disposed to treachery, I cannot 
 betray what I do not know," was my answer. 
 " Read the note, and you will see how little it 
 reveals." 
 
 " Perhaps you have read it," I thought to 
 
220 VILLETTE. 
 
 myself; and yet I could not believe he wrote it: 
 that could hardly be his style: besides, I was fool 
 enough to think there would be a degree of hard- 
 ship in his calling me such names. His own look 
 vindicated him; he grew hot, and coloured as he 
 read. 
 
 " This is indeed too much: this is cruel, this is 
 humiliating," were the words that fell from him. I 
 thought it was cruel, when I saw his countenance 
 so moved. No matter whether he was to blame or 
 not ; somebody, it seemed to me, must be more to 
 blame. 
 
 " What shall you do about it ? " he inquired of 
 me. " Shall you tell Madame Beck what you have 
 found, and cause a stir — an esclandre 1 " 
 
 I thought I ought to tell, and said so; adding 
 that I did not believe there would be either stir 
 or esclandre : madame was much too prudent to 
 make a noise about an affair of that sort connected 
 with her establishment. 
 
 He stood looking down and meditating. He was 
 both too proud and too honourable to entreat my 
 secrecy on a point which duty evidently commanded 
 me to communicate. I wished to do right, yet 
 loathed to grieve or injure him. Just then Rosine 
 
THE CASKET. 221 
 
 glanced out through the open door ; she could not 
 see us, though between the trees I could plainly see 
 her : her dress was gray, like mine. This circum- 
 stance, taken in connection with prior transactions, 
 suggested to me that perhaps the case, however 
 deplorable, was one in which I was under no obliga- 
 tion whatever to concern myself. Accordingly, I 
 said, — 
 
 "If you can assure me that none of Madame 
 Beck's pupils are implicated in this business, I 
 shall be very happy to stand aloof from all inter- 
 ference. Take the casket, the bouquet, and the 
 billet ; for my part, I gladly forget the whole 
 affair." 
 
 "Look there!" he whispered suddenly, as his 
 hand closed on what I offered, and at the same time 
 he pointed through the boughs. 
 
 I looked. Behold madame, in shawl, wrapping- 
 gown, and slippers, softly descending the steps, and 
 stealing like a cat round the garden : in two 
 minutes she would have been upon Dr. John. If 
 she were like a cat, however, he, quite as much, re- 
 sembled a leopard: nothing could be lighter than 
 his tread when he chose. He watched, and as she 
 turned a corner, he took the garden at two noiseless 
 
222 VILLETTE. 
 
 bounds. She reappeared, and he was gone. Rosine 
 helped him, instantly interposing the door between 
 him and his huntress. I too might have got away, 
 but I preferred to meet madame openly. 
 
 Though it was my frequent and well-known 
 custom to spend twilight in the garden, yet, never 
 till now, had I remained so late. Full sure was I 
 that [madame had missed — was come in search of 
 me, and designed now to pounce on the defaulter un- 
 awares. I expected a reprimand. No. Madame was 
 all goodness. She tendered not even a remonstrance ; 
 she testified no shade of surprise. With that con- 
 summate tact of hers, in which I believe she was 
 never surpassed by living thing, she even professed 
 merely to have issued forth to taste " la brise du 
 soir." 
 
 " Quelle belle nuit!" cried she, looking up at the 
 stars — the moon was now gone down behind the 
 broad tower of Jean Baptiste. " Qu'il fait bon ! 
 que l'air est frais ! " 
 
 And, instead of sending me in, she detained me 
 to take a few turns with her down the principal 
 alley. When at last we both re-entered, she leaned 
 affably on my shoulder by way of support in mount- 
 ing the front-door steps ; at parting, her cheek was 
 
THE CASKE1. 223 
 
 presented to my lips, and "Bon soir, ma bonne 
 amie ; dormez bien ! " was her kindly adieu for the 
 night. 
 
 I caught myself smiling as I lay awake and 
 thoughtful on my couch — smiling at madame. The 
 unction, the suavity of her behaviour offered, for 
 one who knew her, a sure token that suspicion of 
 some kind was busy in her brain. From some 
 aperture or summit of observation, through parted 
 bough or open window, she had doubtless caught 
 a glimpse, remote or near, deceptive or instructive, 
 of that night's transactions. Finely accomplished 
 as she was in the art of surveillance, it was next to 
 impossible that a casket could be thrown into her 
 garden, or an interloper could cross her walks to 
 seek it, without that she, in shaken branch, passing 
 shade, unwonted footfall, or stilly murmur (and 
 though Dr. John had spoken very low in the few 
 words he dropped to me, yet the hum of his man's 
 voice pervaded, I thought, the whole conventual 
 ground) without, 1 say, that she should have caught 
 intimation of things extraordinary transpiring on 
 her premises. What things, she might by no means 
 see, or at that time be able to discover ; but a 
 delicious little ravelled plot lay tempting her to 
 
224 VILLETTE. 
 
 disentanglement; and in the midst, folded round 
 and round in cobwebs, had she not secured " Meess 
 Lucie," clumsily involved, like the foolish fly she 
 was? 
 
A SNEEZE OUT OF SEASON. 225 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 A SNEEZE OUT OF SEASON. 
 
 I had occasion to smile — nay, to laugh, at madame 
 again, within the space of four and twenty hours 
 after the little scene treated of in the last chapter. 
 
 Villette owns a climate as variable, though not 
 so humid, as that of any English town. A night 
 of high wind followed upon that soft sunset, and 
 all the next day was one of dry storm — 'dark, be- 
 clouded, yet rainless, — the streets were dim with 
 sand and dust, whirled from the boulevards. I know 
 not that even lovely weather would have tempted me 
 to spend the evening-time of study and recreation, 
 where I had spent it yesterday. My alley, and, 
 indeed, all the walks and shrubs in the garden, had 
 acquired a new, but not a pleasant interest; their 
 seclusion was now become precarious ; their calm — 
 insecure. That casement which rained billets, had 
 
 VOL. I. Q 
 
226 VILLETTE. 
 
 vulgarized the once dear nook it overlooked; and 
 elsewhere, the eyes of the flowers had gained vision, 
 and the knots in the tree-boles listened like secret 
 ears. Some plants there were, indeed, trodden 
 down by Dr. John in his search, and his hasty and 
 heedless progress, which I wished to prop up, water, 
 and revive; some foot-marks, too, he had left on 
 the beds : but these, in spite of the strong wind, I 
 found a moment's leisure to efface very early in the 
 morning, ere common eyes had discovered them. 
 With a pensive sort of content, I sat down to my 
 desk and my German, while the pupils settled to 
 their evening lessons, and the other teachers took 
 up their needlework. 
 
 The scene of the " Etude du soir " was always 
 the refectory, a much smaller apartment than any 
 of the three classes or schoolrooms ; for here none, 
 save the boarders, were ever admitted, and these 
 numbered only a score. Two lamps hung from the 
 ceiling over the two tables ; these were lit at dusk, 
 and their kindling was the signal for school-books 
 being set aside, a grave demeanour assumed, general 
 silence enforced, and then commenced " la lecture 
 pieuse." This said " lecture pieuse " was, I soon 
 found, mainly designed as a wholesome mortification 
 
A SNEEZE OUT OF SEASON. 227 
 
 of the Intellect, a useful humiliation of the Reason ; 
 and such a dose for Common Sense as she might 
 digest at her leisure, and thrive on as she best 
 could. 
 
 The book brought out (it was never changed, 
 but when finished, recommenced) was a venerable 
 volume, old as the hills — gray as the Hotel de Yille. 
 
 I would have given two francs for the chance of 
 getting that book once into my hands, turning over 
 the sacred yellow leaves, ascertaining the title, and 
 perusing with my own eyes the enormous figments 
 which, as an unworthy heretic, it was only permitted 
 me to drink in with my bewildered ears. This book 
 contained legends of the saints. Good God! (I 
 speak the words reverently) what legends they 
 were. What gasconading rascals those saints must 
 have been, if they first boasted these exploits or 
 invented these miracles. These legends, hoAvever, 
 were no more than monkish extravagances, over 
 which one laughed inwardly; there were, besides, 
 priestly matters, and the priestcraft of the book was 
 far worse than its monkery. The ears burned on 
 each side of my head as I listened, perforce, to tales 
 of moral martyrdom inflicted by Rome ; the dread 
 boasts of confessors, who had wickedly abused their 
 
228 VILLETTE. 
 
 office, trampling to deep degradation high-born 
 ladies, making of countesses and princesses the 
 most tormented slaves under the sun. Stories like 
 that of Conrad and Elizabeth of Hungary, recurred 
 again and again, -with all its dreadful viciousness, 
 sickening tyranny and black impiety : tales that 
 were nightmares of oppression, privation, and agony. 
 I sat out this " lecture pieuse " for some nights as 
 well as I could, and as quietly too ; only once 
 breaking off the points of my scissors by involun- 
 tarily sticking them somewhat deep in the worm- 
 eaten board of the table before me. But, at last, 
 it made me so burning hot, and my temples and 
 my heart and my wrist throbbed so fast, and my 
 sleep afterwards was so broken with excitement, 
 that I could sit no longer. Prudence recommended 
 henceforward a swift clearance of my person from 
 the place, the moment that guilty old book was 
 brought out. No Mause Headrigg ever felt a 
 stronger call to take up her testimony against 
 Sergeant Bothwell, than I — to speak my mind in 
 this matter of the popish " lecture pieuse." How- 
 ever, I did manage somehow to curb and rein in; 
 and though always, as soon as Bosine came to light 
 the lamps, I shot from the room quickly, yet also I 
 
A SNEEZE OUT OF SEASON. 229 
 
 did it quietly; seizing that vantage moment given 
 by the little bustle before the dead silence, and 
 vanishing whilst the boarders put their books away. 
 
 When I vanished — it was into darkness ; candles 
 were not allowed to be carried about, and the teacher 
 who forsook the refectory, had only the unlit hall, 
 school-room, or bed-room, as a refuge. In winter 
 I sought the long classes, and paced them fast to 
 keep myself warm — fortunate if the moon shone, and 
 if there were only stars, soon reconciled to their 
 dim gleam, or even to the total eclipse of their 
 absence. In summer it was never quite dark, and 
 then I went up stairs to my own quarter of the 
 long dormitory, opened my own casement (that 
 chamber was lit by five casements large as great 
 doors), and leaning out, looked forth upon the city 
 beyond the garden, and listened to band-music from 
 the park or the palace-square, thinking meantime 
 my own thoughts, living my own life in my own 
 still, shadow-world. 
 
 This evening, fugitive as usual before the Pope 
 and his works, I mounted the staircase, approached 
 the dormitory, and quietly opened the door which 
 was always kept carefully shut, and which, like 
 every other door in this house, revolved noiselessly 
 
230 VILLETTE. 
 
 on well-oiled hinges. Before I saw, I felt that life 
 was in the great room, usually void : not that there 
 was either stir or breath, or rustle of sound, but 
 Vacuum lacked, Solitude was not at home. All the 
 white beds — the "lits d'ange," as they were poet- 
 ically termed — lay visible at a glance ; all were 
 empty : no sleeper reposed therein. The sound of a 
 drawer cautiously slid out struck my ear ; stepping 
 a little to one side, my vision took a free range, un- 
 impeded by falling curtains. I now commanded 
 my own bed and my own toilet, with a locked 
 work-box upon it, and locked drawers underneath. 
 
 Very good. A dumpy, motherly, little body, 
 in decent shawl and the cleanest of possible night- 
 caps, stood before this toilet, hard at work, appar- 
 ently doing me the kindness of u tidying out" the 
 " meuble." Open stood the lid of the work-box, 
 open the top drawer ; duly and impartially was 
 each succeeding drawer opened in turn : not an 
 article of their contents but was lifted and un- 
 folded, not a paper but was glanced over, not a 
 little box but was unlidded ; and beautiful was the 
 adroitness, exemplary the care with which the search 
 was accomplished. Madame wrought at it like a 
 true star, "unhasting yet unresting." I will not 
 
A SNEEZE OUT OF SEASON. 231 
 
 deny that it was with a secret glee I watched her. 
 Had I been a gentleman, I believe madame would 
 have found favour in my eyes, she was so handy, 
 neat, thorough in all she did: some people's move- 
 ments provoke the soul by their loose awkwardness, 
 hers — satisfied by their trim compactness. I stood, 
 in short, fascinated ; but it was necessary to make 
 an effort to break this spell : a retreat must be 
 beaten. The searcher might have turned and 
 caught me; there would have been nothing for it 
 then but a scene, and she and I would have had to 
 come all at once, with a sudden clash, to a thorough 
 knowledge of each other: down would have gone 
 conventionalities, away — swept disguises, and /should 
 have looked into her eyes, and she into mine — we 
 should have known that we could work together no 
 more, and parted in this life for ever. 
 
 Where was the use of tempting such a catas- 
 trophe? I was not angry, and had no wish in the 
 world to leave her. I could hardly get another 
 employer whose yoke would be so light and so easy 
 of carriage ; and truly, I liked madame for her 
 capital sense, whatever I might think of her prin- 
 ciples : as to her system, it did me no harm ; she 
 might work me with it to her heart's content : 
 
232 VILLETTE. 
 
 nothing would come of the operation. Loverless 
 and inexpectant of love, I was as safe from spies in 
 my heart - poverty, as the beggar from thieves in 
 his destitution of purse. I turned, then, and fled ; 
 descending the stairs with progress as swift and 
 soundless as that of the spider, which at the same 
 instant ran down the bannister. 
 
 How I laughed when I reached the school-room. 
 
 I knew now she had certainly seen Dr. John in 
 
 the garden ; I knew what her thoughts were. The 
 
 spectacle of a suspicious nature so far misled by 
 
 its own inventions, tickled me much. Yet as the 
 
 laugh died, a kind of wrath smote me, and then 
 
 bitterness followed : it was the rock struck, and 
 
 Meribah's waters gushing out. I never had felt so 
 
 strange and contradictory an inward tumult as I 
 
 felt for an hour that evening : soreness and laughter, 
 
 and fire, and grief, shared my heart between them. 
 
 I cried hot tears ; not because madame mistrusted 
 
 me — I did not care twopence for her mistrust — but 
 
 for other reasons. Complicated, disquieting thoughts 
 
 broke up the whole repose of my nature. However, 
 
 that turmoil subsided : next day I was again Lucy 
 
 Snowe. 
 
 On revisiting my draAvers, I found them all se- 
 
A SNEEZE OUT OF SEASON. 233 
 
 curely locked; the closest subsequent examination 
 could not discover change or apparent disturbance 
 in the position of one object. My few dresses were 
 folded as I had left them ; a certain little bunch of 
 white violets that had once been silently presented 
 to me by a stranger (a stranger to me, for we had 
 never exchanged words), and which I had dried and 
 kept for its sweet perfume between the folds of my 
 best dress, lay there unstirred; my black silk scarf, 
 my lace chemisettes and collars were unrumpled. 
 Had she creased one solitary article, I own I should 
 have felt much greater difficulty in forgiving her ; 
 but finding all straight and orderly, I said, "Let 
 bygones be bygones. I am unharmed : why should 
 I bear malice ? " 
 
 A thing there was which puzzled myself, and I 
 sought in my brain a key to that riddle almost as 
 sedulously as madame had sought a guide to useful 
 knowledge in my toilet drawers. How was it that 
 Dr. John, if he had not been accessory to the 
 dropping of that casket into the garden, should 
 have known that it was dropped, and appeared so 
 promptly on the spot to seek it? So strong was 
 
234 VILLETTE. 
 
 the wish to clear up this point that I began to enter- 
 tain this daring suggestion : 
 
 te Why may I not, in case I should ever have the 
 opportunity, ask Dr. John himself to explain this 
 coincidence ?" 
 
 And so long as Dr. John was absent, I really 
 believed I had courage to test him with such a 
 question. 
 
 Little Georgette was now convalescent ; and her 
 physician accordingly made his visits very rare : 
 indeed, he would have ceased them altogether, had 
 not madame insisted on his giving an occasional call 
 till the child should be quite well. 
 
 She came into the nursery one evening just after 
 I had listened to Georgette's lisped and broken 
 prayer, and had put her to bed. Taking the little 
 one's hand, she said : 
 
 * Cette enfant a toujours un peu de fievre." And 
 presently afterwards, looking at me with a quicker 
 glance than was habitual to her quiet eye, " Le 
 Docteur John l'a-t-il vue dernierement ? Non, n'est, 
 ce pas?" 
 
 Of course, she knew this better than any other 
 person in the house. " Well," she continued, " I 
 am going out, pour faire quelques courses en fiacre. 
 
A SNEEZE OUT OF SEASON". 235 
 
 I shall call on Dr. John, and send him to the child. 
 I will that he sees her this very evening ; her cheeks 
 are flushed, her pulse is quick: you will receive 
 him — for my part, I shall be from home." 
 
 Now the child was well enough, only warm with 
 the warmth of July ; it was scarcely less needful to 
 send for a priest to administer extreme unction than 
 for a doctor to prescribe a dose ; also madame rarely 
 made "courses" as she called them, in the evening: 
 moreover, this was the first time she had chosen to 
 absent herself on the occasion of a visit from Dr. 
 John. The whole arrangement indicated some 
 plan; this I saw, but without the least anxiety. 
 " Ha ! ha ! madame," laughed Light-heart the Beggar, 
 " your crafty wits are on the wrong tack." 
 
 She departed, attired very smartly in a shawl of 
 price, and a certain chapeau vert tendre — hazardous, 
 as to its tint, for any complexion less fresh than her 
 own, but, to her, not unbecoming. I wondered what 
 she intended : whether she really would send Dr. 
 John or not ; or whether indeed he would come : he 
 might be engaged. 
 
 Madame had charged me not to let Georgette 
 sleep till the doctor came ; I had therefore sufficient 
 occupation in telling her nursery tales and palaver- 
 
236 VILLETTE. 
 
 ing the little language for her benefit. I affected 
 Georgette ; she was a sensitive and a loving child : 
 to hold her in my lap, or carry her in my arms was 
 to me a treat. To-night she would have me lay my 
 head on the pillow of her crib ; she even put her 
 little arms round my neck. Her clasp and the 
 nestling action with which she pressed her cheek 
 to mine, made me almost cry with a tender pain. 
 Feeling of no kind abounded in that house; this 
 pure little drop from a pure little source was too 
 sweet: it penetrated deep, and subdued the heart, 
 and sent a gush to the eyes. 
 
 Half an hour or an hour passed ; Georgette mur- 
 mured in her soft lisp that she was growing sleepy. 
 " And you shall sleep," thought I, " malgre maman 
 and medecin, if they are not here in ten minutes." 
 
 Hark ! There was the ring, and there the tread, 
 astonishing the staircase by the fleetness with which 
 it left the steps behind. Rosine introduced Dr. 
 John, and, with a freedom of manner not altogether 
 peculiar to herself, but characteristic of the domestics 
 of Villette generally, she stayed to hear what he had 
 to say. Madame's presence would have awed her 
 back to her own realm of the vestibule and the 
 cabinet — for mine, or that of any other teacher or 
 
A SNEEZE OUT OF SEASON. 237 
 
 pupil, she cared not a jot. Smart, trim and pert, she 
 stood, a hand in each pocket of her gay grisette 
 apron, eyeing Dr. John with no more fear or 
 shyness than if he had been a picture instead of a 
 living gentleman. 
 
 " Le marmot n 'a rien n 'est ce pas ? " said she, 
 indicating Georgette with a jerk of her chin. 
 
 " Pas beaucoup," was the answer, as the doctor 
 hastily scribbled with his pencil some harmless 
 prescription. 
 
 " Eh bien ! " pursued Rosine, approaching him 
 quite near, while he put up his pencil. " And the 
 box — did you get it ? Monsieur went off like a 
 coup de vent the other night; I had not time to 
 ask him." 
 
 " I found it : yes." 
 
 " And who threw it then ? " continued Rosine, 
 speaking quite freely the very words I should so 
 much have wished to say, but had no address or 
 courage to bring it out: how short some people 
 make the road to a point which, for others, seems 
 unattainable ! 
 
 " That may be my secret," rejoined Dr. John 
 briefly, but with no sort of hauteur: he seemed 
 quite to understand the Rosine or grisette character. 
 
VILLETTE. 
 
 " Mais enfin," continued she, nothing abashed, 
 " monsieur knew it was thrown, since he came to 
 seek it — how did he know ? " 
 
 "I was attending a little patient in the college 
 near," said he, "and saw it dropped out of his 
 chamber window, and so came to pick it up." 
 
 How simple the whole explanation ! The note 
 had alluded to a physician as then examining 
 " Gustave." 
 
 " Ah 9a ! " pursued Rosine, " II n'y a done rien 
 la-dessous: pas de mystere, pas d'amourette, par 
 exemple ? " 
 
 * Pas plus que sur ma main," responded the 
 doctor, showing his palm. 
 
 " Quel dommage ! " responded the grisette : " et 
 moi — a qui tout cela commencait a donner des idees." 
 " Vraiment ! vous eu etes pour vos frais," was 
 the doctor's cool rejoinder. 
 
 She pouted. The doctor could not help laughing 
 at the sort of se moue " she made : when he laughed, 
 he had something peculiarly good-natured and genial 
 in his look. I saw his hand incline to his 
 pocket. 
 
 " How many times have you opened the door 
 for me within this last month ? " he asked. 
 
A SNEEZE OUT OP SEASON. 239 
 
 " Monsieur ought to have kept count of that," 
 said Rosine, quite readily. 
 
 " As if I had not something better to do ! " rejoined 
 he ; but I saw him give her a piece of gold, which 
 she took unscrupulously, and then danced off to 
 answer the door-bell, ringing just now every five 
 minutes, as the various servants came to fetch the 
 half-boarders. 
 
 The reader must not think too hardly of Rosine ; 
 on the whole, she was not a bad sort of person, and 
 had no idea there could be any disgrace in grasping 
 at whatever she could get, or any effrontery in 
 chattering like a pie to the best gentleman in 
 Christendom. 
 
 I had learnt something from the above scene 
 besides what concerned the ivory box : viz., that 
 not on the robe de jaconas, pink or gray, nor yet 
 on the frilled and pocketted apron, lay the blame 
 of breaking Dr. John's heart: these items of array 
 were obviously guiltless as Georgette's little blue 
 tunic. So much the better. But who then was 
 the culprit? What was the ground — what the 
 origin — what the perfect explanation of the whole 
 business ? Some points had been cleared, but how 
 many yet remained obscure as night? 
 
240 VILLETTE. 
 
 " However," I said to myself, " it is no affair of 
 yours ;" and turning from the face on which I had 
 been unconsciously dwelling with a questioning gaze, 
 I looked through the window which commanded the 
 garden below. Dr. John, meantime, standing by 
 the bed-side, was slowly drawing on his gloves and 
 watching his little patient, as her eyes closed and 
 her rosy lips parted in coming sleep. I waited till he 
 should depart as usual, with a quick bow and scarce 
 articulate "good night." Just as he took his hat, 
 my eyes, fixed on the tall houses bounding the 
 garden, saw the one lattice, already commemorated, 
 cautiously open; forth from the aperture projected 
 a hand and a white handkerchief; both waved. I 
 know not whether the signal was answered from some 
 viewless quarter of our own dwelling ; but imme- 
 diately after there fluttered from the lattice a falling 
 object, white and light — billet the second, of course. 
 
 " There ! " I ejaculated involuntarily. 
 
 " Where?" asked Dr. John with energy, making 
 direct for the window. " What is it ? " 
 
 "They have gone and done it again," was my 
 reply. " A handkerchief waved and something fell :" 
 and I pointed to the lattice, now closed and looking 
 hypocritically blank. 
 
A SNEEZE OUT OF SEASON". 241 
 
 " Go at once ; pick it up and bring it here," was 
 his prompt direction ; adding, " nobody will take 
 notice oiyou: /should be seen." 
 
 Straight I went. After fome little search, I 
 found a folded paper, lodged on the lower branch of 
 a shrub ; I seized and brought it direct to Dr. John. 
 This time, I believe not even Rosine saw me. 
 
 He instantly tore the billet into small pieces, with- 
 out reading it. 
 
 " It is not in the least her fault, you must re- 
 member," he said, looking at me. 
 
 " Whose fault ?" I asked. « Who is it ?" 
 
 " You don't yet know, then ? " 
 
 f Not in the least." 
 
 " Have you no guess ?" 
 
 « None." 
 
 " If I knew you better, I might be tempted to risk 
 some confidence, and thus secure you as guardian 
 over a most innocent and excellent, but somewhat 
 inexperienced being." 
 
 " As a duenna ? " I asked. 
 
 "Yes," said he abstractedly. "What snares are 
 round her ! " he added musingly : and now, certainly 
 for the first time, he examined my face, anxious, 
 doubtless, to see if any kindly expression there, 
 
 VOL. I. R 
 
242 VILLETTE. 
 
 would warrant him in recommending to my care 
 and indulgence some etherial creature, against whom 
 powers of darkness were plotting. I felt no parti- 
 cular vocation to undertake the surveillance of ethe- 
 real creatures ; but recalling the scene at the bureau, 
 it seemed to me that I owed him a good turn : if 
 I could help him then I would, and it lay not with 
 me to decide how. With as little reluctance as might 
 be, I intimated that " I was willing to do what I 
 could towards taking care of any person in whom he 
 might be interested." 
 
 " I am no farther interested than as a spectator," 
 said he, with a modesty, admirable, as I thought, to 
 witness. "I happen to be acquainted with the 
 rather worthless character of the person who, from 
 the house opposite, has now twice invaded the sanc- 
 tity of this place ; I have also met in society the 
 object at whom these vulgar attempts are aimed. 
 Her exquisite superiority and innate refinement 
 ought, one would think, to scare impertinence from 
 her very idea. It is not so, however ; and innocent, 
 unsuspicious as she is, I would guard her from evil 
 if I could. In person, however, I can do nothing : 
 I cannot come near her" — he paused. 
 
 " Well, I am willing to help you," said I, ** only 
 
A SNEEZE OUT OF SEASON. 243 
 
 tell me how." And busily, in my own mind, I ran 
 over the list of our inmates, seeking this paragon, 
 this pearl of great price, this gem without flaw. 
 ;'" It must be madame," I concluded. " She only, 
 amongst us all, has the art even to seem superior: 
 but as to being unsuspicious, inexperienced, &c, 
 Dr. John need not distract himself about that. 
 However, this is just his whim, and I will not con- 
 tradict him ; he shall be humoured : his angel shall 
 be an angel." 
 
 " Just notify the quarter to which my care is to 
 be directed," I continued gravely : chuckling, how- 
 ever, to myself over the thought of being set to 
 chaperon Madame Beck or any of her pupils. 
 
 Now Dr. John had a fine set of nerves, and he at 
 once felt by instinct, what no more coarsely consti- 
 tuted mind would have detected ; namely, that I was 
 a little amused at him. The colour rose to his 
 cheek ; with half a smile he turned and took his 
 hat — he was going. My heart smote me. 
 
 (t I will— I will help you," said I eagerly. " I 
 will do what you wish. I will watch over your 
 angel; I will take care of her, only tell me who 
 she is." 
 
 a But you must know," said he, then with earnest- 
 
244 VILLETTE. 
 
 ness, yet speaking very low. " So spotless, so good, 
 so unspeakably beautiful ! impossible that one house 
 should contain two like her. I allude, of course — " 
 
 Here the latch of Madame Beck's chamber-door 
 (opening into the nursery) gave a sudden click, as 
 if the hand holding it had been slightly convulsed ; 
 there was the suppressed explosion of an irrepres- 
 sible sneeze. These little accidents will happen to 
 the best of us. Madame — excellent woman! — was 
 then on duty. She had come home quietly, stolen 
 up-stairs on tip-toe; she was in her chamber. If 
 she had not sneezed, she would have heard all, and 
 so should I; but that unlucky sternutation routed 
 Dr. John. While he stood aghast, she came for- 
 ward alert, composed, in the best yet most tranquil 
 spirits: no novice to her habits, but would have 
 thought she was just come in, and scouted the idea 
 of her ear having been glued to the key-hole for at 
 least ten minutes. She affected to sneeze again, de- 
 clared she was "enrhumee," and then proceeded 
 volubly to recount her "courses en fiacre." The 
 prayer-bell rang, and I left her with the doctor. 
 
THE FETE. 245 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE EETE. 
 
 As soon as Georgette was well, madarne sent her 
 away into the country. I was sorry; I loved the 
 child, and her loss made me poorer than before. 
 But I must not complain. I lived in a house full 
 of robust life; I might have had companions, and 
 I chose solitude. Each of the teachers in turn 
 made me overtures of special intimacy ; I tried 
 them all. One I found to be an honest woman, 
 but a narrow thinker, a coarse feeler, and an egotist. 
 The second was a Parisienne, externally refined — at 
 heart, corrupt — without a creed, without a principle, 
 without an affection : having penetrated the out- 
 ward crust of decorum in this character, you found 
 a slough beneath. She had a wonderful passion 
 for presents ; and, in this point, the third teacher — 
 a person otherwise characterless and insignificant — 
 
246 VILLETTE. 
 
 closely resembled her. This last-named had also 
 one other distinctive property — that of avarice. In 
 her reigned the love of money for its own sake. 
 The sight of a piece of gold would bring into her 
 eyes a green glisten, singular to witness. She once, 
 'as a mark of high favour, took me upstairs, and, 
 opening a secret drawer, showed me a hoard — a 
 mass of coarse, large coin — about fifteen guineas, 
 in five-franc pieces. She loved this hoard as a bird 
 loves its eggs. These were her savings. She 
 would come and talk to me about them with an 
 infatuated and persevering dotage, strange to behold 
 in a person not yet twenty-five. 
 
 The Parisienne, on the other hand, was prodigal 
 and profligate (in disposition, that is : as to action, 
 I do not know). That latter quality showed its 
 snake-head to me but once, peeping out very 
 cautiously. A curious kind of reptile it seemed, 
 judging from the glimpse I got ; its novelty whetted 
 my curiosity : if it would have come out boldly, 
 perhaps I might philosophically have stood my 
 ground, and coolly surveyed the long thing from 
 forked tongue to scaly tail-tip ; but it merely rustled 
 in the leaves of a bad novel ; and, on encountering 
 a hasty and ill-advised demonstration of wrath, 
 
THE PETE. 247 
 
 recoiled and vanished, hissing. She hated me from 
 that day. 
 
 This Parisienne was always in debt ; her salary 
 being anticipated, not only in dress, but in per- 
 fumes, cosmetics, confectionary, and condiments. 
 What a cold, callous epicure she was in all things ! 
 I see her now. Thin in face and figure, sallow in 
 complexion, regular in features, with perfect teeth, 
 lips like a thread, a large, prominent chin, a well- 
 opened, but frozen eye, of light at once craving 
 and ingrate. She mortally hated work, and loved 
 what she called pleasure ; being an insipid, heartless, 
 brainless dissipation of time. 
 
 Madame Beck knew this woman's character per- 
 fectly well. She once talked to me about her, 
 with an odd mixture of discrimination, indifference, 
 and antipathy. I asked why she kept her in the 
 establishment. She answered plainly, "because it 
 suited her interest to do so ;" and pointed out a fact I 
 had already noticed, namely, that Mademoiselle St. 
 Pierre possessed, in an almost unique degree, the 
 power of keeping order amongst her undisciplined 
 ranks of scholars. A certain petrifying influence 
 accompanied and surrounded her: without passion, 
 noise, or violence, she held them in check as a 
 
248 VILLETTE. 
 
 breezeless frost-air might still a brawling stream. 
 She was of little use as far as communication of 
 knowledge went, but for strict surveillance and 
 maintenance of rules she was invaluable. " Je 
 sais bien qu'elle n'a pas de principes, ni, peutetre, 
 de moeurs," admitted madame frankly ; but added, 
 with philosophy, "son maintien en classe est tou- 
 jours convenable et rempli meme d'une certaine 
 dignite : c'est tout ce qu'il faut. Ni les eleves, 
 ni les parents ne regardent plus loin; ni, par con- 
 sequent, moi non plus." 
 
 A strange, frolicsome, noisy little world was 
 this school: great pains were taken to hide chains 
 with flowers: a subtle essence of Romanism per- 
 vaded every arrangement : large sensual indulgence 
 (so to speak) was permitted by way of counterpoise 
 to jealous spiritual restraint. Each mind was being 
 reared in slavery ; but, to prevent reflection from 
 dwelling on this fact, every pretext for physical 
 recreation was seized and made the most of. There, 
 as elsewhere, the Chuech strove to bring up her 
 children robust in body, feeble in soul, fat, ruddy, 
 
THE F&TE. 249 
 
 hale, joyous, ignorant, unthinking, unquestioning. 
 " Eat, drink, and live ! " she says. " Look after 
 your bodies ; leave your souls to me. I hold their 
 cure — guide their course : I guarantee their final 
 fate." A bargain, in which every true Catholic 
 deems himself a gainer. Lucifer just offers the 
 same terms : " All this power will I give thee, 
 and the glory of it; for that is delivered unto 
 me, and to whomsoever I will I give it. If 
 thou, therefore, wilt worship me, all shall be 
 thine!" 
 
 About this time — in the ripest glow of summer — 
 Madame Beck's house became as merry a place as 
 a school could well be. All day long the broad 
 folding-doors and the two-leaved casements stood 
 wide open : settled sunshine seemed naturalized in 
 the atmosphere: clouds were far off, sailing away 
 beyond sea, resting, no doubt, round islands such 
 as England — that dear land of mists — but with- 
 drawn wholly from the drier continent. We lived 
 far more in the garden than under a roof: classes 
 were held, and meals partaken of, in the "grand 
 berceau." Moreover, there was a note of holiday 
 preparation, which almost turned freedom into 
 license. The autumnal long; vacation was but two 
 
250 VILLETTE. 
 
 months distant; but before that, a great day — an 
 important ceremony — none other than the f&te of 
 madame — awaited celebration. 
 
 The conduct of this fete devolved chiefly on Made- 
 moiselle St. Pierre ; madame herself being supposed 
 to stand aloof, disinterestedly unconscious of what 
 might be going forward in her honour. Especially, 
 she never knew, never in the least suspected that 
 a subscription was annually levied on the whole 
 school for the purchase of a handsome present. The 
 polite tact of the reader will please to leave out of 
 the account a brief, secret consultation on this point 
 in madame's own chamber. 
 
 " What will you have this year ? " was asked by 
 her Parisian lieutenant. 
 
 " Oh, no matter! Let it alone. Let the poor 
 children keep their francs." And madame looked 
 benign and modest. 
 
 The St. Pierre would here protrude her chin; 
 she knew madame by heart; she always called her 
 airs of " bonte" — " des grimaces." She never even 
 professed to respect them one instant. 
 
 "Vite!" she would say coldly. "Name the 
 article. Shall it be jewellery or porcelain, haber- 
 dashery or silver ?" 
 
THE FETE. 251 
 
 " Eh bien ! Deux ou trois cuillers et autant de 
 fourchettes en argent." 
 
 And the result was a handsome case, containing 
 300 francs worth of plate. 
 
 The programme of the fete-day's proceedings 
 comprised : Presentation of plate, collation in the 
 garden, dramatic performance (with pupils and 
 teachers for actors), a dance and supper. Very 
 gorgeous seemed the effect of the whole to me, as 
 I well remember. Zelie St. Pierre understood these 
 things and managed them ably. 
 
 The Play was the main point ; a month's previous 
 drilling being there required. The choice too of the 
 actors required knowledge and care; then came 
 lessons in elocution, in attitude, and then the fatigue 
 of countless rehearsals. For all this, as may well 
 be supposed, St. Pierre did not suffice : other ma- 
 nagement, other accomplishments than hers were 
 requisite here. They were supplied in the person 
 of a master — M. Paul Emanuel, professor of litera- 
 ture. It was never my lot to be present at the 
 histrionic lessons of M. Paul, but I often saw him as 
 he crossed the carre (a square hall between the 
 dwelling-house and school-house). I heard him too 
 in the warm evenings, lecturing with open doors, 
 
252 VILLETTE. 
 
 and his name, with anecdotes of him, resounded in 
 one's ears from all sides. Especially our former 
 acquaintance, Miss Ginevra Fanshawe, who had been 
 selected to take a prominent part in the play — used, 
 in bestowing upon me a large portion of her leisure, 
 to lard her discourse with frequent allusions to his 
 sayings and doings. She esteemed him hideously 
 plain, and used to profess herself frightened almost 
 into hysterics at the sound of his step or voice. A 
 dark little man he certainly was ; pungent and 
 austere. Even to me he seemed a harsh apparition, 
 with his close-shorn, black head, his broad, sallow 
 brow, his thin cheek, his wide and quivering nostril, 
 his thorough glance and hurried bearing. Irritable 
 he was; one heard that, as he apostrophised with 
 vehemence the awkward squad under his orders. 
 Sometimes he would break out on these raw amateur 
 actresses with a passion of impatience at their false- 
 ness of conception, their coldness of emotion, their 
 feebleness of delivery. " Ecoutez ! " he would cry ; 
 and then his voice rang though the premises like a 
 trumpet; and when, mimicking it, came the small 
 pipe of a Ginevra, a Mathilde, or a Blanche, one 
 understood why a hollow groan of scorn, or a fierce 
 hiss of rage rewarded the tame echo. 
 
THE FETE. 253 
 
 " Vou3 n'etes done que des poupees?" I heard 
 him thunder. " Vous n'avez pas de passions — vous 
 autres ? Yous ne sentez done rien ? Yotre chair est 
 de neige, votre sang de glace ? Moi, je veux que 
 tout cela s'allume, qu'il ait une vie, une ame ! " 
 
 Yain resolve ! And when he at last found it was 
 vain, he suddenly broke the whole business down. 
 Hitherto he had been teaching them a grand 
 tragedy ; he tore the tragedy in morsels, and came 
 next day with a compact little comic trifle. To this 
 they took more kindly ; he presently knocked it all 
 into their smooth round pates. 
 
 Mademoiselle St. Pierre always presided at M. 
 Emanuel's lessons, and I was told that the polish of 
 her manner, her seeming attention, her tact and 
 grace, impressed that gentleman very favourably. 
 She had, indeed, the art of pleasing, for a given time, 
 whom she would ; but the feeling would not last : 
 in an hour it was dried like dew, vanished like 
 gossamer. 
 
 The day preceding madame's fete was as much a 
 holiday as the fete itself. It was devoted to 
 clearing out, cleaning, arranging and decorating the 
 three schoolrooms. All within doors was the gayest 
 bustle; neither upstairs nor down could a quiet 
 
254 VILLETTE. 
 
 isolated person find rest for the sole of her foot; 
 accordingly, for my part, I took refuge in the garden. 
 The whole day did I wander or sit there alone, 
 finding warmth in the sun, shelter among the trees, 
 and a sort of companionship in my own thoughts. 
 I well remember that I exchanged but two sentences 
 that day with any living being : not that I felt 
 solitary ; I was glad to be quiet. For a looker-on, 
 it sufficed to pass through the rooms once or twice, 
 observe what changes were being wrought, how a 
 green-room and a dressing-room were being con- 
 trived, a little stage with scenery erected, how 
 M. Paul Emanuel, in conjunction with Mademoiselle 
 St. Pierre, was directing all, and how an eager band 
 of pupils, amongst them Ginevra Fanshawe, were 
 working gaily under his control. 
 
 The great day arrived. The sun rose hot and 
 unclouded, and hot and unclouded it burned on till 
 evening. All the doors and all the windows were 
 set open, which gave a pleasant sense of summer 
 freedom — and freedom the most complete seemed 
 indeed the order of the day. Teachers and pupils 
 descended to breakfast in dressing-gowns and curl- 
 papers: anticipating "avec delices" the toilette of 
 the evening, they seemed to take a pleasure in 
 
the fete. 255 
 
 indulging that forenoon a luxury of slovenliness ; 
 like aldermen, fasting in preparation for a feast. 
 About nine o'clock, A.M., an important functionary, 
 the "coiffeur," arrived. Sacrilegeous to state, he 
 fixed his head-quarters in the oratory, and there, in 
 presence of benitier, candle, and crucifix, solemnized 
 the mysteries of his art. Each girl was summoned 
 in turn to pass through his hands; emerging from 
 them with head as smooth as a shell, intersected by 
 faultless white lines, and wreathed about with 
 Grecian plaits that shone as if lacquered. I took 
 my turn with the rest, and could hardly believe 
 what the glass said when I applied to it for infor- 
 mation afterwards; the lavish garlandry^of woven 
 brown hair amazed me — I feared it was not all my 
 own, and it required several convincing pulls to 
 give assurance to the contrary. I then acknow- 
 ledged in the coiffeur a first-rate artist — one who 
 certainly made the most of indifferent materials. 
 
 The oratory closed, the dormitory became the 
 scene of ablutions, arrayings and bedizenings curi- 
 ously elaborate. To me it was, and ever must be 
 an enigma, how they contrived to spend so much 
 time in doing so little. The operation seemed close, 
 intricate, prolonged: the result simple. A clear 
 
256 VILLETTE. 
 
 white muslin dress, a blue sash (the Virgin's 
 colours), a pair of white, or straw-colour kid gloves 
 — such was the gala uniform, to the assumption 
 whereof that houseful of teachers and pupils de- 
 voted three mortal hours. But though simple, 
 it must be allowed the array was perfect — perfect 
 in fashion, fit, and freshness ; every head being also 
 dressed with exquisite nicety, and a certain compact 
 taste — suiting the full, firm comeliness of Labasse- 
 courien contours, though too stiff for any more flow- 
 ing and flexile style of beauty — the general effect 
 was, on the whole, commendable. 
 
 In beholding this diaphanous and snowy mass, I 
 well remember feeling myself to be a mere shadowy 
 spot on a field of light ; the courage was not in me to 
 put on a transparent white dress : something thin I 
 must wear — the weather and rooms being too hot to 
 give substantial fabrics sufferance, so I had sought 
 through a dozen shops till I lit upon a crape-like 
 material of purple-gray — the colour, in short, of 
 dun mist, lying on a moor in bloom. My tailleuse 
 had kindly made it as well as she could : because, as 
 she judiciously observed, it was "si triste — si peu 
 voyant," care in the fashion was the more imperative : 
 it was well she took this view of the matter, for 
 
THE FETE. 257 
 
 I had no flower, no jewel to relieve it; and, what 
 was more, I had no natural rose of complexion. 
 
 "We become oblivious of these deficiencies in the 
 uniform routine of daily drudgery, but they will 
 force upon us their unwelcome blank on those bright 
 occasions when beauty should shine. 
 
 However, in this same gown of shadow, I felt 
 at home and at ease ; an advantage I should not 
 have enjoyed in anything more brilliant or striking. 
 Madame Beck, too, kept me in countenance; her 
 dress was almost as quiet as mine, except that she 
 wore a bracelet, and a large brooch bright with gold 
 and fine stones. We chanced to meet on the stairs, 
 and she gave me a nod and smile of approbation. Not 
 that she thought I was looking well — a point unlikely 
 to engage her interest — but she considered me dressed 
 "convenablement," " decemment," and la Convenance 
 et la Decence were the two calm deities of madame's 
 worship. She even paused, laid on my shoulder her 
 gloved hand, holding an embroidered and perfumed 
 handkerchief, and confided to my ear a sarcasm on 
 the other teachers (whom she had just been com- 
 plimenting to their faces). " Nothing so absurd," 
 she said, " as for des femmes mures e to dress them- 
 selves like girls of fifteen' — quant a la St. Pierre, 
 
 vol. i. s 
 
258 VILLETTE. 
 
 elle a l'air d'une vieille coquette qui fait l'in- 
 genue." 
 
 Being dressed at least a couple of hours before 
 anybody else, I felt a pleasure in betaking myself — 
 not to the garden, where servants were busy prop- 
 ping up long tables, placing seats, and spreading 
 cloths in readiness for the collation — but to the 
 school-rooms, now empty, quiet, cool, and clean; 
 their walls fresh stained, their planked floors fresh 
 scoured and scarce dry; flowers fresh gathered 
 adorning the recesses in pots, and draperies, fresh 
 hung, beautifying the great windows. 
 
 Withdrawing to the first classe, a smaller and 
 neater room than the others, and taking from the 
 glazed book-case, of which I kept the key, a volume 
 whose title promised some interest, I sat down to 
 read. The glass-door of this "classe," or school- 
 room, opened into the large berceau; acacia-boughs 
 caressed its panes, as they stretched across to meet 
 a rose-bush blooming by the opposite lintel : in 
 this rose-bush, bees murmured busy and happy. I 
 commenced reading. Just as the stilly hum, the 
 embowering shade, the warm, lonely calm of my 
 retreat were beginning to steal meaning from the 
 page, vision from my eyes, and to lure me along 
 
THE FETE. 259 
 
 the track of reverie, down into some deep dell 
 of dream-land — just then, the sharpest ring of the 
 street-door bell to which that much-tried instru- 
 ment had ever thrilled, snatched me back to con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 Now, the bell had been ringing all the morning, 
 as workmen, or servants, or coiffeurs, or tailleuses, 
 went and came on their several errands. Moreover, 
 there was good reason to expect it would ring all the 
 afternoon, since about one hundred externes were 
 yet to arrive in carriages or fiacres: nor could it 
 be expected to rest during the evening, when 
 parents and friends would gather thronging to the 
 play. Under these circumstances, a ring — even a 
 sharp ring — was a matter of course : yet this 
 particular peal had an accent of its own, which 
 chased my dream, and startled my book from my 
 knee. 
 
 I was stooping to pick up this last, when — firm, 
 fast, straight — right on through vestibule, along 
 corridor, across carre, through first division, second 
 division, grande salle — strode a step, quick, regular, 
 intent. The closed door of the first classe — my 
 sanctuary — offered no obstacle; it burst open, and 
 a paletot, and a bonnet grec filled the void; also 
 
260 VILLETTE. 
 
 two eyes first vaguely struck upon, and then hun- 
 grily dived into me. 
 
 " C'est cela ! " said a voice. " Je la connais : c'est 
 V Anglaise. Tant pis. Toute Anglaise, et par 
 consequent, toute begueule qu'elle soit — elle fera 
 mon affaire, ou je saurai pourquoi." _, 
 
 Then, with a certain stern politeness (I suppose 
 he thought I had not caught the drift of his pre- 
 vious uncivil mutterings), and in a jargon the most 
 
 execrable that ever was heard. " Meess , play 
 
 you must : I am planted there." 
 
 "What can I do for you, M. Paul Emanuel?" I 
 inquired: for M. Paul Emanuel it was, and in a 
 state of no little excitement. 
 
 "Play you must. I will not have you shrink, 
 or frown, or make the prude. I read your skull, that 
 night you came ; I see your moyens : play you can ; 
 play you must." 
 
 " But how, M. Paul ? What do you mean?" 
 
 " There is no time to be lost," he went on now 
 speaking in French ; " and let us thrust to the 
 wall all reluctance, all excuses, all minauderies. 
 You must take a part." 
 
 " In the vaudeville ? " 
 
 " In the vaudeville. You have said it." 
 
THE FETE. 261 
 
 I gasped, horror-struck. What did the little 
 man mean? 
 
 "Listen!" he said. "The case shall be stated, 
 and you shall then answer me Yes, or No; and 
 according to your answer shall I ever after estimate 
 
 you." 
 
 The scarce-suppressed impetus of a most irritable 
 nature glowed in his cheek, fed with sharp shafts 
 his glances, a nature — the injudicious, the mawkish,, 
 the hesitating, the sullen, the affected, above all, 
 the unyielding, might quickly render violent and 
 implacable. Silence and attention was the best 
 balm to apply : I listened. 
 
 " The whole matter is going to fail," he began. 
 " Louise Vanderkelkov has fallen ill — at least so 
 her ridiculous mother asserts; for my part, I feel 
 sure she might play if she would : it is only good- 
 will that lacks. She was charged with a role, as 
 you know, or do not know — it is equal: without 
 that role the play is stopped. There are now but 
 a few hours in which to learn it : not a girl in 
 this school would hear reason, and accept the task. 
 Forsooth, it is not an interesting, not an amiable, 
 part; their vile amour-propre — that base quality 
 of which women have so much — would revolt from 
 
262 VILLETTE. 
 
 it. Englishwomen are either the best or the worst 
 of their sex. Dieu sait que je les deteste comme 
 la peste, ordinairement " (this between his recreant 
 teeth). "I apply to an Englishwoman to rescue 
 me. What is her answer — Yes, or No ?" 
 
 A thousand objections rushed into my mind. 
 The foreign language, the limited time, the public 
 display .... Inclination recoiled, Ability faltered, 
 Self-respect (that "vile quality") trembled. 
 " Non, non, non ! " said all these ; but looking up 
 at M. Paul, and seeing in his vexed, fiery, and 
 searching eye, a sort of appeal behind all its 
 menace — my lips dropped the word " oui." For a 
 moment, his rigid countenance relaxed with a quiver 
 of content : quickly bent up again, however, he 
 went on, — 
 
 " Vite a. l'ouvrage ! Here is the book ; here is 
 your role: read." And I read. He did not com- 
 mend ; at some passages he scowled and stamped. 
 He gave me a lesson : I diligently imitated. It 
 was a disagreeable part, — a man's — an empty- 
 headed fop's. One could put into it neither heart 
 nor soul : I hated it. The play— a mere trifle — 
 ran chiefly on the efforts of a brace of rivals to 
 gain the hand of a fair coquette. One lover was 
 
THE FETE. 263 
 
 called the " Ours," a good and gallant but un- 
 polished man, a sort of diamond in the rough ; the 
 other was a butterfly, a talker, and a traitor: and 
 I was to be the butterfly, talker, and traitor. 
 
 I did my best — which was bad, I know : it pro- 
 voked M. Paul ; he fumed. Putting both hands to 
 the work, I endeavoured to do better than my best ; 
 I presume he gave me credit for good intentions ; 
 he professed to be partially content. " Qa ira ! " 
 he cried; and as voices began sounding from the 
 garden, and white dresses fluttering among the trees, 
 he added : " You must withdraw : you must be 
 alone to learn this. Come with me." 
 
 Without being allowed time or power to deliber- 
 ate, I found myself in the same breath convoyed 
 along as in a species of whirlwind, up stairs, up two 
 pair of stairs, nay, actually up three (for this fiery 
 little man seemed as by instinct to know his way 
 everywhere) ; to the solitary and lofty attic was I 
 borne, put in and locked in, the key being on the 
 door, and that key he took with him, and vanished. 
 
 The attic was no pleasant place : I believe he did 
 not know how unpleasant it was, or he never would 
 have locked me in with so little ceremony. In this 
 summer weather, it was hot as Africa ; as in winter, 
 
264 TILLETTE. 
 
 it was always cold as Greenland. Boxes and lum- 
 ber filled it ; old dresses draped its unstained wall — 
 cobwebs its unswept ceiling. Well was it known 
 to be tenanted by rats, by black beetles, and by 
 cockroaches — nay, rumour affirmed that the ghostly 
 Nun of the garden had once been seen here. A 
 partial darkness obscured one end, across which, 
 as for deeper mystery, an old russet curtain was 
 drawn, by way of screen to a sombre band of winter 
 cloaks, pendant each from its pin — like a malefactor 
 from his gibbet. From amongst these cloaks, and 
 behind that curtain, the Nun was said to issue. I 
 did not believe this, nor was I troubled by appre- 
 hension thereof; but I saw a very dark and large 
 rat, with a long tail, come gliding out from that 
 squalid alcove ; and, moreover, my eye fell on many 
 a black beetle, dotting the floor. These objects 
 discomposed me more, perhaps, than it would be 
 wise to say, as also did the dust, lumber, and 
 stifling heat of the place. The last inconvenience 
 would soon have become intolerable, had I not 
 found means to open and prop up the sky-light, 
 thus admitting some freshness. Underneath this 
 aperture I pushed a large empty chest, and having 
 mounted upon it a smaller box, and wiped from both 
 
THE FETE. 265 
 
 the dust, I gathered my dress (my best, the reader 
 must remember, and therefore a legitimate object 
 of care) fastidiously round me, ascended this species 
 of extempore throne, and being seated, commenced 
 the acquisition of my task; while I learned, not 
 forgetting to keep a sharp look-out on the black 
 beetles and cockroaches, of which, more even, I 
 believe, than of the rats, I sat in mortal dread. 
 
 My impression at first was that I had under- 
 taken what it really was impossible to perform, 
 and I simply resolved to do my best and be re- 
 signed to fail. I soon found, however, that one 
 part in so short a piece was not more than me- 
 mory could master at a few hours' notice. I learned 
 and learned on, first in a whisper, and then aloud. 
 Perfectly secure from human audience, I acted my 
 part before the garret-vermin. Entering into its 
 emptiness, frivolity, and falsehood, with a spirit 
 inspired by scorn and impatience, I took my re- 
 venge on this "fat," by making him as fatuitous 
 as I possibly could. 
 
 In this exercise the afternoon passed : day began 
 to glide into evening ; and I, who had eaten nothing 
 since breakfast, grew excessively hungry. Now I 
 thought of the collation, which doubtless they were 
 
266 VILLETTE. 
 
 just then devouring in the garden far below. (I 
 had seen in the vestibule a basketful of small pates 
 a la crime, than which nothing in the whole range of 
 cookery seemed to me better). A pate, or a square 
 of cake, it seemed to me would come very apropos ; 
 and as my relish for these dainties increased, it 
 began to appear somewhat hard that I should pass 
 my holiday, fasting and in prison. Remote as was 
 the attic from the street-door and vestibule, yet 
 the ever-tinkling bell was faintly audible here ; and 
 also the ceaseless roll of wheels on the tormented 
 pavement. I knew that the house and garden were 
 thronged, and that all was gay and . glad below ; 
 here it began to grow dusk: the beetles were fad- 
 ing from my sight; I trembled lest they should 
 steal on me a march, mount my throne unseen, and, 
 unsuspected, invade my skirts. Impatient and ap- 
 prehensive, I recommenced the rehearsal of my 
 part merely to kill time. Just as I was conclud- 
 ing, the long-delayed rattle of the key in the lock 
 came to my ear — no unwelcome sound. M. Paul 
 (I could just see through the dusk that it was M. 
 Paul, for light enough still lingered to show the 
 velvet blackness of his close shorn head, and the 
 sallow ivory of his brow) looked in. 
 
THE FETE. 267 
 
 "Brava!" cried he, holding the door open, and 
 remaining at the threshold. " J'ai tout entendu. 
 C'est assez bien. Encore ! " 
 
 A moment I hesitated. 
 
 "Encore!" said he sternly. "Et point de gri- 
 maces ! A bas la timidite !" 
 
 Again I went through the part, but not half so 
 well as I had spoken it alone. 
 
 " Enfin, elle le sait," said he, half dissatisfied, " and 
 one cannot be fastidious or exacting under the cir- 
 cumstances." Then he added, " You may yet have 
 twenty minutes for preparation : au revoir ! " And 
 he was going. 
 
 " Monsieur," I called out, taking courage. 
 
 "Eh bien. Qu'est ce que c'est, mademoiselle ?" 
 
 " J'ai bien faim." 
 
 " Comment, vous avez faim ! Et la collation ?" 
 
 " I know nothing about it. I have not seen it, 
 shut up here." 
 
 " Ah ! C'est vrai," cried he. 
 
 In a moment my throne was abdicated, the attic 
 evacuated ; an inverse repetition of the impetus 
 which had brought me up into the attic, instantly 
 took me down — down — down to the very kitchen. 
 I thought I should have gone to the cellar. The 
 
268 VILLETTE. 
 
 cook was imperatively ordered to produce food, and 
 I, as imperatively, was commanded to eat. To my 
 great joy this food was limited to coffee and cake : 
 I had feared wine and sweets, which I did not like. 
 How he guessed that I should like a petit pate" a 
 la crime I cannot tell; but he went out and pro- 
 cured me one from some quarter. With con- 
 siderable willingness I ate and drank, keeping the 
 petit pate till the last, as a bonne bouche. M. Paul 
 superintended my repast, and almost forced upon me 
 more than I could swallow. 
 
 " A la bonne heure," he cried, when I signified 
 that I really could take no more, and, with up- 
 lifted hands, implored to be spared the additional 
 roll on which he had just spread butter. " You 
 will set me down as a species of tyrant and Blue- 
 beard, starving women in a garret ; whereas, after 
 all, I am no such thing. Now, mademoiselle, do 
 you feel courage and strength to appear?" 
 | I said, I thought I did; though, in truth, I 
 was perfectly confused, and could hardly tell how 
 I felt : but this little man was of the order of 
 beings who must not be opposed, unless you pos- 
 sessed an all-dominant force suflicient to crush him 
 at once. 
 
THE FETE. 269 
 
 " Come then," said he, offering his hand. 
 
 I gave him mine, and he set off with a rapid 
 walk, which obliged me to run at his side in order 
 to keep pace. In the carre he stopped a moment ; 
 it was lit with large lamps ; the wide doors of the 
 classes were open, and so were the equally wide 
 garden-doors ; orange-trees in tubs, and tall flowers 
 in pots, ornamented these portals on each side; 
 groups of ladies and gentlemen in evening-dress 
 stood and walked amongst the flowers. Within, 
 the long vista of the school-rooms presented a 
 thronging, undulating, murmuring, waving, stream- 
 ing multitude, all rose, and blue, and half trans- 
 lucent white. There were lustres burning over- 
 head; far off there was a stage, a solemn green 
 curtain, a row of foot-lights. 
 
 "N'est-ce pas que c'est beau?" demanded my 
 companion. 
 
 I should have said it was, but my heart got up 
 into my throat. M. Paul discovered this, and 
 gave me a side-scowl and a little shake for my 
 pains. 
 
 " I will do my best, but I wish it was over," said 
 I; then I asked: "Are we to walk through that 
 crowd?" 
 
270 VILLETTE. 
 
 " By no means : I manage matters better : we pass 
 through the garden — here." 
 
 In an instant we were out of doors ; the cool, calm 
 night revived me somewhat. It was moonless, but 
 the reflex from the many glowing windows lit the 
 court brightly, and even the alleys — dimly. Heaven 
 was cloudless, and grand with the quiver of its 
 living fires. How soft are the nights of the con- 
 tinent ! How bland, balmy, safe ! No sea-fog ; no 
 chilling damp : mistless as noon, and fresh as morn- 
 ing. 
 
 Having crossed court and garden, we reached the 
 glass door of the first classe. It stood open, like all 
 other doors that night ; we passed, and then I was 
 ushered into a small cabinet, dividing the first classe 
 from the grande salle. This cabinet dazzled me, it 
 was so full of light : it deafened me, it was so cla- 
 mourous with voices : it stifled me, it was so hot, 
 choking, thronged. 
 
 " De 1' ordre ! Du silence !" cried M. Paul. " Is 
 this chaos?" he demanded; and there was a hush. 
 With a dozen words, and as many gestures, he 
 turned out half the persons present, and obliged the 
 remnant to fall into rank. Those left were all in 
 costume : they were the performers, and this was the 
 
THE FETE. 271 
 
 green-room. M. Paul introduced me. All stared 
 and some tittered. It was a surprise : they had not 
 expected the Englishwoman would play in a vau- 
 deville. Ginevra Fanshawe, beautifully dressed for 
 her part, and looking fascinatingly pretty, turned on 
 me a pair of eyes as round as beads. In the highest 
 spirit, unperturbed by fear or bashfulness, delighted 
 indeed at the thought of shining off before hun- 
 dreds — my entrance seemed to transfix her with 
 amazement in the midst of her joy. She would 
 have exclaimed, but M. Paul held her and all the 
 rest in check. 
 
 Having surveyed and criticised the whole troop, 
 he turned to me. 
 
 " You, too, must be dressed for your part." 
 
 "Dressed — dressed like a man!" exclaimed Zelie 
 St. Pierre, darting forwards ; adding with ofiicious- 
 ness, " I will dress her myself." 
 
 To be dressed like a man did not please, and would 
 not suit me. I had consented to take a man's name 
 and part ; as to his dress — halte la ! No. I would keep 
 my own dress ; come what might. M. Paul might 
 storm, might rage : I would keep my own dress. I 
 said so, with a voice as resolute in intent, as it was 
 low, and perhaps unsteady, in utterance. 
 
272 VILLETTE. 
 
 He did not immediately storm or rage, as I fully- 
 thought he would : he stood silent. But Zelie again 
 interposed. 
 
 " She will make a. capital petit-maitre. Here are 
 the garments, all — all complete : somewhat too large, 
 but I will arrange all that. Come chere amie — belle 
 Anglaise !" 
 
 And she sneered, for I was not " belle." She 
 seized my hand, she was drawing me away. M. 
 Paul stood impassible — neutral. 
 
 "You must not resist," pursued St. Pierre — for 
 resist I did. " You will spoil all, destroy the mirth 
 of the piece, the enjoyment of the company, sacrifice 
 everything to your amour-propre. This would be 
 too bad — monsieur will never permit this ?" 
 
 She sought his eye. I watched, likewise, for a 
 glance. He gave her one, and then he gave me one. 
 " Stop !" he said slowly, arresting St. Pierre, who 
 continued her efforts to drag me after her. Every- 
 body awaited the decision. He was not angry, not 
 irritated ; I perceived that and took heart. 
 
 " You do not like these clothes ? " he asked, point- 
 ing to the masculine vestments. 
 
 " I don't object to some of them, but I won't have 
 them all." 
 
THE EETE. 273 
 
 " How must it be, then ? How, accept a man's 
 part, and go on the stage dressed as a woman ? This 
 is an amateur affair, it is true — a vaudeville de pen- 
 sionnat; certain modifications I might sanction, yet 
 something you must have to announce you as of the 
 nobler sex." 
 
 " And I will, monsieur ; but it must be arranged 
 in my own way : nobody must meddle ; the things 
 must not be forced upon me. Just let me dress 
 myself." 
 
 Monsieur, without another word, took the costume 
 from St. Pierre, gave it to me, and permitted me to 
 pass into the dressing-room. Once alone, I grew 
 calm, and collectedly went to work. Retaining 
 my woman's garb without the slightest retrench- 
 ment, I merely assumed in addition, a little vest, a 
 collar, and cravat, and a paletot of small dimen- 
 sions ; the whole being the costume of a brother of 
 one of the pupils. Having loosened my hair out 
 of its braids, made up the long back hair close, 
 and brushed the front hair to one side, I took my 
 hat and gloves in my hand and came out. M. 
 Paul was waiting and so were the others. He 
 looked at me. "That may pass in a Pensionnat," 
 he pronounced. Then added, not unkindly, " Cou- 
 
 VOL. i. T 
 
274 VILLETTE. 
 
 rage, mon ami ! Un peu de sang froid — un peu 
 d'aplomb, M. Lucien, et tout ira bien." 
 
 St. Pierre sneered again, in her cold, snaky- 
 manner. 
 
 I was irritable, because excited, and I could not 
 help turning upon her and saying, that if she were 
 not a lady and I a gentleman, I should feel dis- 
 posed to call her out. 
 
 " After the play, after the play," said M. Paul. 
 " I will then divide my pair of pistols between 
 you, and we will settle the dispute according to 
 form : it will only be the old quarrel of France 
 and England." 
 
 But now the moment approached for the per- 
 formance to commence. M. Paul setting us before 
 him, harangued us briefly, like a general addres- 
 sing soldiers about to charge. I don't know what 
 he said, except that he recommended each to pene- 
 trate herself well with a sense of her personal 
 insignificance. God knows, I thought this advice 
 superfluous for some of us. A bell tinkled. I and 
 two more were ushered on to the stage. The bell 
 tinkled again. I had to speak the very first 
 words. 
 
 "Do not look at the crowd, nor think of it," 
 
THE FETE. 275 
 
 whispered M. Paul in my ear. " Imagine yourself 
 in the garret, acting to the rats." 
 
 He vanished. The curtain drew up — shrivelled 
 to the ceiling ; the bright lights, the long room, 
 the gay throng burst upon us. I thought of the 
 black beetles, the old boxes, the worm - eaten 
 bureaux. I said my say badly ; but I said it. 
 That first speech was the difficulty ; it revealed 
 to me this fact, that it was not the crowd I feared, 
 so much as my own voice. Foreigners and stran- 
 gers, the crowd were nothing to me. Nor did I 
 think of them. When my tongue once got free, 
 and my voice took its true pitch, and found its 
 natural tone, I thought of nothing but the per- 
 sonage I represented — and of M. Paul, who was 
 listening, watching, prompting in the side-scenes. 
 
 By-and-by, feeling the right power come — the 
 spring demanded gush and rise inwardly — I became 
 sufficiently composed to notice my fellow-actors. 
 Some of them played very well ; especially Ginevra 
 Fanshawe, who had to coquette between two suit- 
 ors, and managed admirably : in fact she was in 
 her element. I observed that she once or twice 
 threw a certain marked fondness, and pointed par- 
 tiality into her manner towards me — the fop. With 
 
276 VILLETTE. 
 
 such emphasis and animation did she favour me, 
 such glances did she dart out into the listening 
 and applauding crowd, that to me — who knew her — 
 it presently became evident she was acting at some 
 one; and I followed her eye, her smile, her ges- 
 ture, and ere long discovered that she had at least 
 singled out a handsome and distinguished aim for 
 her shafts ; full in the path of those arrows — taller 
 than other spectators, and therefore more sure to 
 receive them — stood, in attitude quiet but intent, 
 a well-known form — that of Dr. John. 
 
 The spectacle seemed somehow suggestive. There 
 was language in Dr. John's look, though I cannot 
 tell what he said; it animated me: I drew out 
 of it a history ; I put my idea into the part I per- 
 formed; I threw it into my wooing of Ginevra. 
 In the " Ours," or sincere lover, I saw Dr. John. 
 Did I pity him, as erst ? No, I hardened my heart, 
 rivalled and out - rivalled him. I knew myself 
 but a fop, but where he was outcast / could 
 please. Now I know I acted as if wishful and 
 resolute to win and conquer. Ginevra seconded 
 me ; between us we half-changed the nature of the 
 role, gilding it from top to toe. Between the acts 
 M. Paul told us he knew not what possessed us, 
 
THE FETE. 277 
 
 and half expostulated, " C'est, peutetre plus beau 
 que votre modele," said he, "mais ce n'est pas 
 juste." I know not what possessed me either ; but 
 somehow, my longing was to eclipse the " Ours :" 
 i. e. } Dr. John. Ginevra was tender; how could I 
 be otherwise than chivalric? Retaining the letter, 
 I recklessly altered the spirit of the role. Without 
 heart, without interest, I could not play it at all. It 
 must be played — in went the yearned-for season- 
 ing — thus flavoured, I played it with relish. 
 
 What I felt that night, and what I did, I no 
 more expected to feel and do, than to be lifted 
 in a trance to the seventh heaven. Cold, reluct- 
 ant, apprehensive, I had accepted a part to please 
 another : ere long, warming, becoming interested, 
 taking courage, I acted to please myself. Yet the 
 next day, when I thought it over, I quite disap- 
 proved of these amateur performances ; and though 
 glad that I had obliged M. Paul, and tried my own 
 strength for once, I took a firm resolution never to 
 be drawn into a similar affair. A keen relish for 
 dramatic expression had revealed itself as part of 
 my nature ; to cherish and exercise this new-found 
 faculty might gift me with a world of delight, but 
 it would not do for a mere looker-on at life : the 
 
278 VILLETTE. 
 
 strength and longing must be put by ; and I put 
 them by, and fastened them in with the lock of a 
 resolution which neither Time nor Temptation has 
 since picked. 
 
 No sooner was the play over and well over, than 
 the choleric and arbitrary M. Paul underwent a 
 metamorphosis. His hour of managerial responsi- 
 bility past, he at once laid aside his magisterial 
 austerity ; in a moment he stood amongst us, viva- 
 cious, kind, and social, shook hands with us all 
 round, thanked us separately, and announced his 
 determination that each of us should in turn be 
 his partner in the coming ball. On his claiming 
 my promise, I told him I did not dance. "For 
 once I must," was the answer; and if I had not 
 slipped aside and kept out of his way, he would 
 have compelled me to this second performance. 
 But I had acted enough for one evening; it was 
 time I retired into myself and my ordinary life. My 
 dun-coloured dress did well enough under a paletot 
 on the stage, but would not suit a waltz or a qua- 
 drille. Withdrawing to a quiet nook, whence un- 
 observed I could observe — the ball, its splendours 
 and its pleasures passed before me as a spectacle. 
 
 Again Ginevra Fanshawe was the belle, the 
 
THE FETE. 279 
 
 fairest and the gayest present ; she was selected to 
 open the ball: very lovely she looked, very grace- 
 fully she danced, very joyously she smiled. Such 
 scenes were her triumphs — she was the child of 
 pleasure. "Work or suffering found her listless and 
 dejected, powerless and repining; but gaiety ex- 
 panded her butterfly's wings, lit up their gold-dust 
 and bright spots, made her flash like a gem, and 
 flush like a flower. At all ordinary diet and plain 
 beverage she would pout ; but she fed on creams 
 and ices like a humming-bird on honey -paste : 
 sweet wine was her element and sweet cake her 
 daily bread. Ginevra lived her full life in a ball- 
 room ; elsewhere she drooped dispirited. 
 
 Think not, reader, that she thus bloomed and 
 sparkled for the mere sake of M. Paul her partner, 
 or that she lavished her best graces that night for 
 the edification of her companions only, or for that 
 of the parents and grand-parents, who filled the carre 
 and lined the ball-room ; under circumstances so 
 insipid and limited, with motives so chilly and 
 vapid, Ginevra would scarce have deigned to walk 
 one quadrille, and weariness and fretfulness would 
 have replaced animation and good-humour, but she 
 knew of a leaven in the otherwise heavy festal mass 
 
280 VILLETTE. 
 
 which lightened the whole ; she tasted a condiment 
 which gave it zest ; she perceived reasons justifying 
 the display of her choicest attractions. 
 
 In the ball-room, indeed, not a single male 
 spectator was to be seen who was not married and 
 a father — M. Paul excepted — that gentleman, too, 
 being the sole creature of his sex permitted to lead 
 out a pupil to the dance ; and this exceptional 
 part was allowed him, partly as a matter of old- 
 established custom (for he was a kinsman of Ma- 
 dame Beck's, and high in her confidence), partly 
 because he would always have his own way and 
 do as he pleased, and partly because — wilful, pas- 
 sionate, partial, as he might be — he was the soul 
 of honour, and might be trusted with a regiment 
 of the fairest and purest, in perfect security that 
 under his leadership they would come to no harm. 
 Many of the girls — it may be noted in parenthesis 
 — were not pure-minded at all, very much other- 
 wise ; but they no more dare betray their natural 
 coarseness in M. Paul's presence, than they dare 
 tread purposely on his corns, laugh in his face 
 during a stormy apostrophe, or speak above their 
 breath while some crisis of irritability was covering 
 his human visage with the mask of an intelligent 
 
THE FETE. 281 
 
 tiger. M. Paul, then, might dance with whom he 
 would — and woe be to the interference which put 
 him out of step. 
 
 Others there were admitted as spectators — with 
 (seeming) reluctance, through prayers, by influence, 
 under restriction, by special and difficult exer- 
 cise of Madame Beck's gracious good-nature, and 
 whom she all the evening — with her own personal 
 surveillance — kept far aloof at the remotest, drearest, 
 coldest, darkest side of the carre — a small, forlorn, 
 band of "jeunes gens;" these being all of the 
 best families, grown-up sons of mothers present, and 
 whose sisters were pupils in the school. That whole 
 evening was madame on duty beside these " jeunes 
 gens" — attentive to them as a mother, but strict 
 with them as a dragon. There was a sort of 
 cordon sketched before them, which they wearied 
 her with prayers to be permitted to pass, and 
 just to revive themselves by one dance with that 
 " belle blonde," or that " jolie brune," or " cette 
 jeune fille magnifique aux cheveux noirs comme le 
 jais." 
 
 " Taisez-vous ! " madame would reply, heroi- 
 cally and inexorably. " Vous ne passerez pas a. 
 moins que ce ne soit sur mon cadavre, et vous ne 
 
282 VILLETTE. 
 
 danserez qu' avec la nonnette du jardin" (alluding 
 to the legend). And she majestically walked to 
 and fro along their disconsolate and impatient line, 
 like a little Buonaparte in a mouse-coloured silk 
 gown. 
 
 Madame knew something of the world ; madame 
 knew much of human nature. I don't think that 
 another directress in Villette would have dared to 
 admit a "jeune homme" within her walls; but 
 madame knew that by granting such admission, on 
 an occasion like the present, a bold stroke might 
 be struck, and a great point gained. 
 
 In the first place, the parents were made accom- 
 plices to the deed, for it was only through their 
 mediation it was brought about. Secondly : the 
 admission of these rattlesnakes, so fascinating and so 
 dangerous, served to draw out madame precisely in 
 her strongest character — that of a first-rate surveil- 
 lante. Thirdly : their presence furnished a most 
 piquant ingredient to the entertainment : the pupils 
 knew it, and saw it, and the view of such golden 
 apples shining afar off, animated them with a spirit 
 no other circumstance could have kindled. The 
 children's pleasure spread to the parents ; life and 
 mirth circulated quickly round the ball-room; the 
 
THE FETE. 283 
 
 "jeunes gens" themselves, though restrained, were 
 amused: for madame never permitted them to feel 
 dull — and thus Madame Beck's fete annually ensured 
 a success unknown to the f&te of any other directress 
 in the land. 
 
 I observed that Dr. John was at first permitted to 
 walk at large through the classes : there was about 
 him a manly, responsible look, that redeemed his 
 youth, and half-expiated his beauty ; but as soon as 
 the ball began, madame ran up to him. 
 
 " Come, Wolf; come," said she, laughing : " You 
 wear sheep's clothing, but you must quit the fold 
 notwithstanding. Come ; I have a fine menagerie 
 of twenty here in the carre : let me place you 
 amongst my collection." 
 
 " But first suffer me to have one dance with one 
 pupil of my choice." 
 
 " Have you the face to ask such a thing ? It is 
 madness : it is impiety. Sortez, sortez, et au plus 
 vite." 
 
 She drove him before her, and soon had him en- 
 closed within the cordon. 
 
 Ginevra being, I suppose, tired with dancing, 
 sought me out in my retreat. She threw herself on 
 the bench beside me, and (a demonstration I could 
 
284 VILLETTE. 
 
 very well have dispensed with) cast her arms round 
 my neck. 
 
 " Lucy Snowe ! Lucy Snowe ! " she cried in a 
 somewhat sobbing voice, half hysterical. 
 
 "What in the world is the matter?" I drily 
 said. 
 
 "How do I look — how do I look to-night?" she 
 demanded. 
 
 " As usual," said I; " preposterously vain." 
 
 " Caustic creature ! You never have a kind word 
 for me ; but in spite of you, and all other envious 
 detractors, I know I am beautiful : I feel it, I see 
 it — for there is a great looking-glass in the dressing- 
 room, where I can view my shape from head to foot. 
 Will you go with me now, and let us two stand 
 before it?" 
 
 " I will, Miss Fanshawe : you shall be humoured 
 even to the top of your bent." 
 
 The dressing-room was very near, and we stepped 
 in. Putting her arm through mine, she drew me to 
 the mirror. Without resistance, remonstrance, or 
 remark, I stood and let her self-love have its feast 
 and triumph : curious to see how much it could 
 swallow — whether it was possible it could feed to 
 satiety — whether any whisper of consideration for 
 
THE FETE. 285 
 
 others could penetrate her heart, and moderate its 
 vain-glorious exultation. 
 
 Not at all. She turned me and herself round; 
 she viewed us both on all sides; she smiled, she 
 waved her curls, she retouched her sash, she spread 
 her dress, and finally, letting go my arm, and 
 curtseying with mock respect, she said : 
 
 " I would not be you for a kingdom." 
 
 The remark was too naive to rouse auger; I 
 merely said : 
 
 " Very good." 
 
 "And what would you give to be me?" she 
 inquired. 
 
 " Not a bad sixpence — strange as it may sound," 
 I replied. " You are but a poor creature." 
 
 " You don't think so in your heart." 
 
 " No ; for in my heart you have not the outline 
 of a place : I only occasionally turn you over in my 
 brain." 
 
 " Well, but," said she, in an expostulatory tone, 
 "just listen to the difference of our positions, and 
 then see how happy am I, and how miserable are 
 you." 
 
 "Go on; I listen." 
 
 " In the first place : I am the daughter of a 
 
286 VILLETTE. 
 
 gentleman of family, and though my father is 
 not rich, I have expectations from an uncle. Then, 
 I am just eighteen, the finest age possible. I have 
 had a continental education, and though I can't 
 spell, I have abundant accomplishments. I am 
 pretty ; you can't deny that ; I may have as many 
 admirers as I choose. This very night I have been 
 breaking the hearts of two gentlemen, and it is the 
 dying look I had from one of them just now, which 
 puts me in such spirits. I do so like to watch them 
 turn red and pale, and scowl and dart fiery glances 
 at each other, and languishing ones at me. There 
 is me — happy me ; now for you, poor soul ! 
 
 " I suppose you are nobody's daughter, since you 
 took care of little children when you first came to 
 Villette: you have no relations; you can't call 
 yourself young at twenty-three ; you have no attrac- 
 tive accomplishments — no beauty. As to admirers, 
 you hardly know what they are; you can't even 
 talk on the subject : you sit dumb when the other 
 teachers quote their conquests. I believe you never 
 were in love, and never will be; you don't know 
 the feeling : and so much the better, for though you 
 might have your own heart broken, no living heart 
 will you ever break. Isn't it all true ? " 
 
THE PETE. 287 
 
 " A good deal of it is true as gospel, and shrewd 
 besides. There must be good in you, Ginevra, to 
 speak so honestly ; that snake, Zelie St. Pierre, 
 could not utter what you have uttered. Still, Miss 
 Fanshawe, hapless as I am, according to your show- 
 ing, sixpence I would not give to purchase you, 
 body and soul." 
 
 " Just because I am not clever, and that is all 
 you think of. Nobody in the world but you cares 
 for cleverness." 
 
 " On the contrary, I consider you are clever, in 
 your way — very smart indeed. But you were 
 talking of breaking hearts — that edifying amusement 
 into the merits of which I don't quite enter; pray 
 on whom does your vanity lead you to think you 
 have done execution to-night ? " 
 
 She approached her lips to my ear — " Isidore and 
 Alfred de Hamal are both here," she whispered. 
 
 " Oh! they are? I should like to see them." 
 
 " There 's a dear creature ! your curiosity is 
 roused at last. Follow me, I will point them 
 out." 
 
 She proudly led the way — " But you cannot see 
 them well from the classes," said she, turning, 
 " Madame keeps them too far off. Let us cross the 
 
288 VILLETTE. 
 
 garden, enter by the corridor, and get close to them 
 behind: we shall be scolded if we are seen, but 
 never mind." 
 
 For once, I did not mind. Through the garden 
 we went — penetrated into the corridor by a quiet 
 private entrance, and approaching the carre, yet 
 keeping in the corridor shade, commanded a near 
 view of the band of " jeimes gens." 
 
 I believe I could have picked out the conquering 
 de Hamal even undirected. He was a straight- 
 nosed, very correct-featured, little dandy. I say 
 little dandy, though he was not beneath the middle 
 standard in stature ; but his lineaments were small, 
 and so were his hands and feet ; and he was pretty 
 and smooth, and as trim as a doll : so nicely dressed, 
 so nicely curled, so booted and gloved and cravated 
 — he was charming indeed. I said so: "What a 
 dear personage ! " cried I, and commended Ginevra's 
 taste warmly ; and asked her what she thought de 
 Hamal might have done with the precious fragments 
 of that heart she had broken — whether he kept 
 them in a scent-vial, and conserved them in otto 
 of roses? I observed, too, with a deep rapture 
 of approbation, that the colonel's hands were scarce 
 larger than Miss Fanshawe's own, and suggested 
 
THE PETE. 289 
 
 that this circumstance might be convenient, as he 
 could wear her gloves at a pinch. On his dear 
 curls, I told her I doated ; and as to his low, Grecian 
 brow, and exquisite classic head-piece, I confessed I 
 had no language to do such perfections justice. 
 
 " And if he were your lover ? " suggested the 
 cruelly exultant Ginevra. 
 
 " Oh ! heavens, what bliss ! " said I ; " but do not 
 be inhuman, Miss Fanshawe : to put such thoughts 
 into my head is like showing poor outcast Cain a far 
 glimpse of Paradise. 
 
 " You like him then ? " 
 
 " As I like sweets, and jams, and comfits, and 
 conservatory flowers." 
 
 Ginevra admired my taste, for all these things 
 were her adoration; she could then readily credit 
 that they were mine too. 
 
 " Now for Isidore," I went on. I own I felt still 
 more curious to see him than his rival ; but Ginevra 
 was absorbed in the latter. 
 
 " Alfred was admitted here to-night," said she, 
 "through the influence of his aunt, Madame la 
 Baronne de Dorlodot ; and now, having seen him, 
 can you not understand why I have been in such 
 spirits all the evening, and acted so well and danced 
 
 VOL. i. u 
 
290 VILLETTE. 
 
 with such life, and why I am now happy as a 
 queen ? Dieu ! Dieu ! It was such good fun to 
 glance first at him and then at the other, and 
 
 madden them both." 
 
 t 
 
 " But that other — where is he ? Show me Isi- 
 dore." 
 
 "I don't like." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " I am ashamed of him." 
 
 " For what reason ? " 
 
 "Because — because" (in a whisper) "he has such 
 — such whiskers, orange — red — there now !" 
 
 " The murder is out," I subjoined. " Never 
 mind, show him, all the same; I engage not to 
 faint." 
 
 She looked round. Just then an English voice 
 spoke behind her and me. 
 
 " You are both standing in a draught ; you must 
 leave this corridor." 
 
 " There is no draught, Dr. John," said I turning. 
 
 " She takes cold so easily," he pursued, looking 
 at Ginevra with extreme kindness. " She is deli- 
 cate ; she must be cared for : fetch her a shawl." 
 
 " Permit me to judge for myself," said Miss 
 Fanshawe, with hauteur. " 1 want no shawl." 
 
THE FETE. 291 
 
 " Your dress is thin, you have been dancing, you 
 are heated." 
 
 " Always preaching," retorted she; "always 
 coddling and admonishing." 
 
 The answer Dr. John would have given, did not 
 come ; that . his heart was hurt became evident in 
 his eye ; darkened, and saddened, and pained, he 
 turned a little aside, but was patient. I knew 
 where there were plenty of shawls near at hand ; I 
 ran and fetched one. 
 
 " She shall wear this if I have strength to make 
 her," said I, folding it well round her muslin dress, 
 covering carefully her neck and her arms. " Is that 
 Isidore ? " I asked, in a somewhat fierce whisper. 
 
 She pushed up her lip, smiled, and nodded. 
 
 "Is that Isidore ?" I repeated, giving her a shake : 
 I could have given her a dozen. 
 
 " C'est lui-meme," said she. " How coarse he is, 
 compared with the Colonel-Count ! And then — oh, 
 ciel ! — the whiskers !" 
 
 Dr. John now passed on. 
 
 "The Colonel-Count!" I echoed. "The doll— 
 the puppet — the manikin — the poor inferior crea- 
 ture ! A mere lackey for Dr. John : his valet, his 
 foot-boy ! Is it possible that fine generous gentle- 
 
292 VILLETTE. 
 
 man — handsome as a vision — offers you his honour- 
 able hand and gallant heart, and promises to pro- 
 tect your flimsy person and wretchless mind through 
 the storms and struggles of life — and you hang back — 
 you scorn, you sting, you torture him ! Have you 
 power to do this ? Who gave you that power? 
 Where is it ? Does it lie all in your beauty — your 
 pink and white complexion and your yellow hair? 
 Does this bind his soul at your feet, and bend his 
 neck under your yoke ? Does this purchase for you 
 his affection, his tenderness, his thoughts, his hopes, 
 his interest, his noble, cordial love — and will you 
 not have it ? Do you scorn it ? You are only dis- 
 sembling : you are not in earnest ; you love him ; 
 you long for him ; but you trifle with his heart 
 to make him more surely yours?" 
 
 " Bah ! How you run on ! I don't understand 
 half you have said." 
 
 I had got her out into the garden ere this. I now 
 set her down on a seat and told her she should not 
 stir till she had avowed which she meant in the end 
 to accept — the man or the monkey. 
 
 " Him you call the man," said she, " is bourgeois, 
 sandy-haired, and answers to the name of John! — 
 cela suffit : je n'en veux pas. Colonel de Hamal is a 
 
THE PETE. 293 
 
 gentleman of excellent connections, perfect manners, 
 sweet appearance, with pale interesting face, and 
 hair and eyes like an Italian. Then too he is the 
 most delightful company possible — a man quite in 
 my way ; not sensible and serious like the other, but 
 one with whom I can talk on equal terms — who does 
 not plague, and bore, and harass me with depths, 
 and heights, and passions, and talents for which I 
 have no taste. There now. Don't hold me so fast." 
 
 I slackened my grasp, and she darted off. I did 
 not care to pursue her. 
 
 Somehow I could not avoid returning once more 
 in the direction of the corridor to get another 
 glimpse of Dr. John ; but I met him on the garden- 
 steps, standing where the light from a window fell 
 broad. His well-proportioned figure was not to be 
 mistaken, for I doubt whether there was another 
 in that assemblage his equal. He carried his hat 
 in his hand; his uncovered head, his face and fine 
 brow were most handsome and manly. His features 
 were not delicate, not slight like those of a woman, 
 nor were they cold, frivolous, and feeble; though 
 well cut, they were not so chiselled, so frittered 
 away, as to lose in power and significance what they 
 gained in unmeaning symmetry. Much feeling 
 
294 VILLETTE. 
 
 spoke in them at times, and more sat silent in his 
 eye. Such at least were my thoughts of him: to 
 me he seemed all this. An inexpressible sense of 
 wonder occupied me as I looked at this man, and 
 reflected that he could be slighted. 
 
 It was not my intention to approach or address 
 him in the garden, our terms of acquaintance not 
 warranting such a step ; I had only meant to view 
 him in the crowd — myself unseen : coming upon him 
 thus alone, I withdrew. But he was looking out 
 for me, or rather for her who had been with me ; 
 therefore he descended the steps, and followed me 
 down the alley. 
 
 " You know Miss Fanshawe ? I have often 
 wished to ask whether you knew her," said he. 
 
 " Yes : I know her." 
 
 " Intimately ? " 
 
 " Quite as intimately as I wish." 
 
 " What have you done with her now ? " 
 
 " Am I her keeper ? " I felt inclined to ask ; but 
 I simply answered, " I have shaken her well, and 
 would have shaken her better, but she escaped out 
 of my hands and ran away." 
 
 " Would you favour me," he asked, " by watching 
 over her this one evening, and observing that she 
 
THE FETE. 295 
 
 does nothing imprudent — does not, for instance, run 
 out into the night-air immediately after dancing ? " 
 
 " I may, perhaps, look after her a little, since you 
 wish it; but she likes her own way too well to 
 submit readily to control." 
 
 " She is so young, so thoroughly artless," said he. 
 
 * To me she is an enigma," I responded. 
 
 " Is she ? " he asked — much interested. " How ? " 
 
 " It would be difficult to say how — difficult, at 
 least, to tell you how." 
 
 " And why me ? " 
 
 " I wonder she is not better pleased that yon 
 are so much her friend." 
 
 " But she has not the slightest idea how much 
 I am her friend. That is precisely the point I can- 
 not teach her. May I inquire did she ever speak of 
 me to you ? " 
 
 " Under the name of ' Isidore ' she has talked 
 about you often ; but I must add that it is only 
 within the last ten minutes I have discovered that 
 you and ' Isidore ' are identical. It is only, Dr. 
 John, within that brief space of time I have learned 
 that Ginevra Fanshawe is the person, under this 
 roof, in whom you have long been interested — that 
 she is the magnet which attracts you to the Rue 
 
296 VILLETTE. 
 
 Fossette, that for her sake you venture into this 
 garden, and seek out caskets dropped by rivals." 
 
 " You know all?" 
 
 " I know so much." 
 
 " For more than a year I have been accustomed 
 to meet her in society. Mrs. Cholmondeley, her 
 friend, is an acquaintance of mine ; thus I see her 
 every Sunday. But you observed that under the 
 name of * Isidore ' she often spoke of me : may I — 
 without inviting you to a breach of confidence — 
 inquire what was the tone, what the feeling of her 
 remarks ? I feel somewhat anxious to know, being 
 a little tormented with uncertainty as to how I 
 stand with her." 
 
 " Oh, she varies : she shifts and changes like the 
 wind." 
 
 " Still, you can gather some general idea — ? " 
 
 "I can," thought I, "but it would not do to 
 communicate that general idea to you. Besides, 
 if I said she did not love you, I know you would 
 not believe me." 
 
 " You are silent," he pursued. " I suppose you 
 have no good news to impart. No matter. If she 
 feels for me positive coldness and aversion, it is a 
 sign I do not deserve her." 
 
THE EETE. 297 
 
 " Do you doubt yourself ? Do you consider your- 
 self the inferior of Colonel de Hamal?" 
 
 " I love Miss Fanshawe far more than de Hanial 
 loves any human being, and would care for and 
 guard her better than he. Respecting de Hamal, 
 I fear she is under an illusion ; the man's character 
 is known to me, all his antecedents, all his scrapes. 
 He is not worthy of your beautiful young friend." 
 
 "My 'beautiful young friend' ought to know 
 that, and to know or feel who is worthy of her," 
 said I. "If her beauty or her brains will not 
 serve her so far, she merits the sharp lesson of ex- 
 perience." 
 
 " Are you not a little severe?" 
 
 "I am excessively severe — more severe than I 
 choose to show you. You should hear the strictures 
 with which I favour my 'beautiful young friend,' 
 only that you would be unutterably shocked at my 
 want of tender considerateness for her delicate 
 nature." 
 
 " She is so lovely, one cannot but be loving to- 
 wards her. You — every woman older than herself, 
 must feel for such a simple, innocent, girlish fairy, 
 a sort of motherly or elder-sisterly fondness. 
 Graceful angel! Does not your heart yearn to- 
 
298 VILLETTE. 
 
 wards her when she pours into your ear her pure, 
 child-like confidences? How you are privileged!" 
 And he sighed. 
 
 w I cut short these confidences somewhat abruptly 
 now and then," said I. " But excuse me, Dr. John, 
 may I change the theme for one instant ? What 
 a god-like person is that de Hamal ! What a nose 
 on his face — perfect ! Model one in putty or clay, 
 you could not make a better, or straighter, or 
 neater; and then, such classic lips and chin — and 
 his bearing — sublime." 
 
 "De Hamal is an unutterable puppy, besides being 
 a very white-livered hero." 
 
 " You, Dr. John, and every man of a less refined 
 mould than he, must feel for him a sort of admiring 
 affection, such as Mars and the coarser deities may 
 be supposed to have borne the young, graceful 
 Apollo." 
 
 " An unprincipled, gambling, little jackanapes ! " 
 said Dr. John curtly, "whom, with one hand, I 
 could lift up by the waistband any day, and lay low 
 in the kennel, if I liked." 
 
 " The sweet seraph ! " said I. " What a cruel 
 idea ? Are you not a little severe, Dr. John ? 
 
 And now I paused. For the second time that 
 
THE FETE. 299 
 
 night I was going beyond myself — venturing out of 
 what I looked on as my natural habits — speaking 
 in an unpremeditated, impulsive strain, which 
 startled me strangely when I halted to reflect. 
 On rising that morning, had I anticipated that 
 before night I should have acted the part of a gay 
 lover in a vaudeville; and an hour after, frankly 
 discussed with Dr. John the question of his hapless 
 suit, and rallied him on his illusions ? I had no 
 more presaged such feats than I had looked forward 
 to an ascent in a balloon, or a voyage to Cape 
 Horn. 
 
 The Doctor and I, having paced down the walk, 
 were now returning; the reflex from the window 
 again lit his face : he smiled, but his eye was me- 
 lancholy. How I wished that he could feel heart's- 
 ease! How I grieved that he brooded over pain, 
 and pain from such a cause ! He, with his great 
 advantages, he to love in vain! I did not then 
 know that the pensiveness of reverse is the best 
 phase for some minds ; nor did I reflect that some 
 herbs, " though scentless when entire, yield fragrance 
 when they're bruised." 
 
 "Do not be sorrowful, do not grieve," I broke 
 out. " If there is in Ginevra one spark of worthi- 
 
300 VILLETTE. 
 
 ness of your affection, she will — she must feel devo- 
 tion in return. Be cheerful, be hopeful, Dr. John. 
 Who should hope, if not you ? " 
 
 In return for this speech I got — what, it must be 
 supposed, I deserved — a look of some surprise : I 
 thought also of some disapprobation. "We parted, 
 and I went into the house very chill. The clocks 
 struck and the bells tolled midnight; people were 
 leaving fast: the fete was over; the lamps were 
 fading. In another hour all the dwelling-house, 
 and all the Pensionnat, were dark and hushed. I 
 too was in bed, but not asleep. To me it was not 
 easy to sleep after a day of such excitement. 
 
THE LONG VACATION. 301 
 
 CHAPTEE XVI. 
 
 THE LONG VACATION. 
 
 Following Madame Beck's fete, with its three 
 preceding weeks of relaxation, its brief twelve hours' 
 burst of hilarity and dissipation, and its one subsequent 
 day of utter languor, came a period of reaction; 
 two months of real application, of close, hard study. 
 These two months, being the last of the " annee 
 scolaire," were indeed the only genuine working 
 months in the year. To them was procrastinated — 
 into them concentrated, alike by professors, mis- 
 tresses, and pupils — the main burden of preparation 
 for the examinations preceding the distribution of 
 prizes. Candidates for rewards had then to work in 
 good earnest ; masters and teachers had to set their 
 shoulders to the wheel, to urge on the backward, 
 and diligently aid and train the more promising. A 
 showy demonstration — a telling exhibition — must be 
 
302 VILLETTE. 
 
 got up for public view, and all means were fair to 
 this end. 
 
 I scarcely noted how the other teachers went to 
 work ; I had my own business to mind : and my 
 task was not the least onerous, being to embue 
 some ninety sets of brains with a due tincture of 
 what they considered a most complicated and 
 difficult science, that of the English language ; and 
 to drill ninety tongues in what, for them, was an 
 almost impossible pronounciation — the lisping and 
 hissing dentals of the isles. 
 
 The examination-day arrived. Awful day ! Pre- 
 pared for with anxious care, dressed for with silent 
 despatch — nothing vaporous or fluttering now — no 
 white gauze or azure streamers; the grave, close, 
 compact was the order of the toilette. It seemed 
 to me that I was this day especially doomed — the 
 main burden and trial falling on me alone of all the 
 female teachers. The others were not expected 
 to examine in the studies they taught ; the pro- 
 fessor of literature, M. Paul, taking upon himself 
 this duty. He, this school-autocrat, gathered all 
 and sundry reins into the hollow of his one hand ; 
 he irefully rejected any colleague ; he would not 
 have help. Madame herself, who evidently rather 
 
THE LONG VACATION. 303 
 
 wished to undertake the examination in geography 
 — her favourite study, which she taught well — was 
 forced to succumb, and be subordinate to her des- 
 potic kinsman's direction. The whole staff of in- 
 structors, male and female, he set aside, and stood 
 on the examiner's estrade alone. It irked him that 
 he was forced to make one exception to this rule. 
 He could not manage English: he was obliged to 
 leave that branch of education in the English 
 teacher's hands ; which he did, not without a flash 
 of naive jealousy. 
 
 A constant crusade against the " amour-propre" of 
 every human-being, but himself, was the crotchet of 
 this able, but fiery and grasping little man. He 
 had a strong relish for public representation in his 
 own person, but an extreme abhorrence of the like 
 display in any other. He quelled, he kept down 
 when he could ; and when he could not, he fumed 
 like a bottled storm. 
 
 On the evening preceding the examination-day, 
 I was walking in the garden, as were the other 
 teachers and all the boarders. M. Emanuel 
 joined me in the "allee defendue"; his cigar was 
 at his lips ; his paletot — a most characteristic 
 garment of no particular shape — hung dark and 
 
304 VILLETTE. 
 
 menacing ; the tassel of his bonnet grec sternly- 
 shadowed his left temple ; his black whiskers curled 
 like those of a wrathful cat : his blue eye had a 
 cloud in its glitter. 
 
 " Ainsi," he began, abruptly fronting and arrest- 
 ing me, " vous allez troner comme une reine ; 
 demain — troner a, mes cotes? Sans doute vous 
 savourez d'avance les delices de l'autorite. Je crois 
 voir en vous je ne sais quoi de rayonnante, petite 
 ambitieuse ! " 
 
 Now the fact was, he happened to be entirely 
 mistaken. I did not — could not — estimate the ad- 
 miration or the good opinion of to-morrow's audience 
 at the same rate he did. Had that audience num- 
 bered as many personal friends and acquaintance 
 for me, as for him, I know not how it might have 
 been : I speak of the case as it stood. On me 
 school-triumphs shed but a cold lustre. I had won- 
 dered — and I wondered now — how it was that for 
 him they seemed to shine as with hearth-warmth 
 and hearth-glow. He cared for them perhaps too 
 much ; I, probably, too little. However, I had my 
 own fancies as well as he. I liked, for instance, to 
 see M. Emanuel jealous; it lit up his nature, and 
 woke his spirit; it threw all sorts of queer lights 
 
THE LONG- VACATION. 305 
 
 and shadows over his dun face, and into his violet- 
 azure eyes (he used to say that his black hair and 
 blue eyes were "une de ses beautes"). There was 
 a relish in his anger; it was artless, earnest, quite 
 unreasonable, but never hypocritical. I uttered no 
 disclaimer then of the complacency he attributed to 
 me ; I merely asked where the English examination 
 was to come in— whether at the commencement or 
 close of the day ? 
 
 " I hesitate," said he, " whether at the very begin- 
 ning, before many persons are come, and when your 
 aspiring nature will not be gratified by a large 
 audience, or quite at the close, when everybody is 
 tired, and only a jaded and worn-out attention will 
 be at your service." 
 
 " Que vous etes dur, monsieur!" I said, affecting 
 dejection. 
 
 " One ought to be ' dur ' with you. You are 
 one of those beings who must be kept down. I know 
 you ! I know you ! Other people in this house see 
 you pass, and think that a colourless shadow has 
 gone by. As for me, I scrutinized your face once, 
 and it sufficed." 
 
 " You are satisfied that you understand me ? " 
 Without answering directly, he went on, " Were 
 vol. i. x 
 
306 VILLETTE. 
 
 you not gratified when you succeeded in that vaude- 
 ville? I watched you, and saw a passionate ardour 
 for triumph in your physiognomy. "What fire shot 
 into the glance ! Not mere light, but flame : je me 
 tins pour averti." 
 
 " What feeling I had on that occasion, monsieur — 
 and pardon me, if I say, you immensely exaggerate 
 "both its quality and quantity — was quite abstract. 
 I did not care for the vaudeville. I hated the part 
 you assigned me. I had not the slightest sympathy 
 with the audience below the stage. They are good 
 people, doubtless, but do I know them? Are they 
 anything to me ? Can I care for being brought 
 before their view again to-morrow ? Will the exami- 
 nation be anything but a task to me — a task I wish 
 well over ? " 
 
 " Shall I take it out of your hands?" 
 <e With all my heart ; if you do not fear failure." 
 <e But I should fail. I only know three phrases 
 of English, and a few words : par exemple, de sonn, 
 de mone, de stare — est ce bien dit ? My opinion is 
 that it would be better to give up the thing alto- 
 ther : to have no English examination, eh?" 
 " If madame consents ; I consent." 
 "Heartily?" 
 
THE LOXG VACATION. 307 
 
 " Very heartily." 
 
 He smoked his cigar in silence. He turned 
 suddenly. 
 
 " Donnez--moi la main," said he, and the spite and 
 jealousy melted out of his face, and a generous kind- 
 liness shone there instead. 
 
 " Come, we will not be rivals, we will be friends ;" 
 he pursued. " The examination shall take place, 
 and I will choose a good moment ; and instead of 
 vexing and hindering, as I felt half inclined ten 
 minutes ago — for I have my malevolent moods : I 
 always had, from childhood — I will aid you sincerely. 
 After all, you are solitary and a stranger, and have 
 your way to make and your bread to earn ; it may 
 be well that you should become known. We will 
 befriends: do you agree?" 
 
 " Out of my heart, monsieur. I am glad of a 
 friend. I like that better than a triumph." 
 
 " Pauvrette ! " said he, and turned away and left 
 the alley. 
 
 The examination passed over well ; M. Paul was 
 as good as his word, and did his best to make my 
 part easy. The next day came the distribution of 
 prizes ; that also passed ; the school broke up ; the 
 pupils went home, and now began the long vacation. 
 
308 VILLETTE. 
 
 That vacation ! Shall I ever forget it ? I think 
 not. Madame Beck went, the first day of the 
 holidays, to join her children at the sea-side ; all 
 the three teachers had parents or friends with 
 whom they took refuge ; every professor quitted 
 the city ; some went to Paris, some to Bouemarine ; 
 M. Paul set forth on a pilgrimage to Rome ; the 
 house was left quite empty, but for me, a servant, 
 and a poor deformed and imbecile pupil, a sort of 
 cretin whom her stepmother in a distant province 
 would not allow to return home. 
 
 My heart almost died within me ; miserable long- 
 ings strained its chords. How long were the Sep- 
 tember days ! How silent, how lifeless ! How vast 
 and void seemed the desolate premises ! How 
 gloomy the forsaken garden — gray now with the 
 dust of a town-summer departed. Looking forward 
 at the commencement of those eight weeks, I hardly 
 knew how I was to live to the end. My spirits had 
 long been gradually sinking ; now that the prop of 
 employment was withdrawn, they went down fast. 
 Even to look forward was not to hope : the dumb 
 future spoke no comfort, offered no promise, gave 
 no inducement to bear present evil in reliance on 
 future good. A sorrowful indifference to existence 
 
THE LONG VACATION. 309 
 
 often pressed on me — a despairing resignation to 
 reach betimes the end of all things earthly. Alas ! 
 When I had full leisure to look on life as life must 
 be looked on by such as me, I found it but a 
 hopeless desert: tawny sands, with no green field, 
 no palm-tree, no well in view. The hopes which 
 are dear to youth, which bear it up and lead it on, 
 I knew not and dared not know. If they knocked 
 at my heart sometimes, an inhospitable bar to admis- 
 sion must be inwardly drawn. When they turned 
 away thus rejected, tears sad enough sometimes 
 flowed ; but it could not be helped : I dared not 
 give such guests lodging. So mortally did I fear the 
 sin and weakness of presumption. 
 
 Religious reader, you will preach to me a long 
 sermon about what I have just written, and so will 
 you, moralist ; and you, stern sage : you, stoic, will 
 frown ; you, cynic, sneer ; you, epicure, laugh. 
 Well, each and all, take it your own way. I ac- 
 cept the sermon, frown, sneer and laugh; perhaps 
 you are all right: and perhaps, circumstanced like 
 me, you would have been, like me, wrong. The 
 first month was, indeed, a long, black, heavy month 
 to me. 
 
 The cretin did not seem unhappy. I did my best 
 
310 VILLETTE. 
 
 to feed her well and keep her warm, and she only- 
 asked food and sunshine, or when that lacked, fire. 
 Her weak faculties approved of inertion : her brain, 
 her eyes, her ears, her heart slept content ; they could 
 not wake to work, so lethargy was their Paradise. 
 
 Three weeks of that vacation were hot, fair, and 
 dry, but the fourth and fifth were tempestuous and 
 wet. I do not know why that change in the atmo- 
 sphere made a cruel impression on me, why the 
 raging storm and beating rain crushed me with 
 a deadlier paralysis than I had experienced while 
 the air remained serene : but so it was ; and my 
 nervous system could hardly support what it had 
 for many days and nights to undergo in that huge, 
 empty house. How I used to pray to Heaven for 
 consolation and support ! With what dread force 
 the conviction would grasp me that Fate was my 
 permanent foe, never to be conciliated. I did not, 
 in my heart, arraign the mercy or justice of God for 
 this ; I concluded it to be a part of his great plan 
 that some must deeply suffer while they live, and 
 I thrilled in the certainty that of this number, I was 
 one. 
 
 It was some relief when an aunt of the cretin, a 
 kind old woman, came one day, and took away my 
 
THE LONG VACATION. 311 
 
 strange, deformed companion. The hapless creature 
 had been at times a heavy charge ; I could not take 
 her out beyond the garden, and I could not leave 
 her a minute alone ; for her poor mind, like her body, 
 was warped : its propensity was to evil. A vague 
 bent to mischief, an aimless malevolence made con- 
 stant vigilance indispensable. As she very rarely 
 spoke, and would sit for hours together moping and 
 mowing and distorting her features with indescribable 
 grimaces, it was more like being prisoned with some 
 strange tameless animal, than associating with a 
 human being. Then there were personal attentions 
 to be rendered which required the nerve of a hos- 
 pital nurse ; my resolution was so tried, it sometimes 
 fell dead-sick. These duties should not have fallen 
 on me ; a servant, now absent, had rendered them 
 hitherto, and in the hurry of holiday departure, no 
 substitute to fill this office had been provided. This 
 tax and trial were by no means the least I have 
 known in life. Still, menial and distasteful as they 
 were, my mental pain was far more wasting and 
 wearing. Attendance on the cretin deprived me 
 often of the power and inclination to swallow a meal, 
 and sent me faint to the fresh air, and the well or 
 fountain in the court ; but this duty never wrung my 
 
312 VILLETTE. 
 
 heart, or brimmed my eyes, or scalded my cheek with 
 tears hot as molten metal. 
 
 The cretin being gone, I was free to walk out. 
 At first I lacked courage to venture very far from 
 the Rue Fossette, but by degrees I sought the city- 
 gates, and passed them, and then went wandering 
 away far along chaussees, through fields, beyond 
 cemeteries, Catholic and Protestant, beyond farm-- 
 steads, to lanes and little woods, and I know not 
 where. A goad thrust me on, a fever forbade me to 
 rest ; a want of companionship maintained in my 
 soul the cravings of a most deadly famine. I often 
 walked all day, through the burning noon and the 
 arid afternoon, and the dusk evening, and came back 
 with moonrise. 
 
 "While wandering in solitude, I would sometimes 
 picture the present probable position of others, my 
 acquaintance. There was Madame Beck at a cheer- 
 ful watering-place with her children, her mother, and 
 a whole troop of friends who had sought the same 
 scene of relaxation. Zelie St. Pierre was at Paris, 
 with her relatives ; the other teachers were at their 
 homes. There was Grinevra Fanshawe whom certain 
 of her connections had carried on a pleasant tour 
 southward. Ginevra seemed to me the happiest. 
 
THE LONG VACATION. 313 
 
 She was on the route of beautiful scenery ; these 
 September suns shone for her on fertile plains, where 
 harvest and vintage matured under their mellow 
 beam. These gold and crystal moons rose on her 
 vision over blue horizons waved in mountain lines. 
 
 But all this was nothing ; I too felt those autumn 
 suns and saw those harvest moons, and I almost 
 wished to be covered in with earth and turf, deep 
 out of their influence ; for I could not live in their 
 light, nor make them comrades, nor yield them 
 affection. But Ginevra had a kind of spirit with 
 her, empowered to give constant strength and com- 
 fort, to gladden daylight and embalm darkness; 
 the best of the good genii that guard humanity 
 curtained her with his wings, and canopied her 
 head with his bending form. By True Love was 
 Ginevra followed : never could she be alone. "Was 
 she insensible to this presence ? It seemed to me 
 impossible: I could not realize such deadness. I 
 imagined her grateful in secret, loving now with 
 reserve ; but purposing one day to show how much 
 she loved : I pictured her faithful hero half con- 
 scious of her coy fondness, and comforted by that 
 consciousness : I conceived an electric chord of sym- 
 pathy between them, a fine chain of mutual under- 
 
314 VILLETTE. 
 
 standing, sustaining union through a separation of 
 a hundred leagues — carrying, across mound and 
 hollow, communication by prayer and wish. Ginevra 
 gradually became with me a sort of heroine. One 
 day, perceiving this growing illusion, I said, " I 
 really believe my nerves are getting overstretched : 
 my mind has suffered somewhat too much; a 
 malady is growing upon it — what shall I do ? How 
 shall I keep well ? " 
 
 Indeed there was no way to keep well under the 
 circumstances. At last a day and night of pecu- 
 liarly agonizing depression were succeeded by physi- 
 cal illness, I took perforce to my bed. About this 
 time the Indian summer closed and the equinoctial 
 storms began ; and for nine dark and wet days, of 
 which the Hours rushed on all turbulent, deaf, 
 dishevelled — bewildered with sounding hurricane — 
 I lay in a strange fever of the nerves and blood. 
 Sleep went quite away. I used to rise in the night, 
 look round for her, beseech her earnestly to re- 
 turn. A rattle of the window, a cry of the blast 
 only replied — Sleep never came ! 
 
 I err. She came once, but in anger. Impatient 
 of my importunity she brought with her an aveng- 
 ing dream. By the clock of St. Jean Baptiste, 
 
THE LONG- VACATION. 315 
 
 that dream remained scarce fifteen minutes — a brief 
 space, but sufficing to wring my whole frame with 
 unknown anguish ; to confer a nameless experience 
 that had the hue, the mien, the terror, the very- 
 tone of a visitation from eternity. Between twelve 
 and one that night a cup was forced to my lips, 
 black, strong, strange, drawn from no well, but 
 filled up seething from a bottomless and boundless 
 sea. Suffering, brewed in temporal or calculable 
 measure, and mixed for mortal lips, tastes not as 
 this suffering tasted. Having drank and woke, I 
 thought all was over: the end come and past by. 
 Trembling fearfully — as consciousness returned — 
 ready to cry out on some fellow-creature to help 
 me, only that I knew no fellow-creature was near 
 enough to catch the wild summons — Goton in her 
 far distant attic could not hear — I rose on my knees 
 in bed. Some fearful hours went over me : inde- 
 scribably was I torn, racked and oppressed in mind. 
 Amidst the horrors of that dream I think the worst 
 lay here. Methought the well-loved dead, who had 
 loved me well in life, met me elsewhere, alienated : 
 galled was my inmost spirit with an unutterable 
 sense of despair about the future. Motive there 
 was none why I should try to recover or wish to 
 
316 VILLETTE. 
 
 live; and yet quite unendurable was the pitiless 
 and haughty voice in which Death challenged me 
 to engage his unknown terrors. When I tried to 
 pray I could only utter these words : — 
 
 " From my youth up Thy terrors have I suf- 
 fered with a troubled mind." 
 
 Most true was it. 
 
 On bringing me my tea next morning Goton 
 urged me to call in a doctor. I would not : I 
 thought no doctor could cure me. 
 
 One evening — and I was not delirious : I was in 
 my sane mind, I got up — I dressed myself, weak 
 and shaking. The solitude and the stillness of the 
 long dormitory could not be borne any longer ; the 
 ghastly white beds were turning into spectres — the 
 coronal of each became a death's head, huge and 
 sun-bleached— dead dreams of an elder world and 
 mightier race lay frozen in their wide gaping eye- 
 holes. That evening more firmly than ever fastened 
 into my soul the conviction that Fate was of stone, 
 and Hope a false idol — blind, bloodless, and of gra- 
 nite core. I felt, too, that the trial God had ap- 
 pointed me was gaining its climax, and must now be 
 turned by my own hands, hot, feeble, trembling as 
 they were. It rained still, and blew ; but with more 
 
THE LONG VACATION. 317 
 
 clemency, I thought, than it had poured and raged 
 all day. Twilight was falling, and I deemed its 
 influence pitiful ; from the lattice I saAV coming 
 night-clouds trailing low like banners drooping. It 
 seemed to me that at this hour there was affection 
 and sorrow in Heaven above for all pain suffered on 
 earth beneath ; the weight of my dreadful dream be- 
 came alleviated — that insufferable thought of being 
 no more loved, no more owned, half-yielded to hope 
 of the contrary — I was sure this hope would shine 
 clearer if I got out from under this house-roof, 
 which was crushing as the slab of a tomb, and went 
 outside the city to a certain quiet hill, a long way 
 distant in the fields. Covered with a cloak (I could 
 not be delirious, for I had sense and recollection to 
 put on warm clothing), forth I set. The bells of a 
 church arrested me in passing ; they seemed to call 
 me in to the salut, and I went in. Any solemn rite, 
 any spectacle of sincere worship, any opening for 
 appeal to God was as welcome to me then as bread 
 to one in extremity of want. I knelt down with 
 others on the stone pavement. It was an old solemn 
 church, its pervading gloom not gilded but purpled 
 by light shed through stained glass. 
 Few worshippers were assembled, and, the salut over 
 
318 VILLETTE. 
 
 half of them departed. I discovered soon that those 
 left, remained to confess. I did not stir. Carefully 
 every door of the church was shut ; a holy quiet sank 
 upon, and a solemn shade gathered about us. After 
 a space, breathless and spent in prayer, a penitent 
 approached the confessional. I watched. She whis- 
 pered her avowal; her shrift was whispered back; she 
 returned consoled. Another went, and another. A 
 pale lady, kneeling near me, said in a low, kind voice : — 
 
 " Go you, now ; I am not quite prepared." 
 
 Mechanically obedient, I rose and went. I knew 
 what I was about ; my mind had run over the intent 
 with lightning-speed. To take this step could not 
 make me more wretched than I was ; it might soothe 
 me. 
 
 The priest within the confessional never turned 
 his eyes to regard me ; he only quietly inclined his 
 ear to my lips. He might be a good man, but this 
 duty had become to him a sort of form : he went 
 through it with the phlegm of custom. I hesitated ; 
 of the formula of confession, I was ignorant : instead 
 of commencing them with the prelude usual, I said: — 
 
 " Mon pere, je suis Protestante." 
 
 He directly turned. He was not a native priest ; 
 of that class, the cast of physiognomy is, almost 
 
THE LONG VACATION. 319 
 
 invariably, grovelling : I saw by his profile and 
 brow he was a Frenchman ; though gray and ad- 
 vanced in years, he did not, I think, lack either 
 feeling or intelligence. He inquired, not unkindly, 
 why, being a Protestant, I came to him ? 
 
 I said, I was perishing for a word of advice or 
 an accent of comfort. I had been living for some 
 weeks quite alone ; I had been ill ; I had a pressure 
 of affliction on my mind of which it would hardly 
 any longer endure the weight. 
 
 "Was it a sin, a crime?" he inquired, somewhat 
 startled. 
 
 I reassured him on this point, and, as well as I 
 could, I showed him the mere outline of my ex- 
 perience. 
 
 He looked thoughtful, surprised, puzzled. " You 
 take me unawares," said he. " I have not had such a 
 case as yours before : ordinarily we know our routine 
 and are prepared, but this makes a great break 
 in the common course of confession. I am hardly 
 furnished with counsel fitting the circumstances." 
 
 Of course, I had not expected he would be ; but 
 the mere relief of communication in an ear which 
 was human and sentient, yet consecrated — the mere 
 j)ouring out of some portion of long accumulating, 
 
320 VILLETTE. 
 
 long pent-up pain into a vessel whence it could not 
 be again diffused — had done me good. I was already- 
 solaced. 
 
 " Must I go, father ? " I asked of him, as he sat 
 silent. 
 
 " My daughter," he said kindly — and I am sure he 
 was a kind man : he had a compassionate eye — " for 
 the present you had better go; but I assure you 
 your words have struck me. Confession, like other 
 things, is apt to become formal and trivial with 
 habit. You have come and poured your heart out ; 
 a thing seldom done. I would fain think your case 
 over, and take it with me to my oratory. Were 
 you of our faith I should know what to say — a 
 mind so tossed can find repose but in the bosom 
 of retreat, and the punctual practice of piety. The 
 world, it is well known, has no satisfaction for that 
 class of natures. Holy men have bidden penitents 
 like you to hasten their path upward by penance, 
 self-denial, and difficult good works. Tears are given 
 them here for meat and drink — bread of affliction 
 and waters of affliction — their recompense comes 
 hereafter. It is my own conviction that these 
 impressions under which you are smarting are 
 messengers from God to bring you back to the 
 
THE LONG VACATION. 321 
 
 true church. You were made for our faith : depend 
 upon it our faith alone could heal and help you — 
 Protestantism is altogether too dry, cold, prosaic 
 for you. The further I look into this matter, 
 the more plainly I see it is entirely out of the 
 common order of things. On no account would I 
 lose sight of you. Go, my daughter, for the present ; 
 but return to me again." 
 
 I rose and thanked him. I was withdrawing 
 when he signed me to return. 
 
 " You must not come to this church," said he : 
 " I see you are ill, and this church is too cold ; 
 
 you must come to my house : I live ■ " (and he 
 
 gave me his address). " Be there to-morrow morn- 
 ing at ten." 
 
 In reply to this appointment, I only bowed ; and 
 pulling down my veil, and gathering round me my 
 cloak, I glided away. 
 
 Did I, do you suppose, reader, contemplate ven- 
 turing again within that worthy priest's reach ? As 
 soon should I have thought of walking into a 
 Babylonish furnace. That priest had arms which 
 could influence me ; he was naturally kind, with a 
 sentimental French kindness, to whose softness I 
 knew myself not wholly impervious. Without re- 
 
 VOL. I. T 
 
322 VILLETTE. 
 
 specting some sorts of affection, there was hardly 
 any sort, having a fibre of root in reality, which I 
 could rely on my force wholly to withstand. Had I 
 gone to him, he would have shown me all that was 
 tender, and comforting, and gentle, in the honest 
 popish superstition. Then he would have tried to 
 kindle, blow and stir up in me the zeal of good works. 
 I know not how it would all have ended. We all 
 think ourselves strong in some points ; we all know 
 ourselves weak in many; the probabilities are that 
 had I visited Numero 10, Rue des Mages, at the 
 hour and day appointed, I might just now, instead of 
 writing this heretic narrative, be counting my beads 
 in the cell of a certain Carmelite convent on the 
 Boulevard of Crecy in Villette. There was some- 
 thing of Fenelon about that benign old priest ; and 
 whatever most of his brethren may be, and what- 
 ever I may think of his Church and creed (and I 
 like neither), of himself I must ever retain a grate- 
 ful recollection. He was kind when I needed kind- 
 ness ; he did me good. May Heaven bless him ! 
 
 Twilight had passed into night, and the lamps 
 were lit in the streets, ere I issued from that sombre 
 church. To turn back was now become possible to 
 me ; the wild longing to breathe this October wind 
 
THE LONG VACATION. 323 
 
 on the little hill far without the city-walls had 
 ceased to be an imperative impulse, and was softened 
 into a wish with which Reason could cope : she put 
 it down, and I turned, as I thought, to the Rue 
 Fossette. But I had become involved in a part of 
 the city with which I was not familiar; it was the 
 old part, and full of narrow streets of picturesque, 
 ancient, and mouldering houses. I was much too 
 weak to be very collected, and I was still too care- 
 less of my own welfare and safety, to be cautious. 
 I grew embarrassed ; I got immeshed in a net-work 
 of turns unknown. I was lost, and had no resolu- 
 tion to ask guidance of any passenger. 
 
 If the storm had lulled a little at sunset, it made 
 up now for lost time. Strong and horizontal thun- 
 dered the current of the wind from north-west to 
 south-east ; it brought rain like spray, and some- 
 times, a sharp hail like shot ; it was cold and pierced 
 me to the vitals. I bent my head to meet it, but it 
 beat me back. My heart did not fail at all in this 
 conflict ; I only wished that I had wings and could 
 ascend the gale, spread and repose my pinions on its 
 strength, career in its course, sweep where it swept. 
 While wishing this, I suddenly felt colder where 
 before I was cold, and more powerless where before 
 
324 VILLETTE. 
 
 I was weak. I tried to reach the porch of a great 
 building near, but the mass of frontage and the 
 giant-spire turned black and vanished from my eyes. 
 Instead of sinking on the steps as I intended, I 
 seemed to pitch headlong down an abyss. I re- 
 member no more. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 London : Printed by Stewart and Murray, Old Bailey. 
 
January 1853. 
 
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vl &-^^ a^&d^T^L, 
 
VILLETTE. 
 
 By CUREEB BELL, 
 
 AUTHOR OF " JANE EYRE," " SHIRLEY," ETC. 
 
 IN THKEE VOLUMES. 
 
 YOL. II. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 SMITH, ELDER & CO., 65, CORNHILL. 
 
 SMITH, TAYLOE & CO., BOMBAY. 
 
 1853. 
 
 The Author of this work reserves the right of translating it. 
 
London : 
 
 Printed by Stewart and Musbat, 
 
 Old Bailey. 
 
CONTENTS OF YOL. II. 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 XVII. — Auld Lang Syne 1 
 
 XVLTI.— La Tebrasse 29 
 
 XIX. — We quarrel . . . . . .47 
 
 XX. — The Cleopatra 61 
 
 XXL— The Concert 85 
 
 XXII.— Reaction 126 
 
 XXUL— The Letter 160 
 
 XXIV.— Vashti 179 
 
 XXV. — M. de Bassompierre .... 205 
 
 XXVI.— The Little Countess .... 232 
 
 XXVTL— A Burial 259 
 
 XXVUI.— The Hotel Crect . • ... 288 
 
 
VILLETTE. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 AULD LANG SYNE. 
 
 Where my soul went during that swoon I 
 cannot tell. Whatever she saw, or wherever she 
 travelled in her trance on that strange night, she 
 kept her own secret; never whispering a word to 
 Memory, and baffling Imagination by an indis- 
 soluble silence. She may have gone upward, and 
 come in sight of her eternal home, hoping for leave 
 to rest now, and deeming that her painful union 
 with matter was at last dissolved. While she so 
 deemed, an angel may have warned her away from 
 heaven's threshold, and, guiding her weeping down, 
 have bound her, once more, all shuddering and 
 unwilling, to that poor frame, cold and wasted, of 
 
 VOL. II. B 
 
VILLETTE. 
 
 whose companionsliip she was grown more than 
 weary. 
 
 I know she re-entered her prison with pain, with 
 reluctance, with a moan and a long shiver. The 
 divorced mates, Spirit and Substance, were hard to 
 re-unite : they greeted each other, not in an embrace, 
 but a racking sort of struggle. The returning sense 
 of sight came upon me, red, as if it swam in blood ; 
 suspended hearing rushed back loud, like thunder ; 
 consciousness revived in fear: I sat up appalled, 
 wondering into what region, amongst what strange 
 beings I was waking. At first I knew nothing 
 I looked on: a wall was not a wall — a lamp not 
 a lamp. I should have understood what we call 
 a ghost, as well as I did the commonest object; 
 which is another way of intimating that all my eye 
 rested on struck it as spectral. But the faculties 
 soon settled each in its place ; the life-machine 
 presently resumed its wonted and regular working. 
 
 Still, I knew not where I was ; only in time 
 I saw I had been removed from the spot where 
 I fell : I lay on no portico-step ; night and 
 tempest were excluded by walls, windows, and 
 ceiling. Into some house I had been carried, — but 
 what house ? 
 
AUI>D LANG SYNE. 6 
 
 I could only think of the pensionnat in the Rue 
 Fossette. Still half-dreaming, I tried hard to dis- 
 cover in what room they had put me ; whether the 
 great dormitory, or one of the little dormitories. 
 I was puzzled, because I could not make the 
 glimpses of furniture I saw, accord with my know- 
 ledge of any of these apartments. The empty white 
 beds were wanting, and the long line of large 
 windows. " Surely," thought I, " it is not to 
 Madame Beck's own chamber they have carried 
 me ! " And here my eye fell on an easy chair 
 covered with blue damask. Other seats, cushioned 
 to match, dawned on me by degrees ; and at last 
 I took in the complete fact of a pleasant parlour, 
 with a wood-fire on a clear-shining hearth, a carpet 
 where arabesques of bright blue relieved a ground 
 of shaded fawn ; pale walls over which a slight but 
 endless garland of azure forget-me-nots ran mazed 
 and bewildered amongst myriad gold leaves and 
 tendrils. A gilded mirror filled up the space 
 between two windows, curtained amply with blue 
 damask. In this mirror I saw myself laid, not in 
 bed, but on a sofa. I looked spectral ; my eyes 
 larger and more hollow, my hair darker than was 
 natural, by contrast with my thin and ashen face. 
 
4 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 It was obvious, not only from the furniture, but 
 from the position of windows, doors, and fire-place, 
 that this was an unknown room in an unknown 
 house. 
 
 Hardly less plain was it that my brain was not 
 yet settled ; for, as I gazed at the blue arm-chair, 
 it appeared to grow familiar ; so did a certain 
 scroll-couch, and not less so the round centre-table, 
 with a blue covering, bordered with autumn-tinted 
 foliage ; and, above all, two little footstools with 
 worked covers, and a small ebony-framed chair* 
 of which the seat and back were also worked with 
 groups of brilliant flowers on a dark ground. 
 
 Struck with these things, I explored further. 
 Strange to say, old acquaintance were all about 
 me, and " auld lang syne " smiled out of every nook. 
 There were two oval miniatures over the mantel- 
 piece, of which I knew by heart the pearls about 
 the high and powdered "heads;" the velvets circling 
 the white throats ; the swell of the full muslin ker- 
 chiefs ; the pattern of the lace sleeve-ruffles. Upon 
 the mantel-shelf there were two china vases, some 
 relics of a diminutive tea-service, as smooth as 
 enamel and as thin as egg-shell, and a white 
 centre-ornament, a classic group in alabaster, pre- 
 
AULD LANG SYNE. 
 
 served under glass. Of all these things I could 
 have told the peculiarities, numbered the flaws or 
 cracks, like any clairvoyante. Above all, there was 
 a pair of handscreens, with elaborate pencil-draw- 
 ings finished like line-engravings ; these, my very 
 eyes ached at beholding again, recalling hours when 
 they had followed, stroke by stroke and touch by 
 touch, a tedious, feeble, finical, school-girl pencil 
 held in these fingers, now so skeleton-like. 
 
 Where was I? Not only in what spot of the 
 world, but in what year of our Lord ? For all these 
 objects were of past days, and of a distant country. 
 Ten years ago I bade them good by ; since my 
 fourteenth year they and I had never met. I gasped 
 audibly, "Where ami?" 
 
 A shape hitherto unnoticed, stirred, rose, came 
 forward ; a shape inharmonious with the environ- 
 ment, serving only to complicate the riddle further. 
 This was no more than a sort of native bonne, in 
 a common-place bonne's cap and print-dress. She 
 spoke neither French nor English, and I could get 
 no intelligence from her, not understanding her 
 phrases of dialect. But she bathed my temples and 
 forehead with some cool and perfumed water, and 
 then she heightened the cushion on which I reclined, 
 
VILLETTE. 
 
 made signs that I was not to speak, and resumed 
 her post at the foot of the sofa. 
 
 She was busy knitting ; her eyes thus drawn from 
 me, I could gaze on her without interruption. I did 
 mightily wonder how she came there, or what she 
 could have to do among the scenes, or with the days 
 of my girlhood. Still more I marvelled what those 
 scenes and days could now have to do with me. 
 
 Too weak to scrutinize thoroughly the mystery, I 
 tried to settle it by saying it was a mistake, a dream, 
 a fever-fit ; and yet I knew there could be no mis- 
 take, and that I was not sleeping, and I believed I 
 was sane. I wished the room had not been so well 
 lighted, that I might not so clearly have seen the 
 little pictures, the ornaments, the screens, the worked 
 chair. All these objects, as well as the blue-damask 
 furniture, were, in fact, precisely the same, in every 
 minutest detail, with those I so well remembered, and 
 with which I had been so thoroughly intimate, in the 
 drawing-room of my godmother's house at Bretton. 
 Methought the apartment only was changed, being 
 of different proportions and dimensions. 
 
 I thought of Bedreddin Hassan, transported in his 
 sleep from Cairo to the gates of Damascus. Had a 
 Genius stooped his dark wing down the storm to 
 
AULD LANG SYNE. 7 
 
 whose stress I had succumbed, and gathering- me 
 from the church-steps, and "rising high into the 
 air," as the eastern tale said, had he borne me over 
 land and ocean, and laid me quietly down beside a 
 hearth of Old England ? But no ; I knew the fire 
 of that hearth burned before its Lares no more — it 
 went out long ago, and the household gods had been 
 carried elsewhere. 
 
 The bonne turned again to survey me, and seeing 
 my eyes wide open, and, I suppose, deeming their 
 expression perturbed and excited, she put down her 
 knitting. I saw her busied for a moment at a little 
 stand; she poured out water, and measured drops 
 from a phial : glass in hand, she approached me. 
 What dark-tinged draught might she now be offer- 
 ing ? what Genii-elixir or Magi-distillation ? 
 
 It was too late to inquire — I had swallowed it pas- 
 sively, and at once. A tide of quiet thought now 
 came gently caressing my brain ; softer and softer 
 rose the flow, with tepid undulations smoother than 
 balm. The pain of weakness left my limbs, my 
 muscles slept. I lost power to move ; but, losing at 
 the same time wish, it was no privation. That kind 
 bonne placed a screen between me and the lamp ; I 
 saw her rise to do this, but do not remember seeing 
 
8 VILLETTE. 
 
 her resume her place : in the interval between the 
 two acts, I " fell on sleep." 
 
 At waking, lo ! all was again changed. The light 
 of high day surrounded me ; not, indeed, a warm, 
 summer light, but the leaden gloom of raw and 
 blustering autumn. I felt sure now that I was in 
 the pensionnat — sure by the beating rain on the 
 casement ; sure by the " wuther " of wind amongst 
 trees, denoting a garden outside ; sure by the chill, 
 the whiteness, the solitude, amidst which I lay. I 
 say whiteness — for the dimity curtains, dropped before 
 a French bed, bounded my view. 
 
 I lifted them ; I looked out. My eye, prepared to 
 take in the range of a long, large, and white-washed 
 chamber, blinked baffled, on encountering the limited 
 area of a small cabinet — a cabinet with sea-green 
 walls ; also, instead of five wide and naked windows, 
 there was one high lattice, shaded with muslin fes- 
 toons : instead of two dozen little stands of painted 
 wood, each holding a basin and an ewer, there was a 
 toilette table dressed, like a lady for a ball, in a 
 white robe over a pink skirt ; a polished and large 
 glass crowned, and a pretty pincushion frilled with 
 
AULD LANG SYNE. 9 
 
 lace adorned it. This toilette, together with a small, 
 low, green and white chintz arm-chair, a wash-stand 
 topped with a marble slab, and supplied with utensils 
 of pale-green ware, sufficiently furnished the tiny- 
 chamber. 
 
 Reader, I felt alarmed ! Why ? you will ask. 
 What was there in this simple and somewhat pretty 
 sleeping-closet to startle the most timid? Merely 
 this — These articles of furniture could not be real, 
 solid arm-chairs, looking-glasses, and wash-stands — 
 they must be the ghosts of such articles ; or, if this 
 were denied as too wild an hypothesis — and, con- 
 founded as I was, I did deny it — there remained but 
 to conclude that I had myself passed into an abnor- 
 mal state of mind ; in short, that I was very ill and 
 delirious : and even then, mine was the strangest 
 figment with which delirium had ever harassed a 
 victim. 
 
 I knew — I was obliged to know — the green chintz 
 of that little chair; the little snug chair itself, the 
 carved, shining-black, foliated frame of that glass ; 
 the smooth, milky-green of the china vessels on the 
 stand ; the very stand too, with its top of gray mar- 
 ble, splintered at one corner ; — all these I was com- 
 pelled to recognize and to hail, as last night I had, 
 
10 VILLETTE. 
 
 perforce, recognized and hailed the rosewood, the 
 drapery, the porcelain, of the drawing-room. 
 
 Bretton ! Bretton ! and ten years ago shone re- 
 flected in that mirror. And why did Bretton and 
 my fourteenth year haunt me thus ? Why, if they 
 came at all, did they not return complete? Why 
 hovered before my distempered vision the mere fur- 
 niture, while the rooms and the locality were gone? 
 As to that pin-cushion made of crimson satin, orna- 
 mented with gold beads and frilled with thread-lace, 
 I had the same right to know it as to know the 
 screens — I had made it myself. Rising with a 
 start from the bed, I took the cushion in my hand 
 and examined it. There was the cipher " L. L. B." 
 formed in gold beads, and surrounded with an 
 oval wreath embroidered in white silk. These 
 were the initials of my godmother's name — Louisa 
 Lucy Bretton. 
 
 Am I in England? Am I at Bretton? I muttered ; 
 and hastily pulling up the blind with which the lattice 
 was shrouded, I looked out to try and discover where 
 I was ; half-prepared to meet the calm, old, handsome 
 buildings and clean gray pavement of St. Ann's 
 Street, and to see at the end, the towers of the 
 minster : or, if otherwise, fully expectant of a town 
 
AULD LxlNG SYNE. 11 
 
 view somewhere, a rue in Villette, if not a street in 
 a pleasant and ancient English city. 
 
 I looked, on the contrary, through a frame of 
 leafage, clustering round the high lattice, and forth 
 thence to a grassy mead-like level, a lawn-terrace 
 with trees rising from the lower ground beyond — 
 high forest-trees, such as I had not seen for many a 
 day. They were now groaning under the gale of 
 October, and between their trunks I traced the line 
 of an avenue, where yellow leaves lay in heaps and 
 drifts, or were whirled singly before the sweeping 
 west wind. Whatever landscape might lie further 
 must have been flat, and these tall beeches shut it 
 out. The place seemed secluded, and was to me 
 quite strange : I did not know it at all. 
 
 Once more I lay down. My bed stood in a little 
 alcove; on turning my face to the wall, the room 
 with its bewildering accompaniments became ex- 
 cluded. Excluded ? No ! For as I arranged my 
 position in this hope, behold, on the green space 
 between the divided and looped-up curtains, hung a 
 broad, gilded picture-frame enclosing a portrait. It 
 was drawn — well drawn, though but a sketch— in 
 water-colours ; a head, a boy's head, fresh, life-like, 
 speaking, and animated. It seemed a youth of 
 
12 VILLETTE. 
 
 sixteen, fair-complexioned, with sanguine health in 
 his cheek; hair long, not dark, and with a sunny 
 sheen ; penetrating eyes, an arch mouth, and a gay 
 smile. On the whole a most pleasant face to look 
 at, especially for those claiming a right to that 
 youth's affection — parents, for instance, or sisters. 
 Any romantic little school-girl might almost have 
 loved it in its frame. Those eyes looked as if when 
 somewhat older they would flash a lightning response 
 to love : I cannot tell whether they kept in store 
 the steady-beaming shine of faith. For whatever 
 sentiment met him in form too facile, his lips 
 menaced, beautifully but surely, caprice and light 
 esteem. 
 
 Striving to take each new discovery as quietly as 
 I could, I whispered to myself — 
 
 " Ah ! that portrait used to hang in the breakfast- 
 room, over the mantel-piece : somewhat too high, as 
 I thought. I well remember how I used to mount 
 a music-stool for the purpose of unhooking it, hold- 
 ing it in my hand, and searching into those bonny 
 wells of eyes, whose glance under their hazel lashes 
 seemed like a pencilled laugh ; and well I liked to 
 note the colouring of the cheek, and the expression 
 of the mouth." I hardly believed fancy could ini- 
 
AULD LANG SYNE. 13 
 
 prove on the curve of that mouth, or of the chin ; 
 even my ignorance knew that both were beautiful, 
 and pondered, perplexed over this doubt: "How it 
 was that what charmed so much, could at the same 
 time so keenly pain?" Once, byway of test, I took 
 little Missy Home, and, lifting her in my arms, told 
 her to look at the picture. 
 
 " Do you like it, Polly ? " I asked. She never 
 answered, but gazed long, and at last a darkness 
 went trembling through her sensitive eye, as she said, 
 " Put me down." So I put her down, saying to 
 myself: " The child feels it too." 
 
 All these things did I now think over, adding, 
 " He had his faults, yet scarce ever was a finer 
 nature; liberal, suave, impressible." My reflec- 
 tions closed in an audibly pronounced word, 
 " Graham!" 
 
 " Graham!" echoed a sudden voice at the bedside. 
 " Do you want Graham?" 
 
 I looked. The plot was but thickening; the 
 wonder but culminating. If it was strange to see 
 that well-remembered pictured form on the wall, 
 still stranger was it to turn and behold the equally 
 well-remembered living form opposite— a woman, a 
 lady, most real and substantial, tall, well-attired, 
 
14 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 wearing widow's silk, and such a cap as best became 
 her matron and motherly braids of hair. Hers, too, 
 was a good face ; too marked, perhaps, now for 
 beauty, but not for sense or character. She was 
 little changed; something sterner, something more 
 robust — but she was my godmother : still the dis- 
 tinct vision of Mrs. Bretton. 
 
 I kept quiet, yet internally I was much agitated : 
 my pulse fluttered, and the blood left my cheek, 
 which turned cold. 
 
 " Madam, where am I ? " I inquired. 
 
 " In a very safe asylum ; well protected for the 
 present: make your mind quite easy till you get a 
 little better; you look ill this morning." 
 
 " I am so entirely bewildered, I do not know 
 whether I can trust my senses at all, or whether 
 they are misleading me in every particular: but you 
 speak English, do you not, madam?" 
 
 " I should think you might hear that : it would 
 puzzle me to hold a long discourse in French." 
 
 " You do not come from England?" 
 
 " I am lately arrived thence. Have you been 
 long in this country? You seem to know my son?" 
 
 " Do I, madam ? Perhaps I do. Your son — 
 the picture there?" 
 
AULD LANG SYNE. 15 
 
 " That is his portrait as a youth. While looking 
 at it, you pronounced his name." 
 
 "Graham Bretton?" 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 " I speak to Mrs. Bretton, formerly of Bretton, 
 shire?" 
 
 " Quite right ; and you, I am told, are an 
 English teacher in a foreign chool here : my son 
 recognized you as such." 
 
 " How was I found, madam, and by whom ?" 
 
 " My son shall tell you that by-and-by," said she ; 
 " but at present you are too confused and weak for 
 conversation : try to eat some breakfast, and then 
 sleep." 
 
 Notwithstanding all I had undergone — the bodily 
 fatigue, the perturbation of spirits, the exposure to 
 weather — it seemed that I was better : the fever, the 
 real malady which had oppressed my frame, was 
 abating; for, whereas during the last nine days I 
 had taken no solid food, and suffered from continual 
 thirst, this morning, on breakfast being offered, 
 I experienced a craving for nourishment : an inward 
 faintness which caused me eagerly to taste the tea 
 this lady offered, and to eat the morsel of dry toast 
 she allowed in accompaniment. It was only a 
 
16 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 morsel, but it sufficed ; keeping up my strength till 
 some two or three hours afterwards, when the bonne 
 brought me a little cup of broth and a biscuit. 
 
 As evening began to darken, and the ceaseless 
 blast still blew wild and cold, and the rain streamed 
 on, deluge-like, I grew weary — very weary of my bed. 
 The room, though pretty, was small : I felt it 
 confining ; I longed for a change. The increasing 
 chill and gathering gloom, too, depressed me ; I 
 wanted to see — to feel firelight. Besides, I kept 
 thinking of the son of that tall matron : when 
 should I see him ? Certainly not till I left my room. 
 
 At last the bonne came to make my bed for the 
 night. She prepared to wrap me in a blanket and 
 place me in the little chintz chair; but, declining 
 these attentions, I proceeded to dress myself. The 
 business was just' achieved, and I was sitting down to 
 take breath, when Mrs. Bretton once more appeared. 
 
 " Dressed !" she exclaimed, smiling with that 
 smile I so well knew — a pleasant smile, though not 
 soft; — "You are quite better then? Quite strong 
 —eh? 1 ' 
 
 She spoke to me so much as of old she used to 
 speak that I almost fancied she was beginning to 
 know me. There was the same sort of patronage 
 
AULD LANG SYNE. 17 
 
 in her voice and manner that, as a girl, I had al- 
 ways experienced from her — a patronage I yielded to 
 and even liked ; it was not founded on conventional 
 grounds of superior wealth or station (in the last 
 particular there had never been any inequality ; her 
 degree was mine) but on natural reasons of physical 
 advantage : it was the shelter the tree gives the herb, 
 I put a request without further ceremony. 
 
 " Do let me go down stairs, madam ; I am so 
 cold and dull here." 
 
 " I desire nothing better, if you are strong enough 
 to bear the change," was her reply. " Come then ; 
 here is an arm." And she offered me hers : I 
 took it, and we descended one flight of carpeted 
 steps to a landing where a tall door, standing open, 
 gave admission into the blue damask room. How 
 pleasant it was in its air of perfect domestic comfort ! 
 How warm in its amber lamp-light and vermilion 
 fire-flush ! To render the picture perfect, tea stood 
 ready on the table — an English tea, whereof the 
 whole shining service glanced at me familiarly; 
 from the solid silver urn, of antique pattern, and the 
 massive pot of the same metal, to the thin porcelain 
 cups, dark with purple and gilding. I knew the 
 very seed-cake of peculiar form, baked in a peculiar 
 
 VOL. II. c 
 
18 VILLETTE. 
 
 mould, which always had a place on the tea-table at 
 Bretton. Graham liked it, and there it was as of 
 yore — set before Graham's plate with the silver 
 knife and fork beside it. Graham was then expected 
 to tea : Graham was now, perhaps, in the house ; 
 ere many minutes I might see him, 
 
 " Sit down — sit down," said my conductress, as 
 my step faltered a little in passing to the hearth. 
 She seated me on the sofa, but I soon passed behind 
 it, saying the fire was too hot ; in its shade I found 
 another seat which suited me better. Mrs. Bretton 
 was never wont to make a fuss about any person or 
 anything; without remonstrance she suffered me 
 to have my own way. She made the tea, and she 
 took up the newspaper. I liked to watch every 
 action of my godmother ; all her movements were 
 so young : she must have been now above fifty, yet 
 neither her sinews nor her spirit seemed yet touched 
 by the rust of age. Though portly, she was alert, 
 and though serene, she was at times impetuous — 
 good health and an excellent temperament kept her 
 green as in her spring. 
 
 While she read, I perceived she listened — 
 listened for her son. She wa,s not the woman ever 
 to confess herself uneasy, but there was yet no lull 
 
AULD LANG SYNE. 19 
 
 in the weather, and if Graham were out in 
 that hoarse wind — roaring still unsatisfied — I 
 well knew his mother's heart would he out with 
 him. 
 
 " Ten minutes behind his time," said she, looking 
 at her watch; then, in another minute, a lifting of 
 her eyes from the page, and a slight inclination of 
 her head towards the door, denoted that she heard 
 some sound. Presently her brow cleared; and then 
 even my ear, less practised, caught the iron clash of a 
 gate swung to, steps on gravel, lastly the door-bell. 
 He was come. His mother filled the tea-pot from 
 the urn, she drew nearer the hearth the stuffed and 
 cushioned blue chair — her own chair by right, but 
 I saw there was one who might with impunity 
 usurp it. And when that one came up the stairs — 
 which he soon did, after, I suppose, some such 
 attention to the toilet as the wild and wet nio-ht 
 rendered necessary, and strode straight in — 
 
 "Is it you, Graham?" said his mother, hiding a 
 glad smile and speaking curtly, 
 
 "Who else should it be, mama?" demanded the 
 Unpunctual, possessing himself irreverently of the 
 abdicated throne. 
 
 " Don't you deserve cold tea, for being late?" 
 
20 VILLETTE. 
 
 "I shall not get my deserts, for the urn sings 
 cheerily." 
 
 b Wheel yourself to table, lazy boy : no seat will 
 serve you but mine ; if you had one spark of a sense 
 of propriety, you would always leave that chair for 
 the Old Lady." 
 
 " So I should ; only the dear Old Lady persists in 
 leaving it for me. How is your patient, mama?" 
 
 "Will she come forward and speak for herself?" 
 said Mrs. Bretton, turning to my corner; and at 
 this invitation, forward I came. Graham courte- 
 ously rose up to greet me. He stood tall on the hearth, 
 a figure justifying his mother's unconcealed pride. 
 
 " So you are come down," said he ; " you must 
 be better then — much better. I scarcely expected 
 we should meet thus, or here. I was alarmed last 
 night, and if I had not been forced to hurry away to 
 a dying patient, I certainly would not have left you ; 
 but my mother herself is something of a doctress, 
 and Martha an excellent nurse. I saw the case was 
 a fainting-fit, not necessarily dangerous. What 
 brought it on, I have yet to learn, and all particu- 
 lars; meantime, I trust you really do feel better." 
 
 " Much better," I said calmly. " Much better, I 
 thank you, Dr. John." 
 
AULD LANG SYNE. 21 
 
 For, reader, this tall young- man — this darling 
 son — this host of mine — this Graham Bretton, was 
 Dr. John : he, and no other ; and, what is more, 
 I ascertained this identity scarcely with surprise. 
 What is more, when I heard Graham's step on the 
 stairs, I knew what manner of figure would enter, 
 and for whose aspect to prepare my eyes. The dis- 
 covery was not of to-day, its dawn had penetrated 
 my perceptions long since. Of course I remem- 
 bered young Bretton well ; and though ten years 
 (from sixteen to twenty-six) may greatly change the 
 boy as they mature him to the man, yet they could 
 bring no such utter difference as would suffice wholly 
 to blind my eyes, or baffle my memory. Dr. John 
 Graham Bretton retained still an affinity to the 
 youth of sixteen : he had his eyes ; he had some of 
 his features; to wit, all the excellently-moulded 
 lower half of the face ; I found him out soon. I 
 first recognized him on that occasion, noted several 
 chapters back, when my unguardedly-fixed attention 
 had drawn on me the mortification of an implied re- 
 buke. Subsequent observation confirmed, in every 
 point, that early surmise. I traced in the gesture, 
 the port, and the habits of his manhood, all his boy's 
 promise. I heard in his now deep tones the accent 
 
22 VILLETTE. 
 
 of former clays. Certain turns of phrase, peculiar 
 to him of old, were peculiar to him still; and so was 
 many a trick of eye and lip, many a smile, many a 
 sudden ray levelled from the irid, under his well- 
 charactered brow. 
 
 To say anything on the subject, to hint at my dis- 
 covery, had not suited my habits of thought, or as- 
 similated with my system of feeling. On the con- 
 trary, I had preferred to keep the matter to myself. 
 I liked entering his presence covered with a cloud 
 he had not seen through, while he stood before 
 me under a ray of special illumination, which shone 
 all partial over his head, trembled about his feet, and 
 cast light no farther. 
 
 Well I knew that to him it could make little dif- 
 ference, were I to come forward and announce " This 
 is Lucy Snowe ! " So I kept back in my teacher's 
 place ; and as he never asked my name, so I never 
 gave it. He heard me called " Miss," and " Miss 
 Lucy ; " he never heard the surname, " Snowe." As 
 to spontaneous recognition — though I, perhaps, was 
 still less changed than he — the idea never approached 
 his mind, and why should I suggest it? 
 
 During tea, Dr. John was kind, as it was his na- 
 ture to be.; that meal over, and the tray carried out, 
 
AULD LANG SYNE. 23 
 
 he made a cosy arrangement of the cushions in a 
 corner of the sofa, and obliged me to settle 
 amongst them. He and his mother also drew to 
 the fire, and ere we had sat ten minutes, I caught 
 the eye of the latter fastened steadily upon me. 
 Women are certainly quicker in some things than 
 men. 
 
 " Well," she exclaimed, presently ; "I have seldom 
 seen a stronger likeness ! Graham, have you ob- 
 served it 1 " 
 
 " Observed what ? What ails the Old Lady now? 
 How you stare, mama ! One would think you had 
 an attack of second-sight." 
 
 " Tell me, Graham, of whom does that young lady 
 remind you ? " pointing to me. 
 
 " Mama, you put her out of countenance. I often 
 tell you abruptness is your fault; remember, too, 
 that to you she is a stranger, and does not know 
 your ways." 
 
 " Now, when she looks down ; now, when she 
 turns sideways, who is she like, Graham ? " 
 
 "Indeed, mama, since you propound the riddle, I 
 think you ought to solve it ! " 
 
 " And you have known her some time, you say — 
 ever since you first began to attend the school in the 
 
~4 VILLETTE. 
 
 Rue Fossette ; — yet you never mentioned to me that 
 singular resemblance ! " 
 
 " I could not mention a thing of which I never 
 thought, and which I do not now acknowledge. 
 What can you mean? " 
 
 " Stupid boy ! look at her." 
 
 Graham did look : but this was not to be endured ; 
 I saw how it must end, so I thought it best to antici- 
 pate. 
 
 " Dr. John," I said, " has had so much to do and 
 think of, since he and I shook hands at our last 
 parting in St. Ann's Street, that, while I readily 
 found out Mr. Graham Bretton, some months ago, 
 it never occurred to me as possible that he should 
 recognize Lucy Snowe." 
 
 " Lucy Snowe ! I thought so ! I knew it ! " cried 
 Mrs. Bretton. And she at once stepped across the 
 hearth and kissed me. Some ladies would, perhaps, 
 have made a great bustle upon such a discovery 
 without being particularly glad of it ; but it was not 
 my godmother's habit to make a bustle, and she 
 preferred all sentimental demonstration in bas-relief. 
 So she and I got over the surprise with few words 
 and a single salute ; yet I daresay she was pleased, 
 and I know I was. While we renewed old acquain- 
 
AULD LANG SYNE. 25 
 
 tance, Graham, sitting opposite, silently disposed of 
 his paroxysm of astonishment. 
 
 " Mama calls me a stupid boy, and I think I 
 am so;" at length he said, "for, upon my honour, 
 often as I have seen you, I never once suspected 
 this fact: and yet I perceive it all now. Lucy 
 Snowe ! To be sure ! I recollect her perfectly, and 
 there she sits ; not a doubt of it. But," he added, 
 " you surely have not known me as an old acquain- 
 tance all this time, and never mentioned it ?" 
 
 "That I have," was my answer. 
 
 Dr. John commented not. I supposed he re- 
 garded my silence as eccentric, but he was indulgent 
 in refraining from censure. I dare say, too, he 
 would have deemed it impertinent to have interro- 
 gated me very closely, to have asked me the why and 
 wherefore of my reserve ; and, though he might 
 feel a little curious, the importance of the case was 
 by no means such as to tempt curiosity to infringe 
 on discretion. 
 
 For my part, I just ventured to inquire whether 
 he remembered the circumstance of my once looking 
 at him very fixedly ; for the slight annoyance he had 
 betrayed on that occasion, still lingered sore on my 
 mind. 
 
26 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 "I think I do!" said he: "I think I was even 
 cross with you." 
 
 "You considered me a little bold, perhaps?" I 
 inquired. 
 
 "Not at all. Only, shy and retiring as your 
 general manner was, I wondered what personal or 
 facial enormity in me proved so magnetic to your 
 usually averted eyes." 
 
 " You see how it was, now?" 
 
 " Perfectly." 
 
 And here Mrs. Bretton broke in with many, many 
 questions about past times ; and for her satisfaction I 
 had to recur to gone-by troubles, to explain causes 
 of seeming estrangement, to touch on single-handed 
 conflict with Life, with Death, with Grief, with Fate. 
 Dr. John listened, saying little. He and she then told 
 me of changes they had known: even with them, all 
 had not gone smoothly, and fortune had retrenched 
 her once abundant gifts. But so courageous a mother, 
 with such a champion in her son, was well fitted to 
 fight a good fight with the world, and to prevail 
 ultimately. Dr. John himself was one of those 
 on whose birth benign planets have certainly smiled. 
 Adversity might set against him her most sullen 
 front : he was the man to beat her down with smiles. 
 
AULD LANG SYNE. 
 
 27 
 
 Strong and cheerful, and firm and courteous ; not 
 rash, yet valiant; he was the aspirant to woo Destiny 
 herself, and to win from her stone eye-halls a beam 
 almost loving. 
 
 In the profession he had adopted, his success was 
 now quite decided. Within the last three months, 
 he had taken this house (a small chateau, they told 
 me, about half a league without the Porte de Crecy) ; 
 this country site being chosen for the sake of his 
 mother's health, with which town air did not now 
 agree. Hither he had invited Mrs. Bretton, and 
 she, on leaving England, had brought with her such 
 residue furniture of the former St. Ann's Street man- 
 sion, as she had thought fit to keep unsold. Hence 
 my bewilderment at the phantoms of chairs, and the 
 wraiths of looking glasses, tea urns, and tea cups. 
 
 As the clock struck eleven, Dr. John stopped his 
 mother. 
 
 " Miss Snowe must retire now," he said ; " she is 
 beginning to look very pale. To-morrow I will 
 venture to put some questions respecting the cause 
 of her loss of health. She is much changed indeed, 
 since last July, when I saw her enact with no little 
 spirit, the part of a very killing fine gentleman. 
 As to last night's catastrophe, I am sure thereby 
 
28 VILLETTE. 
 
 hangs a tale, but we will inquire no further this 
 evening. Good night, Miss Lucy." 
 
 And so, he kindly led me to the door, and holding 
 a wax candle, lighted me up the one flight of steps. 
 
 When I had said my prayers, and when I was 
 undressed and laid down, I felt that I still had 
 friends. Friends, not professing vehement attach- 
 ment, not offering the tender solace of well-matched 
 and congenial relationship ; on whom, therefore, but 
 moderate demand of affection was to be made, of 
 whom but moderate expectation formed ; but towards 
 whom, my heart softened instinctively and yearned 
 with an importunate gratitude, which I entreated 
 Reason betimes to check. 
 
 " Do not let me think of them too often, too much 
 too fondly," I implored; " let me be content with a 
 temperate draught of this living stream : let me not 
 run athirst, and apply passionately to its welcome 
 waters : let me not imagine in them a sweeter taste 
 than earth's fountains know. Oh ! would to God ! 
 I may be enabled to feel enough sustained by an 
 occasional, amicable intercourse, rare, brief, un- 
 engrossing and tranquil : quite tranquil ! " 
 
 Still repeating this word, I turned to my pillow ; 
 and, still repeating it, I steeped that pillow with tears. 
 
LA TERRASSE. 29 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 LA TERRASSE. 
 
 These struggles with the natural character, the 
 strong native bent of the heart, may seem futile and 
 fruitless, but in the end they do good. They tend, 
 however slightly, to give the actions, the conduct, 
 that turn which Reason approves, and which 
 Feeling, perhaps, too often opposes : they certainly 
 make a difference in the general tenor of a life, and 
 enable it to be better regulated, more equable, 
 quieter on the surface ; and it is on the surface only 
 the common gaze will fall. As to what lies below, 
 leave that with God. Man, your equal, weak as 
 you, and not fit to be your judge, may be shut out 
 thence : take it to your Maker — show Him the 
 secrets of the spirit He gave — ask Him how you are 
 to bear the pains He has appointed — kneel in His 
 presence, and pray with faith for light in darkness, 
 
30 VILLETTE. 
 
 for strength in piteous weakness, for patience in 
 extreme need. Certainly, at some hour, though 
 perhaps not your hour, the waiting waters will stir ; 
 in some shape, though perhaps not the shape you 
 dreamed, which your heart loved, and for which it 
 bled, the healing herald will descend. The cripple 
 and the blind, and the dumb, and the possessed, will 
 be led to bathe. Herald, come quickly ! Thousands 
 lie round the pool, weeping and despairing, to see 
 it, through slow years, stagnant. Long are the 
 " times " of Heaven : the orbits of angel messengers 
 seem wide to mortal vision ; they may en-ring ages : 
 the cycle of one departure and return may clasp 
 unnumbered generations ; and dust, kindling to 
 brief suffering life, and, through pain, passing back 
 to dust, may meanwhile perish out of memory again, 
 and yet again. To how many maimed and mourn- 
 ing millions is the first and sole angel visitant, him 
 easterns call Azrael. 
 
 I tried to get up next morning, but while I was 
 dressing, and at intervals drinking cold water from 
 the carafe on my washstand, with design to brace up 
 that trembling v.eakness which made dressing so 
 difficult, in came Mrs. Bretton. 
 
 tf Here is an absurdity ! " was her morning accost. 
 
LA TERRASSE. 31 
 
 " Not so," she added, and dealing with me at once 
 in her own brusque, energetic fashion — that fashion 
 which I used formerly to enjoy seeing applied to 
 her son, and by him vigorously resisted — in two 
 minutes she consigned me captive to the French 
 bed. 
 
 " There you lie till afternoon," said she. " My 
 boy left orders before he went out that such should 
 be the case, and I can assure you my son is master 
 and must be obeyed. Presently you shall have 
 breakfast." 
 
 Presently she brought that meal — brought it with 
 her own active hands — not leaving me to servants. 
 She seated herself on the bed while I ate. Now it 
 is not everybody, even amongst our respected 
 friends and esteemed acquaintance, whom we like 
 to have near us, whom we like to watch us, to wait 
 on us, to approach us with the proximity of a nurse 
 to a patient. It is not every friend whose eye is 
 a light in a sick room, whose presence is there 
 a solace : but all this was Mrs. Bretton to me ; all 
 this she had ever been. Food or drink never 
 pleased me so well as when it came through her 
 hands. I do not remember the occasion when 
 her entrance into a room had not made that room 
 
32 VILLKTTE. 
 
 cheerier. Our natures own predilections and anti- 
 pathies alike strange. There are people from whom 
 we secretly shrink, whom we would personally avoid, 
 though reason confesses that they are good people : 
 there are others with faults of temper, &c, evident 
 enough, beside whom we live content, as if the air 
 about them did us good. My godmother's lively 
 black eye and clear brunette cheek, her warm, 
 prompt hand, her self-reliant mood, her decided 
 bearing, were all beneficial to me as the atmosphere 
 of some salubrious climate. Her son used to call 
 her "the old lady;" it filled me with pleasant 
 wonder to note how the alacrity and power of five- 
 and-twenty still breathed from her and around her. 
 " I would bring my work here," she said, as she 
 took from me the emptied tea-cup, " and sit with 
 you the whole day, if that overbearing John Graham 
 had not put his veto upon such a proceeding. 
 ' Now, mama,' he said, when he went out, ' take 
 notice, you are not to knock up your god-daughter 
 with gossip,' and he particularly desired me to 
 keep close to my own quarters, and spare you my 
 fine company. He says, Lucy, he thinks you have 
 had a nervous fever, judging from your look, — is 
 that so?" 
 
LA TERRASSE. 33 
 
 I replied that I did not quite know what my ail- 
 ment had been, but that I had certainly suffered 
 a good deal, especially in mind. Further, on this 
 subject, I did not consider it advisable to dwell, for 
 the details of what I had undergone belonged to 
 a portion of my existence in which I never expected 
 my godmother to take a share. Into what a new 
 region would such a confidence have led that hale, 
 serene nature ! The difference between her and me 
 might be figured by that between the stately ship, 
 cruising safe on smooth seas, with its full comple- 
 ment of crew, a captain gay and brave, and ven- 
 turous and provident ; and the life-boat, which most 
 days of the year lies dry and solitary in an old, dark 
 boat-house, only putting to sea when the billows run 
 high in rough weather, when cloud encounters water, 
 when danger and death divide between them the 
 rule of the great deep. No, the " Louisa Bretton " 
 never was out of harbour on such a night, and in 
 such a scene : her crew could not conceive it ; so the 
 half-drowned life-boat man keeps his own counsel, 
 and spins no yarns. 
 
 She left me, and I lay in bed content : it was good 
 of Graham to remember me before he went out. 
 
 My day was lonely, but the prospect of coming 
 
 VOL. II. d 
 
34 VILLETTE. 
 
 evening abridged and cheered it. Then, too, I felt 
 weak, and rest seemed welcome ; and after the 
 morning hours were gone by — those hours which 
 always bring, even to the necessarily unoccupied, a 
 sense of business to be done, of tasks waiting ful- 
 filment, a vague impression of obligation to be 
 employed — when this stirring time was past, and. 
 the silent descent of afternoon hushed housemaid 
 steps on the stairs and in the chambers, I then 
 passed into a dreamy mood, not unpleasant. 
 
 My calm little room seemed somehow like a cave 
 in the sea. There was no colour about it, except that 
 white and pale green, suggestive of foam and deep 
 water; the blanched cornice was adorned with shell- 
 shaped ornaments, and. there were white mouldings 
 like dolphins in the ceiling-angles. Even that one 
 touch of colour visible in the red satin pincushion 
 bore affinity to coral; even that dark, shining glass 
 might have mirrored a mermaid. When I closed 
 my eyes, I heard a gale, subsiding at last, bearing 
 upon the house-front like a settling swell upon a 
 rock-base. I heard it drawn and withdrawn far, far 
 off, like a tide retiring from a shore of the upper 
 world — a world so high above that the rush of its 
 largest waves, the dash of its fiercest breakers could 
 
LA TERRASSE. 35 
 
 sound down in this submarine home, only like 
 murmurs and a lullaby. 
 
 Amidst these dreams came evening, and then 
 Martha brought a light; with her aid I was quickly 
 dressed, and, stronger now than in the morning, I 
 made my way down to the blue saloon unassisted. 
 
 Dr. John, it appears, had concluded his round of 
 professional calls earlier than usual; his form was 
 the first object that met my eyes as I entered the 
 parlour ; he stood in that window-recess opposite 
 the door, reading the close type of a newspaper by 
 such dull light as closing day yet gave. The fire 
 shone clear, but the lamp stood on the table unlit, 
 and tea was not yet brought up. 
 
 As to Mrs. Bretton, my active godmother — who, I 
 afterwards found, had been out in the open air all 
 day — lay half-reclined in her deep-cushioned chair, 
 actually lost in a nap. Her son seeing me, came 
 forward. I noticed that he trod carefully, not to 
 wake the sleeper; he also spoke low: his mellow 
 voice never had any sharpness in it; modulated as at 
 present, it was calculated rather to soothe than startle 
 slumber. 
 
 " This is a quiet little chateau," he observed, after 
 inviting me to sit near the casement, " I don't know 
 
36 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 whether you may have noticed it in your walks : 
 though, indeed, from the chaussee it is not visible; 
 just a mile beyond the Porte de Crecy, you turn 
 down a lane which soon becomes an avenue, and 
 that leads you on, through meadow and shade, to the 
 very door of this house. It is not a modern place, but 
 built somewhat in the old style of the Basse-Ville. 
 It is rather a inanoir than a chateau ; they call it 
 ' La Terrasse,' because its front rises from a broad 
 turfed walk, whence steps lead down a grassy slope 
 to the avenue. See yonder! The moon rises: she 
 looks well through the tree boles." 
 
 Where, indeed, does the moon not look well? 
 What is the scene, confined or expansive, which her 
 orb does not hallow ? Rosy or fiery, she mounted 
 now above a not distant bank ; even while we 
 watched her flushed ascent, she cleared to gold, and 
 in very brief space, floated up stainless into a now 
 calm sky. Did moonlight soften or sadden Dr. 
 Bretton? Did it touch him with romance? I think 
 it did. Albeit of no sighing mood, he sighed in 
 watching it : sighed to himself quietly. No need to 
 ponder the cause or the course of that sigh ; I knew 
 it was wakened by beauty : I knew it pursued 
 Ginevra. Knowing this, the idea pressed upon me 
 
LA TERHASSE. 37 
 
 that it was in some sort my duty to speak the name 
 he meditated. Of course he was ready for the sub- 
 ject: I saw in his countenance a teeming plenitude 
 of comment, question and interest; a pressure of 
 language and sentiment, only checked, I thought, by 
 sense of embarrassment how to begin. To spare 
 him this embarrassment was my best, indeed my sole 
 use. I had but to utter the idol's name, and love's 
 tender litany would flow out. I had just found a 
 fitting phrase : " You know that Miss Fanshawe is 
 gone on a tour with the Cholinondeleys," and was 
 opening my lips to speak it, when he scattered my 
 plans by introducing another theme. 
 
 " The first thing this morning," said he, putting 
 his sentiment in his pocket, turning from the moon, 
 and sitting down, " I went to the Rue Fossette, and 
 told the cuisiniere that you were safe and in good 
 hands. Do you know I actually found that she had 
 not yet discovered your absence from the house : 
 she thought you safe in the great dormitory. With 
 what care must you have been waited on !" 
 
 " Oh ! all that is very conceivable," said I. 
 " Goton could do nothing for me but bring me a 
 little tisane and a crust of bread, and I had rejected 
 both so often during the past week, that the good 
 
38 VILLETTE. 
 
 woman got tired of useless journeys from the 
 dwelling-house kitchen to the school-dormitory, and 
 only came once a day at noon, to make my bed. 
 Believe, however, that she is a good natured creature, 
 and would bave been delighted to cook me cotelettes 
 de mouton,if I could have eaten them." 
 
 "What did Madam Beck mean by leaving you 
 alone?" 
 
 " Madam Beck could not foresee that I should 
 fall ill." 
 
 " Your nervous system bore a good share of the 
 suffering ? " 
 
 " I am not quite sure what my nervous system is, 
 but I was dreadfully low-spirited." 
 
 " Which disables me from helping you by pill or 
 potion. Medicine can give nobody good spirits. 
 My art halts at threshold of Hypochondria : she 
 just looks in and sees a chamber of torture, but can 
 neither say nor do much. Cheerful society would 
 be of use; you should be as little alone as possible; 
 you should take plenty of exercise." 
 
 Acquiescence and a pause followed these re- 
 marks. They sounded all right, I thought, and 
 bore the safe sanction of custom, and the well worn 
 stamp of use. 
 
LA TERRASSE. 39 
 
 " Miss Snowe," recommenced Dr. John — my 
 health, nervous system included, being now some- 
 what to my relief, discussed and done with — " is it 
 permitted me to ask what fyour religion now is? 
 Are you a Catholic ? " 
 
 I looked up in some surprise — " A Catholic ? No ! 
 Why suggest such an idea 1 " 
 
 " The manner in which you were consigned to me 
 last night, made me doubt." 
 
 " I consigned to you? But, indeed, I forget. It 
 remains yet for me to learn how I fell into your 
 hands." 
 
 " Why, under circumstances that puzzled me. I 
 had been in attendance all day yesterday on a case 
 of singularly interesting, and critical character ; the 
 disease being rare, and its treatment doubtful: I 
 saw a similar and still finer case in a hospital at 
 Paris ; but that will not interest you. At last a 
 mitigation of the patient's most urgent symptoms 
 (acute pain is one of its accompaniments) liberated 
 me, and I set out homeward. My shortest way lay 
 through the BasseVille, and as the night was exces- 
 sively dark, wild and wet, I took it. In riding past 
 an old church belonging to a community of 
 Beguines, I saw by a lamp burning over the porch 
 
40 VILLETTE. 
 
 or deep arch of the entrance, a priest lifting some 
 object in his arms. The lamp was bright enough to 
 reveal the priest's features clearly, and I recognized 
 him ; he was a man I have often met by the sick 
 beds of both rich and poor : and, chiefly, the latter. 
 He is, I think, a good old man, far better than most 
 of his class in this country ; superior, indeed, in 
 every way: better informed, as well as more devoted 
 to duty. Our eyes met, he called on me to stop ; 
 what he supported was a woman, fainting or dying. 
 I alighted. 
 
 " ' This person is one of your countrywomen,' he 
 said : ' save her, if she is not dead.' 
 
 "My countrywoman, on examination, turned out to 
 be the English teacher at Madam Beck's pension- 
 nat. She was perfectly unconscious, perfectly blood- 
 less, and nearly cold. 
 
 " ' What does it all mean?' was my inquiry. 
 
 "He communicated a curious account : that you 
 had been to him that evening at confessional ; that 
 your exhausted and suffering appearance, coupled 
 with some things you had said — " 
 
 " Things I had said ? I wonder what things ! " 
 
 "Awful crimes, no doubt ; but he did not tell me 
 what: there, you know, the seal of the confessional 
 
LA TERRASSE. 41 
 
 checked his garrulity and my curiosity. Your con- 
 fidences, however, had not made an enemy of the 
 good father ; it seems he was so struck, and felt so 
 sorry that you should be out on such a night alone, 
 he had esteemed it a christian duty to watch when 
 you quitted the church, and so to manage as not to 
 lose sight of you, till you should have reached 
 home. Perhaps the worthy'man might, half uncon- 
 sciously, have blent in this proceeding, some little of 
 the subtility of his class : it might have been his 
 resolve to learn the locality of your home — did you 
 impart that in your confession ?" 
 
 " I did not : on the contrary, I carefully avoided 
 the shadow of any indication ; and as to my con- 
 fession, Dr. John, I suppose you will think me mad 
 for taking such a step, but I could not help it : 
 I suppose it was all the fault of what you call my 
 ' nervous system.' I cannot put the case into 
 words, but, my days and nights were grown intoler- 
 able ; a cruel sense of desolation pained my 
 mind : a feeling that would make its way, rush 
 out, or kill me — like (and this you will under- 
 stand, Dr. John) the current which passes 
 through the heart, and which, if aneurism or any 
 other morbid cause obstructs its natural channels, 
 
42 VILLETTE. 
 
 seeks abnormal outlet. I wanted companionship, 
 I wanted friendship, I wanted counsel. I could find 
 none of these in closet, or chamber, so I went and 
 sought them in church and confessional. As to what 
 I said, it was no confidence, no narrative. I have 
 done nothing wrong : my life has not been active 
 enough for any dark deed, either of romance or 
 reality : all I poured out was a dreary, desperate 
 complaint." 
 
 " Lucy, you ought to travel for about six months : 
 why, your calm nature is growing quite excitable ! 
 Confound Madame Beck! Has the little buxom 
 widow no bowels, to condemn her best teacher to 
 solitary confinement?" 
 
 " It was not Madame Beck's fault," said I ; "it 
 is no living being's fault, and I won't hear any one 
 blamed." 
 
 "Who is in the wrong then, Lucy?" 
 
 "Me — Dr. John — me ; and a great abstraction on 
 whose wide shoulders I like to lay the mountains of 
 blame they were sculptured to bear : me and Fate." 
 
 "'Me' must take better care in future," said Dr. 
 John — smiling, I suppose, at my bad grammar. 
 
 " Change of air — change of scene ; those are my 
 prescriptions," pursued the practical young doctor. 
 
LA. TERRASSE. 43 
 
 " But to return to our muttons, Luey. As yet, Pere 
 Silas, with all his tact (they say he is a Jesuit), is 
 no wiser than you choose him to be ; for, instead of 
 returning to the Rue Fossette, your fevered wan- 
 derings — there must have been high fever " 
 
 " No, Dr. John : the fever took its turn that 
 night — bow, don't make out that I was delirious, 
 for I know differently." 
 
 " Good ! you were as collected as myself at this 
 moment, no doubt ! Your wanderings had taken 
 an opposite direction to the Pensionnat. Near the 
 Beguinage, amidst the stress of flood and gust, and 
 in the perplexity of darkness, you had swooned and 
 fallen. The priest came to your succour, and the 
 physician, as we have seen, supervened. Between 
 us we procured a fiacre and brought you here. 
 Pere Silas, old as he is, would carry you up stairs, 
 and lay you on that couch himself. He would 
 certainly have remained with you till suspended 
 animation had been restored ; and so should I, but, 
 at that juncture, a hurried messenger arrived from 
 the dying patient I had scarcely left — the last duties 
 were called for — the physician's last visit and the 
 priest's last rite; extreme unction could not be 
 deferred. Pere Silas and myself departed together, 
 
44 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 my mother was spending the evening abroad ; we 
 gave you in charge to Martha, leaving directions, 
 which it seems she followed successfully. Now, are 
 you a Catholic?" 
 
 "Not yet," said I, with a smile. "And never let 
 Pere Silas know where I live, or he will try to con- 
 vert me ; but give him my best and truest thanks 
 when you see him, and if ever I get rich I will send 
 him money for his charities. See, Dr. John, your 
 mother wakes ; you ought to ring for tea." 
 
 Which he did ; and, as Mrs. Bretton sat up — 
 astonished and indignant at herself for the indul- 
 gence to which she had succumbed, and fully pre- 
 pared to deny that she had slept at all— her son 
 came gaily to the attack : 
 
 "Hushaby, mama! Sleep again. You look 
 the picture of innocence in your slumbers." 
 
 " My slumbers, John Graham ! What are you 
 talking about ? You know I never do sleep by day : 
 it was the slightest doze possible." 
 
 "Exactly! a seraph's gentle lapse — a fairy's 
 dream. Mama, under such circumstances, you 
 always remind me of Titania." 
 
 " That is because you, yourself, are so like Bot- 
 tom." 
 
LA TERRASSE. 45 
 
 " Miss Snowe — did you ever hear anything like 
 mama's wit ? She is a most sprightly woman of 
 her size and age." 
 
 " Keep your compliments to yourself, sir, and do 
 not neglect your own size : which seems to me a 
 good deal on the increase. Lucy, has he not rather 
 the air of an incipient John Bull ? He used to be 
 slender as an eel, and now I fancy in him a sort 
 of heavy-dragoon hent — a beef-eater tendency. 
 Graham, take notice ! If you grow fat I disown 
 you." 
 
 "As if you could not sooner disown your own 
 personality ! I am indispensable to the old lady's 
 happiness, Lucy. She would pine away in green 
 and yellow melancholy if she had not my six feet 
 of iniquity to scold. It keeps her lively — it main- 
 tains the wholesome ferment of her spirits." 
 
 The two were now standing opposite to each 
 other, one on each side the fire-place ; their words 
 were not very fond, but their mutual looks atoned 
 for verbal deficiencies. At least, the best treasure 
 of Mrs. Bretton's life was certainly casketed in her 
 son's bosom ; her dearest pulse throbbed in his 
 heart. As to him, of course another love shared his 
 feelings with filial love; and, no doubt, as the new 
 
46 VILLETTE. 
 
 passion was the latest born, so he assigned it in his 
 emotions Benjamin's portion. Ginevra ! Ginevra! 
 Did Mrs. Bretton yet know at whose feet her own 
 young idol had laid his homage ? Would she 
 approve that choice ? I could not tell ; but I could 
 well guess that if she knew Miss Fanshawe's con- 
 duct towards Graham: her alternations between 
 coldness and coaxing, and repulse and allurement; 
 if she could at all suspect the pain with which she 
 had tried him ; if she could have seen, as I had seen, 
 his fine spirits subdued and harassed, his inferior 
 preferred before him, his subordinate made the 
 instrument of his humiliation — then Mrs. Bretton 
 would have pronounced Ginevra imbecile, or per- 
 verted, or both. Well — I thought so too. 
 
 That second evening passed as sweetly as the 
 first — more sweetly indeed : we enjoyed a smoother 
 interchange of thought ; old troubles were not re- 
 verted to, acquaintance was better cemented ; I felt 
 happier, easier, more at home. That night— instead 
 of crying myself asleep — I went down to dreamland 
 by a pathway bordered with pleasant thoughts. 
 
WE QUARREL. 47 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 WE QUARREL. 
 
 During the first days of rny stay at the Terrace, 
 Graham never took a seat near me, or in his fre- 
 quent pacing of the room approached the quarter 
 where I sat, or looked preoccupied, or more grave 
 than usual, but I thought of Miss Fanshawe and 
 expected her name to leap from his lips. I kept 
 my ear and mind in perpetual readiness for the 
 tender theme ; my patience was ordered to be per- 
 manently under arms, and my sympathy desired to 
 keep its cornucopia replenished and ready for out- 
 pouring. At last, and after a little inward struggle 
 which I saw and respected, he one day launched 
 into the topic. It was introduced delicately; 
 anonymously as it were. 
 
 " Your friend is spending her vacation in travel- 
 
48 VILLETTE. 
 
 ling, I hear?" "Friend, forsooth!" thought I to 
 myself: but it would not do to contradict ; he must 
 have his own way ; I must own the soft impeach- 
 ment : friend let it be. Still, by way of experiment, 
 I could not help asking whom he meant? 
 
 He had taken a seat at my work-table ; he now 
 laid hands on a reel of thread which he proceeded 
 recklessly to unwind. 
 
 " Ginevra — Miss Fanshawe, has accompanied the 
 Cholmondeleys on a tour through the south of 
 France?" 
 
 " She has." 
 
 " Do you and she correspond?" 
 
 " It will astonish you to ' hear that I never once 
 thought of making application for that privilege." 
 
 " You have seen letters of her writing?" 
 
 " Yes ; several to her uncle." 
 
 "They will not be deficient in wit and naivete; 
 there is so much sparkle, and so little art in her 
 soul?" 
 
 " She writes comprehensibly enough when she 
 writes to M. de Bassompierre : he who runs may 
 read." (In fact, Ginevra's epistles to her wealthy 
 kinsman were commonly business documents, un- 
 equivocal applications for cash.) 
 
WE QUARREL. 49 
 
 " And her handwriting ? It must be pretty, light, 
 ladylike, I should think?" 
 
 It was, and I said so. 
 
 66 I verily believe that all she does is well done," 
 said Dr. John ; and as I seemed in no hurry to 
 chime in with this remark, he added : " You, who 
 know her, could you name a point in which she is 
 deficient?" 
 
 " She does several things very well." (" Flirtation 
 amongst the rest," subjoined I, in thought.) 
 
 " When do you suppose she will return to town ? " 
 he soon inquired. 
 
 "Pardon me, Dr. John, I must explain. You 
 honour me too much in ascribing to me a degree 
 of intimacy with Miss Fanshawe I have not the 
 felicity to enjoy. I have never been the depositary 
 of her plans and secrets. You will find her par- 
 ticular friends in another sphere than mine : amongst 
 the Cholmondeleys, for instance." 
 
 He actually thought I was stung with a kind of 
 jealous pain similar to his own ! " Excuse her ; " 
 he said, "judge her indulgently; the glitter of 
 fashion misleads her, but she will soon find out that 
 these people are hollow, and will return to you with 
 augmented attachment and confirmed trust. I 
 
 VOL. II. e 
 
50 VILLETTE. 
 
 know something of the Cholmondeleys ; superficial, 
 showy, selfish people : depend on it, at heart 
 Ginevra values you beyond a score of such." 
 
 " You are very kind." I said briefty. A dis- 
 claimer of the sentiments attributed to me burned 
 on my lips, but I extinguished the flame. I sub- 
 mitted to be looked upon as the humiliated, cast-off, 
 and now pining confidante of the distinguished Miss 
 Fanshawe : but, reader, it was a hard submission. 
 
 " Yet, you see," continued Graham, " while I 
 comfort yon, I cannot take the same consolation to 
 myself; I cannot hope she will do me justice. De 
 Hamal is most worthless, yet I fear he pleases her : 
 wretched delusion ! " 
 
 My patience really gave way, and without notice : 
 all at once. I suppose illness and weakness had 
 worn it and made it brittle. 
 
 "Dr. Bretton," I broke out, "there is no delusion 
 like your own. On all points but one you are 
 a man, frank, healthful, right-thinking, clear- 
 sighted : on this exceptional point you are but 
 a slave. I declare, where Miss Fanshawe is con- 
 cerned, you merit no respect; nor have you mine." 
 
 I got up, and left the room very much excited. 
 
 This little scene took place in the morning ; 
 
WE QUARREL. 51 
 
 I had to meet him again in the evening, and then 
 I saw I had done mischief. He was not made of 
 common clay, not put together out of vulgar 
 materials ; while the outlines of his nature had been 
 shaped with breadth, and vigour, the details em- 
 braced workmanship of almost feminine delicacy : 
 finer, much finer, than you could be prepared to 
 meet with ; than you could believe inherent in him, 
 even after years of acquaintance. Indeed, till some 
 over-sharp contact with his nerves had betrayed, by 
 its effects, their acute sensibility, this elaborate con- 
 struction must be ignored ; and the more especially 
 because the sympathetic faculty was not prominent 
 in him : to feel, and to seize quickly another's feelings, 
 are separate properties ; a few constructions possess 
 both, some neither. Dr. John had the one gift in 
 exquisite perfection ; and because I have admitted 
 that he was not endowed with the other in equal 
 degree, the reader will considerately refrain from 
 passing to an extreme, and pronouncing him un~ 
 sympathizing, unfeeling : on the contrary, he was 
 a kind, generous man. Make your need known, 
 his hand was open. Put your grief into words, he 
 turned no deaf ear. Expect refinements of per- 
 ception, miracles of intuition, and realize disappoint- 
 
OZ V1LLETTE. 
 
 ment. This night, when Dr. John entered tlie 
 room, and met the evening lamp, I saw well and at 
 one glance his whole mechanism. 
 
 To one who had named him " slave," and, on any 
 point, banned him from respect, he must now have 
 peculiar feelings. That the epithet was well applied, 
 and the ban just, might be; he put forth no denial 
 that it was so : his mind even candidly revolved 
 that unmanning possibility. He sought in this accu- 
 sation the cause of that ill-success which had got so 
 galling a hold on his mental peace. Amid the 
 worry of a self-condemnatory soliloquy, his de- 
 meanour seemed grave, perhaps cold, both to me 
 and his mother. And yet there was no bad feeling, 
 no malice, no rancour, no littleness in his counte- 
 nance, beautiful with a man's best beauty, even in 
 its depression. When I placed his chair at the 
 table, which I hastened to do, anticipating the 
 servant, and when I handed him his tea, which 
 I did with trembling care, he said — 
 
 " Thank you, Lucy," in as kindly a tone of his 
 full pleasant voice as ever my ear welcomed. 
 
 For my part, there was only one plan to be 
 pursued ; I must expiate my culpable vehemence, or 
 I must not sleep that night. This would not do at 
 
WE QUARREL. 53 
 
 all ; I could not stand it : I made no pretence of 
 capacity to wage war on this footing. School 
 solitude, conventual silence and stagnation, any- 
 thing seemed preferable to living embroiled with 
 Dr. John. As to Ginevra, she might take the silver 
 wings of a dove, or any other fowl that flies, and 
 mount straight up to the highest place, among the 
 highest stars, where her lover's highest flight of 
 fancy chose to fix the constellation of her charms: 
 never more be it mine to dispute the arrangement. 
 Long I tried to catch his eye. Again and again 
 that eye just met mine ; but, having nothing to say, 
 
 it withdrew, and I was baffled. After tea, he sat 
 
 j 
 
 sad and quiet, reading a book. I wished I could 
 have dared to go and sit near him, but it seemed 
 that if I ventured to take that step, he would 
 infallibly evince hostility and indignation. I longed 
 to speak out, and I dared not whisper. His mother 
 left the room; then, moved by insupportable regret, 
 I just murmured the words " Dr. Bretton." 
 
 He looked up from his book ; his eyes were not 
 cold or malevolent, his mouth was not cynical ; he 
 was ready and willing to hear what I might have to 
 say : his spirit was of vintage too mellow and 
 generous to sour in one thunder-clap. 
 
54 VILLETTE. 
 
 " Dr. Bretton, forgive my hasty words : do, do 
 forgive them." 
 
 He smiled that moment I spoke. "Perhaps I 
 deserved them, Lucy. If you don't respect me, I 
 am sure it is because] I am not respectable. I fear, 
 I am an awkward fool : I must manage badly in 
 some way, for where I wish to please, it seems I 
 don't please." 
 
 " Of that you cannot be sure ; and even if such 
 be the case, is it the fault of your character, or of 
 another's perceptions? But now, let me unsay 
 what I said in anger. In one thing, and in all 
 things, I deeply respect you. If you think scarcely 
 enough of yourself, and too much of others, what 
 is that but an excellence ?" 
 
 " Can I think too much of Ginevra ? " 
 
 " I believe you may ; you believe you can't. Let 
 us agree to differ. Let me be pardoned; that is 
 what I ask." 
 
 " Do you think I cherish ill-will for one warm 
 word?" 
 
 "I see you do not and cannot; but just say, 
 ' Lucy, I forgive you ! ' Say that, to ease me of the 
 heart-ache." 
 
 -" Put away your heart-ache, as I will put away 
 
WE QUARREL. 55 
 
 mine: for you wounded me a little, Lucy. Now, 
 when the pain is gone, I more than forgive : I feel 
 grateful, as to a sineere well-wisher." 
 
 " I am your sincere well-wisher : you are right." 
 
 Thus our quarrel ended. 
 
 Reader, if in the course of this work, you find 
 that my opinion of Dr. John, undergoes modifica- 
 tion, excuse the seeming inconsistency. I give the 
 feeling as at the time I felt it ; I describe the view 
 of character as it appeared when discovered. 
 
 He showed the fineness of his nature by being 
 kinder to me after that misunderstanding than 
 before. Nay, the very incident which, by my 
 theory, must in some degree estrange me and him, 
 changed, indeed, somewhat our relations ; but not in 
 the sense I painfully anticipated. An invisible, 
 but a cold something, very slight, very transparent, 
 but very chill : a sort of screen of ice had hither- 
 to, all through our two lives, glazed the medium 
 through which we exchanged intercourse. Those few 
 warm words, though only warm with anger, breathed 
 on that frail frost-work of reserve; about this time, 
 it gave note of dissolution. I think from that day, 
 so long as we continued friends, he never in dis- 
 course stood on topics of ceremony with me. He 
 
56 VILLETTE. 
 
 seemed to know that if he would but talk about 
 himself, and about that in which he was most 
 interested, my expectation would always be an- 
 swered, my wish always satisfied. It follows, as a 
 matter of course, that I continued to hear much of 
 " Ginevra." 
 
 " Ginevra ! " He thought her so fair, so good ; 
 he spoke so lovingly of her charms, her sweetness, 
 her innocence, that, in spite of my plain prose 
 knowledge of the reality, a kind of reflected glow 
 began to settle on her idea, even for me. Still, 
 reader, I am free to confess, that he often talked 
 nonsense ; but I strove to be unfailingly patient 
 with him. I had had my lesson : I had learned how 
 severe for me was the pain of crossing, or grieving, 
 or disappointing him. In a strange and new sense? 
 I grew most selfish, and quite powerless to deny my. 
 self the delight of indulging his mood, and being- 
 pliant to his will. He still seemed to me most 
 absurd when he obstinately doubted, and desponded 
 about his power to win in the end Miss Fanshawe's 
 preference. The fancy became rooted in my own mind 
 more stubbornly than ever, that she was only 
 coquetting to goad him, and that, at heart, she 
 coveted every one of his words and looks. Some- 
 
WE QUARREL. 57 
 
 times he harassed me, in spite of my resolution to 
 bear and hear; in the midst of the indescribable 
 gall-honey pleasure of thus bearing and hearing, 
 he struck so on the flint of what firmness I owned, 
 that it emitted fire once and again. I chanced to 
 assert one day, with a view to stilling his impa- 
 tience, that in my own mind, I felt positive Miss 
 Fanshawe must intend eventually to accept him. 
 
 " Positive ! It was easy to say so, but had I any 
 grounds for such assurance?" 
 
 " The best grounds." 
 
 "Now, Lucy, do tell me what !" 
 
 " You know them as well as I ; and, knowing- 
 them Dr. John, it really amazes me that you should 
 not repose the frankest confidence in her fidelity. 
 To doubt, under the circumstances, is almost to 
 insult." 
 
 " Now you are beginning to speak fast and to 
 breathe short ; but speak a little faster and breathe 
 a little shorter, till you have given an explanation 
 — a full explanation : I must have it." 
 
 " You shall, Dr. John. In some cases, you are a 
 lavish, generous man : you are a worshipper ever 
 ready with the votive offering ; should Pere Silas 
 ever convert you, you will give him abundance of alms 
 
58 VILLETTE. 
 
 for his poor, you will supply his altar with tapers, 
 and the shrine of your favourite saint you will do 
 your best to enrich : Ginevra, Dr. John " 
 
 " Hush !" said he, " don't go on." 
 
 " Hush, I will not: and go on I will: Ginevra has 
 had her hands filled from your hands more times 
 than I can count. You have sought for her the 
 costliest flowers ; you have busied your brain in 
 devising gifts, the most delicate : such, one would 
 have thought, as only a woman could have imagined ; 
 and in addition, Miss Fanshawe owns a set of 
 ornaments, to purchase which your generosity must 
 have verged on extravagance." 
 
 The modesty Ginevra herself had never evinced 
 in this matter, now flushed all over the face of her 
 admirer. 
 
 "Nonsense!" he said, destructively snipping a 
 skein of silk with my scissors. " I offered them to 
 please myself: I felt she did me a favour in accept- 
 ing them." 
 
 " She did more than a favour, Dr. John : she 
 pledged her very honour that she would make you 
 some return; and if she cannot pay you in affection, 
 she ought to hand out a business-like equivalent, in 
 the shape of some rouleaux of gold pieces." 
 
WE QUARREL. 59 
 
 " But you don't understand her ; she is far too 
 disinterested to care for my gifts, and too simple- 
 minded to know their value." 
 
 I laughed out: I had heard her adjudge to every 
 jewel its price ; and well I knew money-embarrass- 
 ment, money-schemes, money's worth, and en- 
 deavours to realize supplies, had, young as she was, 
 furnished the most frequent, and the favourite 
 stimulus of her thoughts for years. 
 
 He pursued. " You should have seen her when- 
 ever I have laid on her lap some trifle; so cool, so 
 unmoved : no eagerness to take, not even pleasure 
 in contemplating. Just from amiable reluctance 
 to grieve me, she would permit the bouquet to lie 
 beside her, and perhaps consent to bear it away. 
 Or, if I achieved the fastening of a bracelet on her 
 ivory arm, however pretty the trinket might be 
 (and I always carefully chose what seemed to me 
 pretty, and what of course was not valueless), the 
 glitter never dazzled her bright eyes : she would 
 hardly cast one look on my gift." 
 
 " Then, of course, not valuing it, she would un- 
 loose, and return it to you ? " 
 
 " No ; for such a repulse she was too good- 
 natured. She would consent to seem to forget what 
 
60 VILLETTE. 
 
 I had done, and retain the offering with lady-like 
 quiet and easy oblivion. Under such circumstances, 
 how can a man build on acceptance of his presents 
 as a favourable symptom ? For my part, were I to 
 offer her all I have, and she to take it, such is her 
 incapacity to be swayed by sordid considerations, 
 I should not venture to believe the transaction 
 advanced me one step." 
 
 " Dr John," I began, "Love is blind ;" but just 
 then a blue, subtle ray sped sideways from Dr. 
 John's eye : it reminded me of old days, it reminded 
 me of his picture: it half led me to think that part, 
 at least, of his professed persuasion of Miss Fan- 
 sh awe's naivete was assumed ; it led me dubiously 
 to conjecture that perhaps, in spite of his passion 
 for her beauty, his appreciation of her foibles might 
 possibly be less mistaken, more clear-sighted, than 
 from his general language was presumable. After 
 all it might be only a chance look, or at best, the 
 token of a merely momentary impression. Chance 
 or intentional, real or imaginary, it closed the con- 
 versation. 
 
THE CLEOPATRA. 61 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE CLEOPATRA. 
 
 My stay at La Terrasse was prolonged a fortnight 
 beyond the close of the vacation. Mrs. Bretton's 
 kind management procured me this respite. Her 
 son having one day delivered the dictum that "Lucy 
 was not yet strong enough to go back to that den of 
 a Pensionnat," she at once drove over to the Rue 
 Fossette, had an interview with the directress, and 
 procured the indulgence, on the plea of prolonged 
 rest and change being necessary to perfect recovery. 
 Hereupon, however, followed an attention I could 
 very well have dispensed with, viz. — a polite call 
 from Madame Beck. 
 
 That lady — one fine day — actually came out in a 
 fiacre as far as the chateau. I suppose she had 
 resolved within herself to see what manner of place 
 Dr. John inhabited. Apparently, the pleasant site 
 
62 VILLETTE. 
 
 and neat interior surpassed her expectations; she 
 eulogized all she saw, pronounced the blue salon 
 " une piece rnagnifique," profusely congratulated 
 me on the acquisition of friends, " tellement dignes, 
 aimables, et respectables," turned also a neat com- 
 pliment in my favour, and, upon Dr. John coming 
 in, ran up to him with the utmost buoyancy, open- 
 ing at the same time such a fire of rapid language, 
 all sparkling with felicitations and protestations 
 about his " chateau," — " niad.ame sa mere, la digne 
 chatelaine :" also his looks ; which indeed were very 
 flourishing, and at the moment additionally embel- 
 lished by the good-natured but amused smile with 
 which he always listened to madame's fluent and 
 florid French. In short, Madame shone in her 
 very best phase that day, and came in and went 
 out quite a living catherine-wheel of compliments, 
 delight, and affability. Half-purposely, and half to 
 ask some question about school-business, I followed 
 her to the carriage, and looked in after she was 
 seated and the door closed. In that brief fraction of 
 time what a change had been wrought! An instant 
 ago, all sparkles and jests, she now sat sterner than 
 a judge and graver than a sage. Strange little 
 
 woman 
 
THE CLEOPATIiA. 63 
 
 I went back and teased Dr. John about Madame's 
 devotion to him. How he laughed! What fun 
 shone in his eyes as he recalled some of her fine 
 speeches, and repeated them, imitating her voluble 
 delivery ! He had an acute sense of humour, and 
 was the finest company in the world — when he could 
 forget Miss Fanshawe. 
 
 To " sit in sunshine calm and sweet" is said to be 
 excellent for weak people ; it gives them vital force. 
 When little Georgette Beck was recovering from 
 her illness, I used to take her in my arms and walk 
 with her in the garden by the hour together, be- 
 neath a certain wall hung with grapes, which the 
 Southern sun was ripening : that sun cherished her 
 little pale frame quite as effectually as it mellowed 
 and swelled the clustering fruit. 
 
 There are human tempers, bland, glowing, and 
 genial, within whose influence it is as good for the 
 poor in spirit to live, as it is for the feeble in frame 
 to bask in the glow of noon. Of the number of 
 these choice natures were certainly both Dr. Bret- 
 ton's and his mother's. They liked to communicate 
 happiness, as some like to occasion misery : they did 
 
64 VILLETTE. 
 
 it instinctively ; without fuss, and apparently, with 
 little consciousness : the means to give pleasure rose 
 spontaneously in their minds. Every day while I 
 stayed with them, some little plan was proposed 
 which resulted in beneficial enjoyment. Fully oc- 
 cupied as was Dr. John's time, he still made it in 
 his way to accompany us in each brief excursion. I 
 can hardly tell how he managed his engagements ; 
 they were numerous, yet by dint of system, he 
 classed them in an order which left him a daily 
 period of liberty. I often saw him hard-worked, 
 yet seldom over-driven ; and never irritated, con- 
 fused, or oppressed. What he did was accomplished 
 with the ease and grace of all-sufficing strength ; 
 with the bountiful cheerfulness of high and un- 
 broken energies. Under his guidance I saw, in that 
 one happy fortnight, more of Villette, its environs, 
 and its inhabitants, than I had seen in the whole 
 eight months of my previous residence. He took 
 me to places of interest in the town, of whose names 
 I had not before so much as heard ; with willingness 
 and spirit he communicated much note-worthy in- 
 formation. He never seemed to think it a trouble 
 to talk to me, and, I am sure, it was never a task to 
 me to listen. It was not his way to treat subjects 
 
THE CLEOPATRA. 65 
 
 coldly and vaguely ; he rarely generalized, never 
 prosed. He seemed to like nice details almost as 
 much as I liked them myself; he seemed observant 
 of character : and not superficially observant, either. 
 These points gave the quality of interest to his dis- 
 course ; and the fact of his speaking direct from his 
 own resources, and not borrowing or stealing from 
 books — here a dry fact, and there a trite phrase, and 
 elsewhere a hackneyed opinion — ensured a fresh- 
 ness, as welcome as it was rare. Before my eyes, 
 too, his disposition seemed to unfold another phase ; 
 to pass to a fresh day : to rise in new and nobler 
 dawn. 
 
 His mother possessed a good development of 
 benevolence, but he owned a better and larger. I 
 found, on accompanying him to the Basse- Ville — 
 the poor and crowded quarter of the city — that his 
 errands there were as much those of the philan- 
 thropist as the physician. I understood presently 
 that — cheerfully, habitually, and in single-minded 
 unconsciousness of any special merit distinguishing 
 his deeds — he was achieving, amongst a very 
 wretched population, a world of active good. The 
 lower orders liked him well ; his poor patients in the 
 hospitals welcomed him with a sort of enthusiasm. 
 
 VOL. II. p 
 
60 VILLETTE. 
 
 But stop — I must not, from the faithful narrator, 
 degenerate into the partial eulogist. "Well, full 
 well, do I know that Dr. John was not perfect, any- 
 more than I am perfect. Human fallibility leavened 
 him throughout : there was no hour, and scarcely 
 a moment of the times I spent with him, that in 
 act, or speech, or look, he did not betray something 
 that was not of a god. A god could not have the 
 cruel vanity of Dr. John, nor his sometime levity. 
 No immortal could have resembled him in his 
 occasional temporary oblivion of all but the present 
 — in his passing passion for that present ; shown 
 not coarsely, by devoting it to material indulgence, 
 but selfishly, by extracting from it whatever it could 
 yield of nutriment to his masculine self-love : his 
 delight was to feed that ravenous sentiment, without 
 thought of the price of provender, or care for the 
 cost of keeping it sleek and high-pampered. 
 
 The reader is requested to note a seeming con- 
 tradiction in the two views which have been given 
 of Graham Bretton — the public and private — the 
 out-door and the in-door view. In the first, the 
 public, he is shown oblivious of self; as modest in 
 the display of his energies, as earnest in their exer- 
 cise. In the second, the fireside picture, there is 
 
THE CLEOPATRA. 67 
 
 expressed consciousness of what he has and what 
 he is ; pleasure in homage, some recklessness in 
 exciting, some vanity in receiving the same. Both 
 portraits are correct. 
 
 It was hardly possible to oblige Dr. John quietly 
 and in secret. When you thought that the fabri- 
 cation of some trifle dedicated to his use had been 
 achieved unnoticed, and that, like other men, he 
 would use it when placed ready for his use, and 
 never ask whence it came, he amazed you by a 
 smilingly-uttered observation or two proving that 
 his eye had been on the work from commencement 
 to close : that he had noted the design, traced its 
 progress, and marked its completion. It pleased 
 him to be thus served, and he let his pleasure beam 
 in his eye and play about his mouth. 
 
 This would have been all very well, if he had not 
 added to such kindly and unobtrusive evidence a 
 certain wilfulness in discharging what he called 
 debts. When his mother worked for him, he paid 
 her by showering about her his bright animal spirits, 
 with even more affluence than his gay, taunting, 
 teasing, loving wont. If Lucy Snowe were dis- 
 covered to have put her hand to such work, he 
 planned, in recompense, some pleasant recreation. 
 
68 VILLETTE. 
 
 I often felt amazed at his perfect knowledge of 
 Villette ; a knowledge not merely confined to its 
 open streets, but penetrating to all its galleries, 
 salles, and cabinets : of every door which shut in an 
 object worth seeing, of every museum, of every hall, 
 sacred to art or science, he seemed to possess the 
 " Open ! Sesame." I never had a head for science, 
 but an ignorant, blind, fond instinct inclined me to 
 art. I liked to visit the picture-galleries, and I 
 dearly liked to be left there alone. In company, 
 a wretched idiosyncracy forbade me to see much or 
 to feel anything. In unfamiliar company, where it 
 was necessary to maintain a flow of talk on the 
 subjects in presence, half an hour would knock me 
 up, with a combined pressure of physical lassitude 
 and entire mental incapacity. I never yet saw the 
 well-reared child, much less the educated adult, 
 who could not put me to shame, by the sustained 
 intelligence of its demeanour under the ordeal of a 
 conversable sociable visitation of pictures, historical 
 sites or buildings, or any lions of public interest. 
 Dr. Bretton was a cicerone after my own heart ; he 
 would take me betimes, ere the galleries were filled, 
 leave me there for two or three hours, and call for 
 me when his own engagements were discharged. 
 
THE CLEOPATRA. 69 
 
 Meantime, I was happy ; happy, not always in 
 admiring, but in examining, questioning, and form- 
 ing conclusions. In the commencement of these 
 visits, there was some misunderstanding and conse- 
 quent struggle between Will and Power. The 
 former faculty exacted approbation of that which it 
 was considered orthodox to admire ; the latter 
 groaned forth its utter inability to pay the tax ; it 
 was then self-sneered at, spurred up, goaded on to 
 refine its taste, and whet its zest. The more it was 
 chidden, however, the more it wouldn't praise. Dis- 
 covering gradually that a wonderful sense of fatigue 
 resulted from these conscientious efforts, I began to 
 reflect whether I might not dispense with that great 
 labour, and concluded eventually that I might, and 
 so sank supine into a luxury of calm before ninety- 
 nine out of a hundred of the exhibited frames. 
 
 It seemed to me that an original and good pic- 
 ture was just as scarce as an original and good 
 book ; nor did I, in the end, tremble to say to 
 myself, standing before certain chef d 'ceuvres bearing 
 great names, " These are not a whit like nature. 
 Nature's daylight never had that colour ; never was 
 made so turbid, either by storm or cloud, as it is 
 laid out there, under a sky of indigo: and that 
 
70 VILLETTE. 
 
 indigo is not ether ; and those dark weeds plastered 
 upon it are not trees." Several very well executed 
 and complacent-looking fat women struck me as by- 
 no means the goddesses they appeared to consider 
 themselves. Many scores of marvellously-finished 
 little Flemish pictures, and also of sketches, excel- 
 lent for fashion-hooks, displaying varied costumes 
 in the handsomest materials, gave evidence of 
 laudable industry whimsically applied. And yet 
 there were fragments of truth here and there which 
 satisfied the conscience, and gleams of light that 
 cheered the vision. Nature's power here broke 
 through in a mountain snow-storm ; and there her 
 glory in a sunny southern day. An expression in 
 this portrait proved clear insight into character ; 
 a face in that historical painting, by its vivid filial 
 likeness, startlingly reminded you that genius gave 
 it birth. These exceptions I loved : they grew dear 
 as friends. 
 
 One day, at a quiet early hour, I found myself 
 nearly alone in a certain gallery, wherein one par- 
 ticular picture of pretentious size, set up in the best 
 light, having a cordon of protection stretched before 
 it, and a cushioned bench duly set in front for the 
 accommodation of worshipping connoisseurs, who, 
 
THE CLEOPATRA. 71 
 
 having gazed themselves off their feet, might be 
 fain to complete the business sitting : this picture, 
 I say, seemed to consider itself the queen of the 
 collection. 
 
 It represented a woman, considerably larger, I 
 thought, than the life. I calculated that this lady, 
 put into a scale of magnitude suitable for the re- 
 ception of a commodity of bulk, would infallibly 
 turn from fourteen to sixteen stone. She was, 
 indeed, extremely well fed : very much butcher's 
 meat — to say nothing of bread, vegetables, and 
 liquids — must she have consumed to attain that 
 breadth and height, that wealth of muscle, that 
 affluence of flesh. She lay half-reclined on a couch : 
 why, it would be difficult to say ; broad daylight 
 blazed round her; she appeared in hearty health, 
 strong enough to do the work of two plain cooks ; 
 she could not plead a weak spine ; she ought to 
 have been standing, or at least sitting bolt upright. 
 She had no business to lounge away the noon on a 
 sofa. She ought likewise to have worn decent 
 garments; a gown covering her properly, which 
 was not the case: out of abundance, of material — 
 seven-and-twenty yards, I should say, of drapery — 
 she managed to make inefficient raiment. Then, 
 
72 VILLETTE. 
 
 for the wretched untidiness surrounding her, there 
 could be no excuse. Pots and pans — perhaps I 
 ought to say vases and goblets — were rolled here and 
 there on the foreground; a perfect rubbish of 
 flowers was mixed amongst them, and an absurd 
 and disorderly mass of curtain upholstery smothered 
 the couch and cumbered the floor. On referring 
 to the catalogue, I found that this notable pro- 
 duction bore name " Cleopatra." 
 
 Well, I was sitting wondering at it (as the bench 
 was there, I thought I might as well take advan- 
 tage of its accommodation), and thinking that 
 while some of the details — as roses, gold cups, jewels, 
 &c. — were very prettily painted, it was on the whole 
 an enormous piece of claptrap ; the room, almost 
 vacant when I entered, began to fill. Scarcely 
 noticing this circumstance (as, indeed, it did not 
 matter to me) I retained my seat; rather to rest 
 myself than with a view to studying this huge, 
 dark-complexioned gipsy-queen; of whom, indeed, 
 I soon tired, and betook myself for refreshment 
 to the contemplation of some exquisite little pictures 
 of still life : wild-flowers, wild- fruit, mossy wood- 
 nests, casketing eggs that looked like pearls 
 seen through clear green sea- water ; all hung 
 
THE CLEOPATRA. 73 
 
 modestly beneath that coarse and preposterous 
 canvass. 
 
 Suddenly a light tap visited my shoulder. Start- 
 ing, turning, I met a face bent to encounter mine ; 
 a frowning, almost a shocked face it was. 
 
 " Que faites vous ici ? " said a voice. 
 
 " Mais, monsieur, je m' amuse." 
 
 " Vous vous amusez ! et a. quoi, s'il vous plait ? 
 Mais d'abord, faites-moi le plaisir de vous lever : 
 prenez mon bras, et allons de Pautre cote." 
 
 I did precisely as I was bid, M. Paul Emanuel 
 (it was he) returned from Rome, and now a travelled 
 man, was not likely to be less tolerant of insub- 
 ordination now, than before this added distinction 
 laurelled his temples. 
 
 " Permit me to conduct you to your party," 
 said he, as we crossed the room. 
 
 " I have no party." 
 
 " You are not alone ? " 
 
 " Yes, monsieur." 
 
 " Did you come here unaccompanied ? " 
 
 " No, monsieur. Dr. Bretton brought me 
 here." 
 
 " Dr. Bretton and Madame his mother, of 
 course ? " 
 
74 VILLETTE. 
 
 " No ; only Dr. Bretton." 
 
 " And he told you to look at that picture ? " 
 
 " By no means : I found it out for myself." 
 
 M. Paul's hair was shorn close as raven down, 
 or I think it would have bristled on his head. 
 Beginning now to perceive his drift, I had a certain 
 pleasure in keeping cool, and working him up. 
 
 " Astounding insular audacity ! " cried the Pro- 
 fessor. " Singulieres femmes que ces Anglaises !" 
 
 " What is the matter, monsieur ? " 
 
 " Matter ! How dare you, a young person, sit 
 coolly down, with the self-possession of a garcon, 
 and look at that picture ? " 
 
 " It is a very ugly picture, but I cannot at all 
 see why I should not look at it." 
 
 " Bon ! bon ! Speak no more of it. But you 
 ought not to be here alone." 
 
 " If, however, I have no society — no party, as you 
 say? And then, what does it signify whether I 
 am alone, or accompanied ? nobody meddles with 
 me." 
 
 ■* Taisez-vous, et asseyez-vous la — la ! " Setting 
 down a chair with emphasis in a particularly dull 
 corner, before a series of most specially dreary 
 " cadres." 
 
THE CLEOPATRA. 75 
 
 " Mais, monsieur." 
 
 " Mais, mademoiselle, asseyez vous, et ne bougez 
 pas — entendez -vous ? jusqu' a ce qu'on vienne vous 
 chercher, ou que je vous donne la permission." 
 
 "Queltriste coin!" cried I, "et quels laids tableaux!" 
 
 And " laids," indeed, they were; being a set of 
 four, denominated in the catalogue " La vie d'une 
 femme." They were painted rather in a remark- 
 able style — flat, dead, pale and formal. The first 
 represented a "Jeune Fille," coming out of a 
 church-door, a missal in her hand, her dress very 
 prim, her eyes cast down, her mouth pursed up — 
 the image of a most villanous little precocious 
 she-hypocrite. The second, a "Mariee" with a 
 long white veil, kneeling at a prie-dieu in her 
 chamber, holding her hands plastered together, 
 finger to finger, and showing the whites of her 
 eyes in a most exasperating manner. The third, 
 a " Jeune Mere," hanging disconsolate over a clayey 
 and puny baby with a face like an unwholesome 
 full moon. The fourth, a " Veuve," being a 
 black woman, holding by the hand a black little 
 girl, and the twain studiously surveying an elegant 
 French monument, set up in a corner of some Pere 
 la Chaise. All these four " Anges " were grim and 
 
76 VILLETTE. 
 
 gray as burglars, and cold and vapid as ghosts. 
 What women to live with ! insincere, ill-humoured, 
 bloodless, brainless nonentities ! As bad in their 
 way as the indolent gipsy-giantess, the Cleopatra, 
 in hers. 
 
 It was impossible to keep one's attention long 
 confined to these masterpieces, and so, by degrees, 
 I veered round, and surveyed the gallery, 
 
 A perfect crowd of spectators was by this time 
 gathered round the Lioness, from whose vicinage 
 I had been banished ; nearly half this crowd were 
 ladies, but M. Paul afterwards told me, these 
 were " des dames," and it was quite proper for 
 them to contemplate what no " demoiselle " ought to 
 glance at. I assured him plainly I could not agree 
 in this doctrine, and did not see the sense of it ; 
 whereupon, with his usual absolutism, he merely 
 requested my silence, and also, in the same breath, 
 denounced my mingled rashness and ignorance. 
 A more despotic little man than M. Paul never 
 filled a professor's chair. I noticed, by the way, 
 that he looked at the picture himself quite at his 
 ease, and for a very long while: he did not, 
 however, neglect to glance from time to time my 
 way, in order, I suppose, to make sure that I 
 
THE CLEOPATRA. 77 
 
 was obeying orders, and not breaking bounds. 
 By and by, he again accosted me. 
 
 " Had I not been ill ? " he wished to know : 
 " he understood I had." 
 
 " Yes, but I was now quite well." 
 
 " Where had I spent the vacation?" 
 
 " Chiefly in the Rue Fossette ; partly with 
 Madame Bretton." 
 
 " He had heard that I was left alone in the 
 Rue Fossette; was that so?" 
 
 " Not quite alone : Marie Broc " (the cretin) " was 
 with me." 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders ; varied and contra- 
 dictory expressions played rapidly over his coun- 
 tenance. Marie Broc was well known to M. Paul ; 
 he never gave a lesson in the third division (contain- 
 ing the least advanced pupils), that she did not occa- 
 sion in him a sharp conflict between antagonistic im- 
 pressions. Her personal appearance, her repulsive 
 manners, her often unmanageable disposition, irri- 
 tated his temper, and inspired him with strong 
 antipathy; a feeling he was too apt to conceive 
 when his taste was offended or his will thwarted. 
 On the other hand, her misfortunes constituted a 
 strong claim on his forbearance and compassion — 
 
78 VILLETTE. 
 
 such a claim as it was not in his nature to deny ; 
 hence resulted almost daily drawn battles between 
 impatience and disgust on the one hand, pity and a 
 sense of justice on the other; in which, to his credit 
 be it said, it was very seldom that the former feelings 
 prevailed : when they did, however, M. Paul showed 
 a phase of character which had its terrors. His 
 passions were strong, his aversions and attach- 
 ments alike vivid ; the force he exerted in holding 
 both in check, by no means mitigated an observer's 
 sense of their vehemence. With such tendencies, it 
 may well be supposed he often excited in ordinary 
 minds fear and dislike ; yet it was an error to fear 
 him : nothing drove him so nearly frantic as the 
 tremor of an apprehensive and distrustful spirit; 
 nothing soothed him like confidence tempered with 
 gentleness. To evince these sentiments, however, re- 
 quired a thorough comprehension of his nature ; and 
 his nature was of an order rarely comprehended. 
 
 "How did you get on with Marie Broc?" he 
 asked, after some minutes' silence. 
 
 " Monsieur, I did my best ; but it was terrible to 
 be alone with her ! " 
 
 " You have, then, a weak heart ! . You lack cour- 
 age; and, perhaps, charity. Yours are not the 
 
THE CLEOPATRA. ?9 
 
 qualities which might constitute a Sister of 
 Mercy." 
 
 [He was a religious little man, in his way : the 
 self-denying and self-sacrificing part of the Catholic 
 religion commanded the homage of his soul.] 
 
 " I don't know, indeed : I took as good care of 
 her as I could ; but when her aunt came to fetch her 
 away, it was a great relief." 
 
 " Ah ! you are an egotist. There are women who 
 have nursed hospitals-full of similar unfortunates. 
 You could not do that ? " 
 
 " Could Monsieur do it himself? " 
 
 " Women who are worthy the name ought infi- 
 nitely to surpass our coarse, fallible, self-indulgent 
 sex, in the power to perform such duties." 
 
 " I washed her, I kept her clean, I fed her, I tried 
 to amuse her ; but she made mouths at me instead 
 of speaking." 
 
 "You think you did great things?" 
 
 " No ; but as great as I could do." 
 
 " Then limited are your powers, for in tending one 
 idiot, you fell sick." 
 
 " Not with that, monsieur ; I had a nervous fever : 
 my mind was ill." 
 
 " Vraiment ! Vous valez peu de chose. You are 
 
80 VILLETTE. 
 
 not cast in an heroic mould ; your courage will not 
 avail to sustain you in solitude j it merely gives you 
 the temerity to gaze with sang-froid at pictures of 
 Cleopatra." 
 
 It would have been easy to show anger at the 
 teasing, hostile tone of the little man. I had never 
 been angry with him yet, however, and had no pre- 
 sent disposition to begin. 
 
 " Cleopatra ! " I repeated, quietly. " Monsieur, too, 
 has been looking at Cleopatra ; what does he think 
 of her?" 
 
 " Cela ne vaut rien," he responded. " line femme 
 superbe — une taille d'imperatrice, des formes de 
 Junon, mais une personne dont je ne voudrais ni 
 pour femme, ni pour fille, ni pour sceur. Aussi vous 
 ne jeterez plus un seul coup d' ceil de sa cote." 
 
 " But I have looked at her a great many times 
 while Monsieur has been talking : I can see her 
 quite well from this corner." 
 
 " Turn to the wall and study your four pictures 
 of a woman's life." 
 
 " Excuse me, M. Paul ; they are too hideous : 
 but if you admire them, allow me to vacate my 
 seat and leave you to their contemplation." 
 
 " Mademoiselle," he said, grimacing a half-smile, 
 
THE CLEOPATRA. 81 
 
 or what he intended for a smile, though it was but 
 a grim and hurried manifestation. " You nurs- 
 lings of Protestantism astonish me. You un- 
 guarded Englishwomen walk calmly amidst red-hot 
 ploughshares and escape burning. I believe, if 
 some of you were thrown into Nebuchadnezzar's 
 hottest furnace, you would issue forth untraversed 
 by the smell of fire." 
 
 " Will Monsieur have the goodness to move an 
 inch to one side?" 
 
 "How! At what are you gazing now? You 
 are not recognizing an acquaintance amongst that 
 group of jeunes gens ?" 
 
 " I think so Yes, I see there a person I 
 
 know." 
 
 In fact, I had caught a glimpse of a head too 
 pretty to belong to any other than the redoubted 
 Colonel de Hamal. What a very finished, highly- 
 polished little pate it was ! What a figure, so trim 
 and natty ! What womanish feet and hands ! 
 How daintily he held a glass to one of his 
 optics ! with what admiration he gazed upon the 
 Cleopatra ! and then, how engagingly he tittered and 
 whispered a friend at his elbow ! Oh, the man of 
 sense ! Oh, the refined gentleman of superior taste 
 
 VOL. I'. g 
 
82 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 and tact ! I observed him for about ten minutes, 
 and perceived that he was exceedingly taken with 
 this dusk and portly Venus of the Nile. So much 
 was I interested in his bearing, so absorbed in 
 divining his character by his looks and movements, 
 I temporarily forgot M. Paul ; in the interim a 
 group came between that gentleman and me; or 
 possibly his scruples might have received another 
 and worse shock from my present abstrac- 
 tion, causing him to withdraw voluntarily : at 
 any rate, when I again looked round, he was 
 gone. 
 
 My eye, pursuant of the search, met not him, 
 but another and dissimilar figure, well seen amidst 
 the crowd, for the height as well as the port 
 lent each its distinction. This way came Dr. John, 
 in visage, in shape, in hue, as unlike the dark, 
 acerb, and caustic little professor, as the fruit of the 
 Hesperides might be unlike the sloe in the wild 
 thicket ; as the high-couraged but tractable Arabian 
 is unlike the rude and stubborn " sheltie." He was 
 looking for me, but had not yet explored the 
 corner where the schoolmaster had just put me. I 
 remained quiet ; yet another minute I would watch* 
 
 He approached tie Hamal ; he paused near him ; 
 
THE CLEOPATRA. 83 
 
 I thought he had a pleasure in looking over his 
 head ; Dr. Bretton, too, gazed on the Cleopatra. I 
 doubt if it were to his taste: he did not simper 
 like the little Count; his mouth looked fastidious, 
 his eye cool; without demonstration he stepped 
 aside, leaving room for others to approach. I saw 
 now that he was waiting, and, rising, I joined him. 
 
 We took one turn round the gallery ; with 
 Graham it was very pleasant to take such a turn. 
 I always liked dearly to hear what he had to say 
 about either pictures or books ; because, without 
 pretending to be a connoisseur, he always spoke 
 his thought, and that was sure to be fresh : very 
 often it was also just and pithy. It was pleasant 
 also to tell him some things he did not know — he 
 listened so kindly, so teachably; unformalized by 
 scruples lest so to bend his bright handsome head, 
 to o-ather a woman's rather obscure and stammering 
 explanation, should emperil the dignity of his 
 manhood. And when he communicated informa- 
 tion in return, it was with a lucid intelligence that 
 left all his words clear graven on the memory : 
 no explanation of his giving, no fact of his narrating, 
 did 1 ever forget. 
 
 As we left the gallery, I asked him what he 
 
84 VILLETTE. 
 
 thought of the Cleopatra (after making him laugh 
 by telling him how Professor Emanuel had sent me 
 to the right-about, and taking him to see the sweet 
 series of pictures recommended to my attention.) 
 
 "Pooh!" said he, "My mother is a better- 
 looking woman. I heard some French fops, 
 yonder, designating her as ' le type du voluptueux ;' 
 if so, I can only say, 'le voluptueux' is little to my 
 liking. Compare that mulatto with Ginevra ! " 
 
THE CONCERT. 85 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE CONCERT. 
 
 One morning, Mrs. Bretton, coming promptly 
 into my room, desired me to open my drawers 
 and show her my dresses; which I did, without 
 a word. 
 
 " That will do," said she, when she had turned 
 them over. " You must have a new one." 
 
 She went out. She returned presently with a 
 dress-maker. She had me measured. " I mean," 
 said she, "to follow my own taste, and to have 
 my own way in this little matter." 
 
 Two days after came home — a pink dress ! 
 
 "That is not for me," I said, hurriedly, feeling 
 that I would almost as soon clothe myself in the 
 costume of a Chinese lady of rank. 
 
 "We shall see whether it is for you or not," 
 
86 VILLETTE. 
 
 rejoined my godmother, adding with her resistless 
 decision. " Mark my words. You will wear it 
 this very evening." 
 
 I thought I should not: I thought no human 
 force should avail to put me into it. A pink 
 dress ! I knew it not. It knew not me. I had not 
 proved it. 
 
 My godmother went on to decree that I was to 
 go with her and Graham to a concert that same 
 night : which concert, she explained, was a grand 
 affair to be held in the large salle, or hall of the 
 principal musical society. The most advanced of 
 the pupils of the Conservatoire were to perform : 
 it was to be followed by a lottery " au benefice des 
 pauvres ; " and to crown all, the King, Queen, and 
 Prince of Labassecour were to be present. Graham, 
 in sending tickets, had enjoined attention to costume 
 as a compliment due to royalty : he also recom- 
 mended punctual readiness by seven o'clock. 
 
 About six, I was ushered up-stairs. Without any 
 force at all, I found myself led and influenced by 
 another's will, unconsulted, unpersuaded, quietly 
 over-ruled. In short the pink dress went on, 
 softened by some drapery of black lace. I was 
 pronounced to be en grande tenue, and requested 
 
THE CONCERT. 87 
 
 to look in the glass. I did so with some fear and 
 trembling ; with more fear and trembling, I turned 
 away. Seven o'clock struck ; Dr. Bretton was 
 come ; my godmother and I went down. She 
 was clad in brown velvet ; as I walked in her 
 shadow, how I envied her those folds of grave, 
 dark majesty ! Graham stood in the drawing- 
 room doorway. 
 
 " I do hope he will not think I have been decking 
 myself out to draw attention," was my uneasy 
 aspiration. 
 
 " Here, Lucy, are some flowers/' said he, giving 
 me a bouquet. He took no further notice of my 
 dress than was conveyed in a kind smile and satis- 
 fied nod, which calmed at once my sense of shame 
 and fear of ridicule. For the rest, the dress was 
 made with extreme simplicity, guiltless of flounce 
 or furbelow ; it was but the light fabric and bright 
 tint which scared me, and since Graham found in 
 it nothing absurd, my own eye consented soon to 
 become reconciled. 
 
 I suppose people who go every night to places 
 of public amusement, can hardly enter into the 
 fresh gala feeling with which an opera or a concert 
 is enjoyed by those for whom it is a rarity. I am 
 
88 VILLETTE. 
 
 not sure that I expected great pleasure from the 
 concert, having but a very vague notion of its 
 nature, but I liked the drive there well. The snug 
 comfort of the close carriage on a cold though fine 
 night, the pleasure of setting out with companions 
 so cheerful and friendly, the sight of the stars 
 glinting fitfully through the trees as we rolled 
 along the avenue ; then the freer burst of the 
 night-sky when we issued forth to the open chaus- 
 see, the passage through the city gates, the lights 
 there burning, the guards there posted, the pre- 
 tence of inspection to which we there submitted, 
 and which amused us so much — all these small 
 matters had for me, in their novelty, a peculiar 
 exhilarating charm. How much of it lay in the 
 atmosphere of friendship diffused about me, I 
 know not : Dr. John and his mother were both in 
 their finest mood, contending animatedly with each 
 other the whole way, and as frankly kind to me as 
 if I had been of their kin. 
 
 Our way lay through some of the best streets of 
 Villette, streets brightly lit, and far more lively now 
 than at high noon. How brilliant seemed the 
 shops ! How glad, gay, and abundant flowed the 
 tide of life along the broad pavement! While I 
 
THE CONCERT. 89 
 
 looked, the thought of the Rue Fossette came 
 across me — of the walled-in garden and school- 
 house, and of the dark, vast " classes," where, as at 
 this very hour, it was my wont to wander all 
 solitary, gazing at the stars through the high, 
 Windless windows, and listening to the distant 
 voice of the reader in the refectory, monotonously 
 exercised upon the "lecture pieuse." Thus must 
 I soon again listen and wander ; and this shadow 
 of the future stole with timely sobriety across the 
 radiant present. 
 
 By this time we had got into a current of car- 
 riages all tending in one direction, and soon the 
 front of a great illuminated building blazed before 
 us. Of what I should see within this building, I 
 had, as before intimated, but an imperfect idea ; for 
 no place of public entertainment had it ever been 
 my lot to enter yet. 
 
 We alighted under a portico where there was a 
 great bustle and a great crowd, but I do not dis- 
 tinctly remember further details, until I found 
 myself mounting a majestic staircase wide and 
 easy of ascent, deeply and softly carpeted with 
 crimson, leading up to great doors closed solemnly, 
 and whose panels were also crimson-clothed. 
 
90 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 I hardly noticed by what magic these doors were 
 made to roll back — Dr. John managed these points ; 
 roll back they did, however, and within was dis- 
 closed a hall — grand, wide, and high, whose sweep- 
 ing circular walls, and domed hollow ceiling, seemed 
 to me all dead gold (thus with nice art was it stain- 
 ed), relieved by cornicing, fluting and garlandry, 
 either bright," like gold burnished, or snow-white, 
 like alabaster, or white and gold mingled in wreaths 
 of gilded leaves and spotless lilies : wherever dra- 
 pery hung, wherever carpets were spread, or 
 cushions placed, the sole colour employed was 
 deep crimson. Pendant from the dome, flamed 
 a mass that dazzled me — a mass, I thought, of 
 rock - crystal, | sparkling with facets, streaming 
 with drops, ablaze with stars, and gorgeously 
 tinged with dews of gems dissolved, or fragments 
 of rainbows shivered. It was only the chandelier, 
 reader, but for me it seemed] the work of eastern 
 genii : I almost looked to see if a huge, dark cloudy 
 hand — that of the Slave of the Lamp — were not 
 hovering in the lustrous and "perfumed atmosphere 
 of the cupola, guarding its wondrous treasure. 
 
 We moved on — I was not at all conscious whither 
 — but at some turn we suddenly encountered ano- 
 
THE CONCERT. 91 
 
 ther party approaching from the opposite direction. 
 I just now see that group, as it flashed upon me for 
 one moment. A handsome middle-aged lady in 
 dark velvet ; a gentleman who might be her son — 
 the best face, the finest figure, I thought, I had 
 ever seen ; a third person in a pink dress and black 
 lace mantle. 
 
 I noted them all — the third person as well as the 
 other two — and for the fraction of a moment, be- 
 lieved them all strangers, thus receiving an impartial 
 impression of their appearance. But the impression 
 was hardly felt and not fixed, before the conscious- 
 ness that I faced a great mirror, filling a compart- 
 ment between two pillars, dispelled it : the party was 
 our own party. Thus for the first, and perhaps 
 only time in my life, I enjoyed the " giftie" of seeing 
 myself as others see me. No need to dwell on the 
 result. It brought a jar of discord, a pang of 
 regret ; it was not flattering, yet, after all, I ought 
 to be thankful : it might have been worse. 
 
 At last, we were seated in places commanding a 
 good general view of that vast and dazzling, but warm 
 and cheerful hall. Already it was filled, and filled 
 with a splendid assemblage. I do not know that 
 the women were very beautiful, but their dresses 
 
92 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 were so perfect ; and foreigners, even such as are 
 ungraceful in domestic privacy, seem to possess 
 the art of appearing graceful in public : however 
 blunt and boisterous those every-day and home 
 movements connected with peignoir and papillotes, 
 there is a slide, a bend, a carriage of the head and 
 arms, a mien of the mouth and eyes, kept nicely in 
 reserve for gala use — always brought out with the 
 grande toilette, and duly put on with the 
 " parure." 
 
 Some fine forms there were here and there, 
 models of a peculiar style of beauty ; a style, I 
 think, never seen in England : a solid, firm-set, 
 sculptural style. These shapes have no angles: a 
 caryatid in marble is almost as flexible ; a Phidian 
 goddess is not more perfect in a certain still and 
 stately sort. They. have such features as the Dutch 
 painters give to their madonnas : low-country classic 
 features, regular but round, straight but stolid ; and 
 for their depth of expressionless calm, of passionless 
 peace, a polar snow-field could alone offer a type. 
 Women of this order need no ornament, and they 
 seldom wear any ; the smooth hair, closely braided, 
 supplies a sufficient contrast to the smoother cheek 
 and brow ; the dress cannot be too simple ; the 
 
THE CONCERT. 93 
 
 rounded arm and perfect neck require neither 
 bracelet nor chain. 
 
 With one of these beauties I once had the honour 
 and rapture to be perfectly acquainted : the inert 
 force of the deep, settled love she bore herself, was 
 wonderful ; it could only be surpassed by her 
 proud impotency to care for any other living thing. 
 Of blood, her cool veins conducted no flow ; 
 placid lymph filled and almost obstructed her 
 arteries. 
 
 Such a Juno as I have described, sat full in our 
 view — a sort of mark for all eyes, and quite con- 
 scious that so she was, but proof to the magnetic 
 influence of gaze or glance : cold, rounded, blonde, 
 and beauteous, as the white column, capitalled 
 with gilding, which rose at her side. 
 
 Observing that Dr. John's attention was much 
 drawn towards her, I entreated him in a low voice 
 "for the love of heaven to shield well his heart. 
 You need not fall in love with that lady," I said, 
 " because, I tell you before-hand, you might die at 
 her feet, and she would not love you again." 
 
 " Very well," said he, " and how do you know 
 that the spectacle of her grand insensibility might 
 not with me be the strongest stimulus to homage? 
 
94 VILLETTE. 
 
 The sting of desperation is, I think, a wonderful 
 irritant to my emotions : but (shrugging his 
 shoulders) you know nothing about these things ; 
 I'll address myself to my mother. Mama, I'm in a 
 dangerous way." 
 
 " As if that interested me ! " said Mrs. Bretton. 
 
 " Alas ! the cruelty of my lot ! " responded her 
 son. " Never man had a more unsentimental mother 
 than mine : she never seems to think that such 
 a calamity can befall her as a daughter-in- 
 law." 
 
 " If I don't, it is not for want of having that same 
 calamity held over my head : you have threatened 
 me with it for the last ten years. ' Mama, I am 
 going to be married soon ! ' was the cry before you 
 were well out of jackets." 
 
 " But, mother, one of these days it will be 
 realized. All of a sudden, when you think you are 
 most secure, I shall go forth like Jacob or Esau, or 
 any other patriarch, and take me a wife : perhaps of 
 these which are of the daughters of the land." 
 
 " At your peril, John Graham ! that is all." 
 
 "This mother of mine means me to be an old 
 bachelor. What a jealous old lady it is! But now 
 just look at that splendid creature in the pale blue 
 
THE CONCERT. 95 
 
 satin dress, and hair of paler brown, with ' reflets 
 satines ' as those of her robe. Would you nof feel 
 proud, mania, if I were to bring that goddess 
 home some day, and introduce her to you as 
 Mrs. Bretton, junior?" 
 
 " You will bring no goddess to La Terrasse : that 
 little chateau will not contain two mistresses ; es- 
 pecially if the second be of the height, bulk, and 
 circumference of that mighty doll in wood and 
 wax, and kid and satin." 
 
 " Mama, she would fill your blue chair so 
 admirably ! " 
 
 " Fill my chair ? I defy the foreign usurper ! a 
 rueful chair should it be for her : but hush, John 
 Graham ! Hold your tongue, and use your eyes." 
 
 During the above skirmish, the hall which, I had 
 thought, seemed full at our entrance, continued to 
 admit party after party, until the semicircle before 
 the stage presented one dense mass of heads, 
 sloping from floor to ceiling. The stage, too, or 
 rather the wide temporary platform, larger than any 
 stage, desert half an hour since, was now overflow- 
 ing with life; round two grand pianos, placed 
 about the centre, a white flock of young girls, the 
 pupils of the Conservatoire, had noiselessly poured. 
 
96 VILLETTE. 
 
 I had noticed their gathering, while Graham and 
 his mother were engaged in discussing the belle in 
 blue satin, and had watched with interest the process 
 of arraying and marshalling them. Two gentlemen, 
 in each of whom I recognized an acquaintance, 
 officered this virgin troop. One, an artistic looking 
 man, bearded, and with long hair, was a noted 
 pianiste, and also the first music teacher in Villette; 
 he attended twice a week at Madame Beck's pen- 
 sionat, to give lessons to the few pupils whose 
 parents were rich enough to allow their daughters 
 the privilege of his instructions ; his name was 
 M. Josef Emanuel, and he was half-brother to 
 M. Paul : which potent personage was now visible in 
 the person of the second gentleman. 
 
 M. Paul amused me; I smiled to myself as I 
 watched him, he seemed so thoroughly in his 
 element — standing conspicuous in presence of a 
 wide and grand assemblage, arranging, restrain- 
 ing, over-aweing about one hundred young ladies. 
 He was, too, so perfectly in earnest — so energetic, 
 so intent, and, above all, so absolute : and yet what 
 business had he there ? What had he to do with 
 music or the Conservatoire — he who could hardly 
 distinguish one note from another 1 I knew that it 
 
THE CONCERT. 97 
 
 was his love of display and authority which had 
 brought him there — a love not offensive, only because 
 so naive. It presently became obvious that his 
 brother, M. Josef, was as much under his control 
 as were the girls themselves. Never was such a 
 little hawk of a man as that M. Paul ! Ere long, 
 some noted singers and musicians dawned upon the 
 platform : as these stars rose, the comet-like pro- 
 fessor set. Insufferable to him were all notorieties 
 and celebrities : where he could not outshine, he fled. 
 
 And now all was prepared : but one compartment 
 of the hall waited to be filled — a compartment 
 covered with crimson, like the grand staircase and 
 doors, furnished with stuffed and cushioned benches, 
 ranged on each side of two red regal chairs, placed 
 solemnly under a canopy. 
 
 A signal was given, the doors rolled back, the 
 assembly stood up, the orchestra burst out, and, to 
 the welcome of a choral burst, enter the King, 
 the Queen, the Court of Labassecour. 
 
 Till then, I had never set eyes on living king or 
 queen ; it may consequently be conjectured how I 
 strained my powers of vision to take in these spe- 
 cimens of European royalty. By whomsoever 
 majesty is beheld for the first time, there will always 
 
 vol. it. H 
 
98 VILLETTE. 
 
 be experienced a vague surprise bordering on disap- 
 pointment, that the same does not appear seated, en 
 permanence, on a throne, bonneted with a crown, 
 and furnished, as to the hand, with a sceptre. Look- 
 ing out for a king and queen, and seeing only 
 a middle-aged soldier and a rather young lady, I 
 felt half cheated, half pleased. 
 
 Well do I recall that King — a man of fifty, a 
 little bowed, a little gray : there was no face in all 
 that assembly which resembled his. I had never 
 read, never been told anything of his nature or his 
 habits; and at first the strong hieroglyphics 
 graven as with iron stylet on his brow, round his 
 eyes, beside his mouth, puzzled and baffled instinct. 
 Ere long, however, if I did not know, at least I felt, 
 the meaning of those characters written without 
 hand. There sat a silent sufferer — a nervous, 
 melancholy man. Those eyes had looked on the 
 visits of a certain ghost — had long waited the 
 comings and goings of that strangest spectre, 
 Hypochondria. Perhaps he saw her now on that 
 stage, over against him, amidst all that brilliant 
 throng. Hypochondria has that wont, to rise in the 
 midst of thousands — dark as Doom, pale as Malady, 
 and well nigh strong as Death. Her comrade 
 
THE CONCERT. i)V 
 
 and victim thinks to be happy one moment — " Not 
 so," says she ; " I come." And she freezes the blood 
 in his heart, and beclouds the light in his eye. 
 
 Some might say it was the foreign crown pressing 
 the King's brows which bent them to that peculiar 
 and painful fold ; some might quote the effects of 
 early bereavement. Something there might be of 
 both these ; but these as embittered by that darkest 
 foe of humanity — constitutional melancholy. The 
 Queen, his wife, knew this : it seemed to me, the 
 reflection of her husband's grief lay, a subduing 
 shadow, on her own benignant face. A mild, 
 thoughtful, graceful woman that princess seemed ; 
 not beautiful, not at all like the women of solid 
 charms and marble feelings described a page or two 
 since. Hers was a somewhat slender shape ; her 
 features, though distinguished enough, were too 
 suggestive of reigning dynasties and royal j lines 
 to give unqualified pleasure. The expression 
 clothing that profile was agreeable in the present 
 instance ; but you could not avoid connecting it 
 with remembered effigies, where similar lines 
 appeared, under phase ignoble ; feeble, or sensual, 
 or cunning, as the case might be. The Queen's 
 eye, however, was her own ; and pity, goodness, 
 
100 VILLETTE. 
 
 sweet sympathy, blessed it with divinest light. 
 She moved no sovereign, but a lady — kind, loving, 
 elegant. Her little son, the Prince of Labassecour, 
 and young Due de Dindonneau, accompanied her : 
 he leaned on his mother's knee ; and, ever and anon, 
 in the course of that evening, I saw her observant 
 of the monarch at her side, conscious of his be- 
 clouded abstraction, and desirous to rouse him from 
 it by drawing his attention to their son. She often 
 bent her head to listen to the boy's remarks, and 
 would then smilingly repeat them to his sire. The 
 moody King started, listened, smiled, but invariably 
 relapsed as soon as his good angel ceased speaking. 
 Full mournful and significant was that spectacle! 
 Not the less so because, both for the aristocracy 
 and the honest bourgeoisie of Labassecour, its 
 peculiarity seemed to be wholly invisible : I could 
 not discover that one soul present was either struck 
 or touched. 
 
 With the King and Queen had entered their court, 
 comprising two or three foreign ambassadors ; and 
 with them came the elite of the foreigners then 
 resident in Villette. These took possession of the 
 crimson benches ; the ladies were seated ; most 
 of the men remained standing : their sable rank, 
 
THE CONCERT. 101 
 
 lining the back ground, looked like a dark foil to 
 the splendour displayed in front. Nor was this 
 splendour without varying light and shade and 
 gradation : the middle distance was filled with 
 matrons in velvets and satins, in plumes and gems ; 
 the benches in the foreground, to the Queen's right 
 hand, seemed devoted exclusively to young girls, 
 the flower — perhaps, I should rather say, the bud — 
 of Villette aristocracy. Here were no jewels, no 
 head-dresses, no velvet pile or silken sheen : purity, 
 simplicity, and aerial grace reigned in that virgin 
 band. Young heads simply braided, and fair forms 
 (I was going to write sylph forms, but that would 
 have been quite untrue : several of these " jeunes 
 filies," who had not numbered more than sixteen or 
 seventeen years, boasted contours as robust and 
 solid as those of a stout Englishwoman of five-and- 
 twenty) — fair forms robed in white, or pale rose, or 
 placid blue, suggested thoughts of heaven and 
 angels. I knew a couple, at least, of these " rose 
 et blanches" specimens of humanity. Here was a 
 pair of Madame Beck's late pupils — Mesdemoiselles 
 Mathilde and Angelique : pupils, who, during their 
 last year at school, ought to have been in the first 
 class, but whose brains had never got them beyond 
 
102 VILLETTE. 
 
 the second division. In English, thev had been 
 under my own charge, and hard work it was to get 
 them to translate rationally a page of " The Vicar 
 of Wakefield." Also during three months I had 
 one of them for my vis-a-vis at table, and the 
 quantity of household bread, butter, and stewed 
 fruit, she would habitually consume at " second 
 dejeuner" was a real world's wonder — to be ex- 
 ceeded only by the fact of her actually pocketing 
 slices she could not eat. Here be truths — whole- 
 some truths, too. 
 
 I knew another of these seraphs — the prettiest, 
 or, at any rate, the least demure and hypocri- 
 tical-looking of the lot: she was seated* by the 
 daughter of an English peer, also an honest, 
 though haughty-looking girl ; both had entered in 
 the suite of the British embassy. She {i.e. my 
 acquaintance) had a slight pliant figure, not at 
 all like the forms of the foreign damsels ; her hair, 
 too, was not close-braided, like a shell or a skull- 
 cap of satin ; it looked like hair, and waved from 
 her head, long, curled, and flowing. She chatted 
 away volubly, and seemed full of a light-headed 
 sort of satisfaction with herself and her position. 
 I did not look at Dr. Bretton ; but I knew that 
 
THE CONCERT. 103 
 
 he, too, saw Ginevra Fanshawe : be had become so 
 quiet, he answered so briefly his mother's remarks, 
 he so often suppressed a sigh. Why should he 
 sigh? He had confessed a taste for the pursuit 
 of love under difficulties ; here was full gratification 
 for that taste. His lady-love beamed upon him 
 from a sphere above his own : he could not come 
 near her; he was not certain that he could win 
 from her a look. I watched to see if she would so 
 far favour him. Our seat was not far from the 
 crimson benches ; we must inevitably be seen 
 thence, by eyes so quick and roving as Miss Fan- 
 shawe's, and very soon those optics of hers were 
 upon us i at least, upon Dr. and Mrs. Bretton. I 
 kept rather in the shade and out of sight, not wish- 
 ing to be immediately recognized : she looked quite 
 steadily at Dr. John, and then she raised a glass to 
 examine his mother; a minute or two afterwards, 
 she laughingly whispered her neighbour ; upon the 
 performance commencing, her rambling attention 
 was attracted to the platform. 
 
 On the concert I need not dwell ; the reader 
 would not care to have my impressions thereanent : 
 and, indeed, it would not be worth while to record 
 them, as they were the impressions of an ignorance 
 
104 VILLETTE. 
 
 crasse. The young ladies of the Conservatoire, 
 being very much frightened, made rather a tre- 
 mulous exhibition on the two grand pianos. M. 
 Josef Emanuel stood by them while they played ; 
 but he had not the tact or influence of his kinsman, 
 who, under similar circumstances, would certainly 
 have compelled pupils of his to demean themselves 
 with heroism and self-possession. M. Paul Avould 
 have placed the hysteric debutantes between two 
 fires — terror of the audience, and terror of himself — 
 and would have inspired them with the courage 
 of desperation, by making the latter terror incom- 
 parably the greater : M. Josef could not do this. 
 
 Following the white muslin pianistes, came a 
 fine, full-grown, sulky lady in white satin. She 
 sang. Her singing just affected me like the tricks 
 of a conjuror : I wondered how she did it — how 
 she made her voice run up and down, and cut such 
 marvellous capers ; but a simple Scotch melody, 
 played by a rude street minstrel, has often moved 
 me more deeply. 
 
 Afterwards stepped forth a gentleman, who, bend- 
 ing his body a good deal in the direction of the 
 King and Queen, and frequently [approaching his 
 white-gloved hand to the region of his heart, 
 
THE CONCERT. 105 
 
 vented a bitter outcry against a certain " fausse 
 Isabelle." I thought he seemed especially to 
 solicit the Queen's sympathy ; but, unless I am 
 egregiously mistaken, her Majesty lent her attention 
 rather with the calm of courtesy than the earnest- 
 ness of interest. This gentleman's state of mind 
 was very harrowing, and I was glad when he 
 wound up his musical exposition of the same. 
 
 Some rousing choruses struck me as the best 
 part of the evening's entertainment. There were 
 present, deputies from all the best provincial choral 
 societies; genuine, barrel-shaped, native Labasse- 
 couriens. These worthies gave voice without 
 mincing the matter : their hearty exertions had 
 at least this good result — the ear drank thence a 
 satisfying sense of power. 
 
 Through the whole performance — timid instru- 
 mental duets, conceited vocal solos, sonorous, 
 brass-lunged choruses — my attention gave but 
 one eye and one ear to the stage, the other being 
 permanently retained in the service of Dr. Bret- 
 ton : I could not forget him, nor cease to question 
 how he was feeling, what he was thinking, whe- 
 ther he was amused or the contrary. At last he 
 spoke. 
 
106 VILLETTE. 
 
 " And how do you like it all, Lucy ? You are 
 very quiet," he said, in his own cheerful tone. 
 
 " I am quiet," I said, " because I am so very, 
 very much interested : not merely with the music, 
 but with everything about me." 
 
 He then proceeded to make some further re- 
 marks, with so much equanimity and composure 
 that I began to think he had really not seen what 
 I had seen, and I whispered — 
 
 " Miss Fanshawe is here : have you noticed 
 her ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes ! and I observed that you noticed 
 her too." 
 
 " Is she come with Mrs. Cholmondeley, do you 
 think?" 
 
 " Mrs. Cholmondeley is there with a very grand 
 party. Yes : Ginevra was in her train ; and Mrs. 
 Cholmondeley was in Lady * * * 's train, who 
 was in the Queen's train. If this were not one of 
 the compact little minor European courts, whose 
 very formalities are little more imposing than 
 familiarities, and whose gala grandeur is but home- 
 liness in Sunday array, it would sound all very 
 fine." 
 
 " Ginevra saw you, I think ? " 
 
THE CONCERT. 107 
 
 " So do I think so. I have had my eye on her 
 several times since you withdrew yours ; and I 
 have had the honour of witnessing a little spectacle 
 which you were spared." 
 
 I did not ask what : I waited voluntary informa- 
 tion ; which was presently given. 
 
 " Miss Fanshawe," he said, " has a companion 
 with her — a lady of rank. I happen to know Lady 
 Sara by sight; her noble mother has called me 
 in professionally. She is a proud girl, but not in 
 the least insolent, and I doubt whether Ginevra 
 will have gained ground in her estimation by 
 making a butt of her neighbours." 
 
 " What neighbours ? " 
 
 " Merely myself and my mother. As to me it 
 is all very natural: nothing, I suppose, can be 
 fairer game than the young bourgeois doctor ; but 
 my mother? I never saw her ridiculed before. 
 Do you know, the curling lip, and sarcastically 
 levelled glass thus directed, gave me a most curious 
 sensation ? " 
 
 " Think nothing of it, Dr. John : it is not worth 
 while. If Ginevra were in a giddy mood, as she 
 is eminently to-night, she would make no scruple 
 of laughing at that mild, pensive Queen, or that 
 
108 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 melancholy King. She is not actuated by malevo- 
 lence, but sheer, heedless folly. To a feather- 
 brained school-girl nothing is sacred." 
 
 " But you forget : I have not been accustomed 
 to look on Miss Fanshawe in the light of a feather- 
 brained school-girl. Was she not my divinity — 
 the angel of my career? " 
 
 " Hem ! There was your mistake." 
 
 " To speak the honest truth, without any false 
 rant or assumed romance, there actually was a 
 moment, six months ago, when I thought her 
 divine. Do you remember our conversation about 
 the presents? I was not quite open with you in 
 discussing that subject : the warmth with which 
 you took it up amused me. By way of having the 
 full benefit of your lights, I allowed you to 
 think me more in the dark than I really was. It 
 was that test of the presents which first proved 
 Ginevra mortal. Still her beauty retained its 
 fascination : three days — three hours ago, I was 
 very much her slave. As she passed me to-night, 
 triumphant in beauty, my emotions did her homage; 
 but for one luckless sneer, I should yet be the 
 humblest of her servants. She might have scoffed at 
 me, and, while wounding, she would not soon have 
 
THE CONCERT. 109 
 
 alienated me : through myself, she could not in 
 ten years have done what, in a moment, she has 
 done through my mother." 
 
 He held his peace awhile. Never before had I 
 seen so much fire and so little sunshine in Dr. 
 John's blue eye, as just now. 
 
 "Lucy," he recommenced, " look well at my 
 mother, and say, without fear or favour, in what 
 light she now appears to you." 
 
 " As she always does, — an English, middle -class 
 gentlewoman ; well, though gravely dressed, habi- 
 tually independent of pretence, constitutionally 
 composed and cheerful." 
 
 " So she seems to me — bless her ! The merry 
 may laugh with mama, but the weak only will 
 laugh at her. She shall not be ridiculed, with my 
 consent at least ; nor without my — my scorn — my 
 antipathy — my " 
 
 He stopped : and it was time — for he was getting 
 excited — more it seemed than the occasion war- 
 ranted. I did not then know that he had witnessed 
 double cause for dissatisfaction with Miss Fan- 
 shawe. The glow of his complexion, the expansion 
 of his nostril, the bold curve which disdain gave 
 his well-cut under lip, showed him in a new and 
 
110 VILLETTE. 
 
 striking phase. Yet the rare passion of the 
 constitutionally suave and serene, is not a plea- 
 sant spectacle; nor did I like the sort of vindic- 
 tive thrill which passed through his strong young 
 frame. 
 
 " Do I frighten you, Lucy?" he asked. 
 
 " I cannot tell why you are so very angry." 
 
 "For this reason," he muttered in my ear: 
 " Ginevra is neither a pure angel nor a pure-minded 
 woman." 
 
 *' Nonsense ! you exaggerate : she has no great 
 harm in her." 
 
 " Too much for me. J can see where 'you are 
 blind. Now, dismiss the subject. Let me amuse 
 myself by teasing mama : I will assert that she is 
 flagging. Mama, pray rouse yourself." 
 
 " John, I will certainly rouse you, if you are 
 not better conducted. Will you and Lucy be silent, 
 that T may hear the singing ? " 
 
 They were then thundering in a chorus, under 
 cover of which all the previous dialogue had taken 
 place. 
 
 " You hear the singing, mama ! Now, I will 
 wager my studs — which are genuine — against your 
 paste brooch " 
 
THE CONCERT. Ill 
 
 "My paste brooch, Graham? Profane boy 1 
 you know that it is a stone of value." 
 
 " Oh ! that is one of your superstitions : you were 
 cheated in the business." 
 
 " I am cheated in fewer things than you imagine. 
 How do you happen to be acquainted with young 
 ladies of the court, John ? I have observed two of 
 tli em pay you no small attention during the last 
 half hour." 
 
 " I wish you would not observe them." 
 
 "Why not? Because one of them satirically 
 levels her eye-glass at me ? She is a pretty, silly 
 girl: but are you apprehensive that her titter will 
 discomfit the old lady?" 
 
 " The sensible, admirable old lady ! Mother, you 
 are better to me than ten wives yet." 
 
 " Don't be demonstrative, John, or I shall faint, 
 and you will have to carry me out; and if that 
 burden were laid upon you, you would reverse your 
 last speech, and exclaim, ' Mother, ten wives could 
 hardlv be worse to me than you are ! ' " 
 
 The concert over, the Lottery " au benefice des 
 Pauvres" came next: the interval between was one 
 
112 VILLETTE. 
 
 of general relaxation, and the pleasantest imaginable 
 stir and commotion. The white flock was cleared 
 from the platform ; a busy throng of gentlemen 
 crowded it instead, making arrangements for the 
 drawing; and amongst these — the busiest of all — 
 re-appeared that certain well-known form, not tall 
 but active, alive with the energy and movement of 
 three tall men. How M. Paul did work! How 
 he issued directions, and at the same time, set his 
 own shoulder to the wheel ! Half-a-dozen assist- 
 ants were at his beck to remove the pianos, &c. ; 
 no matter, he must add to their strength his own. 
 The redundancy of his alertness was half-vexing, 
 half-ludicrous : in my mind I both disapproved and 
 derided most of this fuss. Yet, in the midst of pre- 
 judice and annoyance, I could not, while watching, 
 avoid perceiving a certain not disagreeable naivete 
 in all he did and said; nor could I be blind to 
 certain vigorous characteristics of his physiognomy, 
 rendered conspicuous now by the contrast with a 
 throng of tamer faces : the deep, intent keenness of 
 his eye, the power of his forehead — pale, broad, and 
 full — the mobility of his most flexible mouth. He 
 lacked the calm of force, but its movement and its 
 fire he signally possessed. 
 
THE CONCERT. 113 
 
 Meantime the whole hall was in a stir ; most 
 people rose and remained standing, for a change ; 
 some walked about, all talked and laughed. The 
 crimson compartment presented a peculiarly ani- 
 mated scene. The long cloud of gentlemen, break- 
 ing into fragments, mixed with the rainbow line of 
 ladies ; two or three officer-like men approached 
 the King and conversed with him. The Queen, 
 leaving her chair, glided along the rank of young 
 ladies, who all stood up as she passed ; and to each 
 in turn I saw her vouchsafe some token of kindness 
 — a gracious word, look or smile. To the two pretty 
 English girls, Lady Sara and Ginevra Fanshawe, 
 she addressed several sentences ; as she left them, 
 both, and especially the latter, seemed to glow all 
 over with gratification, They were afterwards 
 accosted by several ladies, and a little circle of 
 gentlemen gathered round them ; amongst these — 
 the nearest to Ginevra — stood the Count de Hamal. 
 
 " This room is stiflingly hot ;" said Dr. Bretton, 
 rising with sudden impatience. " Lucy — mother — 
 will you come a moment to the fresh air?" 
 
 " Go with him Lucy ;" said Mrs. Bretton. " I 
 would rather keep my seat." 
 
 Willingly would I have kept mine also, but 
 
 VOL. II. I 
 
114 VILLETTE. 
 
 Graham's desire must take precedence of my own ; 
 I accompanied him. 
 
 We found the night-air keen ; or at least, I did : 
 he did not seem to feel it ; but it was very still, and 
 the star-sown sky spread cloudless. I was wrap- 
 ped in a fur shawl. We took some turns on the 
 pavement; in passing under a lamp, Graham en- 
 countered my eye. 
 
 " You look pensive, Lucy : is it on my ac- 
 count?" 
 
 " I was only fearing that you were grieved." 
 
 " Not at all : so be of good cheer — as I am. 
 Whenever I die, Lucy, my persuasion is that it 
 will not be of heart-complaint. I may be stung, 
 I may seem to droop for a time, but no pain or 
 malady of sentiment has yet gone through my 
 whole system. You have always seen me cheerful 
 at home ? " 
 
 " Generally." 
 
 " I am glad she laughed at my mother. I would 
 not give the old lady for a dozen beauties. That 
 sneer did me all the good in the world. Thank 
 you, Miss Fanshawe ! " And he lifted his hat from 
 his waved locks, and made a mock reverence. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " I thank her. She has made 
 
THE CONCERT. 115 
 
 me feel that nine parts in ten of my heart have 
 always been sound as a bell, and the tenth bled 
 from a mere puncture: a lancet-prick that will heal 
 in a trice." 
 
 " You are angry just now, heated and indignant ; 
 you will think and feel differently to-morrow." 
 
 " /heated and indignant ! You don't know me. 
 On the contrary, the heat is gone : I am cool, as 
 the night — which, by the way, may be too cool 
 for you. We will go back." 
 
 " Dr. John — this is a sudden change." 
 
 f" Not it : or if it be, there are good reasons for 
 it — two good reasons : I have told you one. But 
 now let us re-enter." 
 
 We did not easily regain our seats ; the lottery 
 was begun, and all was excited confusion ; crowds 
 blocked the sort of corridor along which we had to 
 pass : it was necessary to pause for a time. Hap- 
 pening to glance round— indeed I half fancied I 
 heard my name pronounced — I saw quite near, the 
 ubiquitous, the inevitable M. Paul. He was look- 
 ing at me gravely and intently : at me, or rather, 
 at my pink dress — sardonic comment on which 
 gleamed in his eye. Now it was his habit to in- 
 dulge in strictures on the dress, both of the teachers 
 
116 VILLETTE. 
 
 and pupils, at Madame Beck's — a habit which 
 the former, at least, held to be an offensive imper- 
 tinence : as yet I had not suffered from it — my 
 sombre daily attire not being calculated to attract 
 notice. I was in no mood to permit any new en- 
 croachment to-night : rather than accept his banter, 
 I would ignore his presence, and accordingly steadily 
 turned my face to the sleeve of Dr. John's coat ; 
 finding in that same black sleeve a prospect more 
 redolent of pleasure and comfort, more genial, 
 more friendly, I thought, than was offered by the 
 dark little Professor's unlovely visage. Dr. John 
 seemed unconsciously to sanction the preference 
 by looking down and saying in his kind voice, 
 
 " Ay, keep close to my side, Lucy : these crowd- 
 ing burghers are no respecters of persons." 
 
 I could not, however, be true to myself. Yielding 
 to some influence, mesmeric or otherwise — an in- 
 fluence unwelcome, displeasing, but effective — I 
 again glanced round to see if M. Paul was gone. 
 No, there he stood on the same spot, looking still, 
 but with a changed eye ; he had penetrated my 
 thought and read my wish to shun him. The mock- 
 ing but not ill-humoured gaze was turned to a 
 swarthy frown, and when I bowed, with a view to 
 
THE CONCERT. 117 
 
 conciliation, I got only the stiffest and sternest of 
 nods in return. 
 
 "Whom have you made angry, Lucy?" whis- 
 pered Dr. Bretton, smiling. " Who is that savage- 
 looking friend of yours?" 
 
 " One of the professors at Madame Beck's : a 
 very cross little man." 
 
 "He looks mighty cross just now: what have 
 you done to him? What is it all about? Ah, 
 Lucy, Lucy ! tell me the meaning of this." 
 
 " No mystery, I assure you. M. Emanuel is very 
 exigeant, and because I looked at your coat sleeve, 
 instead of curtseying and dipping to him, he thinks 
 I have failed in respect." 
 
 " The little " began Dr. John : I know not 
 
 what more he would have added, for at that moment 
 I was nearly thrown down amongst the feet of the 
 crowd. M. Paul had rudely pushed past, and was 
 elbowing his way with such utter disregard to the 
 convenience and security to all round him, that 
 a very uncomfortable pressure was the conse- 
 quence. 
 
 " I think he is what he himself would call 
 ' mechant,' " said Dr. Bretton. I thought so, 
 too. 
 
118 VILLETTE. 
 
 Slowly and with difficulty we made our way 
 along the passage, and at last regained our seats. 
 The drawing of the lottery lasted nearly an hour ; 
 it was an animating and amusing scene ; and as we 
 each held tickets, we shared in the alternations of 
 hope and fear raised hy each turn of the wheel. 
 Two little girls, of five and six years old, drew the 
 numbers ; and the prizes were duly proclaimed from 
 the platform. These prizes were numerous, though 
 of small value. It so fell out, that Dr. John and 
 I each gained one : mine was a cigar-case, his a 
 lady's head-dress — a most airy sort of blue and 
 silver turban, with a streamer of plumage on one 
 side, like a light snowy cloud. He was excessively 
 anxious to make an exchange; but I could not be 
 brought to hear reason, and to this day I keep my 
 cigar-case : it serves, when I look at it, to remind 
 me of old times, and one happy evening. 
 
 Dr. John, for his part, held his turban at arm's 
 length between his finger and thumb, and looked 
 at it with a mixture of reverence and embarrass- 
 ment highly provocative of laughter. The contem- 
 plation over, he was about coolly to deposit the 
 delicate fabric on the ground between his feet ; he 
 seemed to have no shadow of an idea of the treat- 
 
THE CONCERT. 119 
 
 ment or stowage it ought to receive : if his mother 
 had not come to the rescue, I think he would finally 
 have crushed it under his arm like an opera-hat ; 
 she restored it to the band-box whence it had issued. 
 Graham was quite cheerful all the evening, and 
 his cheerfulness seemed natural and unforced. His 
 demeanour, his look, is not easily described ; there 
 was something in it peculiar, and, in its way, 
 original. I read in it no common mastery of the 
 passions, and a fund of deep and healthy strength 
 which, without any exhausting effort, bore down 
 Disappointment and extracted her fang. His manner 
 now, reminded me of qualities I had noticed in him 
 when professionally engaged amongst the poor, the 
 guilty, and the suffering, in the Basse-Ville : he 
 looked at once determined, enduring, and sweet- 
 tempered. Who could help liking hiin 1 He be- 
 trayed no weakness which harassed all your feelings 
 with considerations as to how its faltering must be 
 propped ; from him broke no irritability which 
 startled calm and quenched mirth ; his lips let fall 
 no caustic that burned to the bone ; his eye shot no 
 morose shafts that went cold and rusty and venomed 
 through your heart : beside him was rest and refuge 
 — around him, fostering sunshine. 
 
120 VILLETTE. 
 
 And yet he had neither forgiven nor forgotten 
 Miss Fanshawe. Once angered, I doubt if Dr. 
 Bretton were to be soon propitiated — once alien- 
 ated, whether he were ever to be reclaimed. He 
 looked at her more than once ; not stealthily or 
 humbly, but with a movement of hardy, open ob- 
 servation. De Hamal was now a fixture beside 
 her ; Mrs. Cholmondeley sat near, and they and 
 she were wholly absorbed in the discourse, mirth, 
 and excitement, with which the crimson seats were 
 as much astir as any plebeian part of the hall. In 
 the course of some apparently animated discussion, 
 Ginevra once or twice lifted her hand and arm ; a 
 handsome bracelet gleamed upon the latter. I saw 
 that its gleam flickered in Dr. John's eye — quicken- 
 ing therein a derisive, ireful sparkle ; he laughed : — 
 
 " I think," he said, " I will lay my turban on my 
 wonted altar of offerings ; there, at any rate, it 
 would be certain to find favour : no grisette has a 
 more facile faculty of acceptance. Strange! for after 
 all, I know she is a girl of family. " 
 
 " But you don't know her education, Dr. John, '* 
 said I. " Tossed about all her life from one foreign 
 school to another, she may justly proffer the plea of 
 ignorance in extenuation of most of her faults. And 
 
THE CONCERT. 121 
 
 then, from what she says, I believe her father and 
 mother were brought up much as she has been 
 brought up." 
 
 " I always understood she had no fortune ; and 
 once I had pleasure in the thought, " said he. 
 
 " She tells me, " I answered, "that they are poor 
 at home ; she always speaks quite candidly on such 
 points : you never find her lying, as these foreigners 
 will often lie. Her parents have a large family : 
 they occupy such a station and possess such con- 
 nections as, in their opinion, demand display ; 
 stringent necessity of circumstances and inherent 
 thoughtlessness of disposition combined, have en- 
 gendered reckless unscrupulousness as to how they 
 obtain the means of sustaining a good appearance. 
 This is the state of things, and the only state of things 
 she has seen from childhood upwards. " 
 
 " I believe it — and I thought to mould her to 
 something better : but, Lucy, to speak the plain 
 truth, I have felt a new thing to-night, in look- 
 ing at her and De Hamal. I felt it before noticing 
 the impertinence directed at my mother. I saw a 
 look interchanged between them immediately after 
 their entrance, which threw a most unwelcome light 
 on my mind. " 
 
122 VILLETTE. 
 
 " How do you mean ? You have long been aware 
 of the flirtation they keep up ? " 
 
 " Ay, flirtation ! That might be an innocent girl- 
 ish wile to lure on the true lover ; but what I refer 
 to was not flirtation : it was a look marking mutual 
 and secret understanding — it was neither girlish nor 
 innocent. No woman, were she as beautiful as 
 Aphrodite, who could give or receive such a glance, 
 shall ever be sought in marriage by me : I would 
 rather wed a paysanne in a short petticoat and high 
 cap — and be sure that she was honest. " 
 
 I could not help smiling. I felt sure he now ex- 
 aggerated the case : Ginevra, I was certain, was 
 honest enough, with all her giddiness. I told him 
 so. He shook his head, and said he would not be 
 the man to trust her with his honour. 
 
 " The only thing," said I, "with which you may 
 safely trust her. She would unscrupulously damage 
 a husband's purse and property, recklessly try his 
 patience and temper : I don't think she would 
 breathe, or let another breathe, on his honour. " 
 
 " You are becoming her advocate,'' said he. " Do 
 you wish me to resume my old chains ? " 
 
 " No : I am glad to see you free, and trust that 
 free you will long remain. Yet be, at the same time, 
 just." 
 
THE CONCERT. 123 
 
 " I am so : just as Rhadamanthus, Lucy. When 
 once I am thoroughly estranged, I cannot help 
 being severe. But look ! the King and Queen are 
 rising. I like that Queen : she has a sweet counte- 
 nance. Mama, too, is excessively tired ; we shall 
 never get the old lady home if we stay longer. " 
 
 " I tired, John ? " cried Mrs. Bretton, looking at 
 least as animated and as wide-awake as her son, " I 
 would undertake to sit you out yet : leave us both 
 here till morning, and we should see which would 
 look the most jaded by sunrise. " 
 
 " I should not like to try the experiment ; for, in 
 truth, mama, you are the most unfading of ever- 
 greens, and the freshest of matrons. It must then 
 be on the plea of your son's delicate nerves and 
 fragile constitution that I found a petition for our 
 speedy adjournment. " 
 
 " Indolent young man ! You wish you were in 
 bed, no doubt ; and I suppose you must be humoured. 
 There is Lucy, too, looking quite done up. For 
 shame, Lucy ! At your age, a week of evenings-out 
 would not have made me a shade paler. Come 
 away, both of you ; and you may laugh at the old 
 lady as much as you please, but, for my part, I shall 
 take charge of the band-box and turban. " 
 
124 VILLETTE. 
 
 Which she did accordingly. I offered to relieve 
 her, but was shaken off with kindly contempt : my 
 godmother opined that I had enough to do to take 
 care of myself. Not standing on ceremony now, in 
 the midst of the gay " confusion worse confounded " 
 succeeding to the King and Queen's departure, 
 Mrs. Bretton preceded us, and promptly made us a 
 lane through the crowd. Graham followed, apos- 
 trophizing his mother as the most flourishing grisette 
 it had ever been his good fortune to see charged 
 with carriage of a band-box ; he also desired me to 
 mark her affection for the sky-blue turban, and an- 
 nounced his conviction that she intended one day to 
 wear it. 
 
 The night was now very cold and very dark, but 
 with little delay we found the carriage. Soon we 
 were packed in it, as warm and as snug as at a 
 fire-side ; and the drive home was, I think, still 
 pleasanter than the drive to the concert. Pleasant 
 it was, even though the coachman — having spent in 
 the shop of a " marchand de vin " a portion of the 
 time we passed at the concert — drove us along the 
 dark and solitary chaussee, far past the turn leading 
 down to La Terrasse ; we, who were occupied in 
 talking and laughing, not noticing the aberration — 
 
THE CONCERT. 125 
 
 till at last, Mrs. Bretton intimated that though she 
 had always thought the chateau a retired spot, she 
 did know it was situated at the world's end, as she 
 declared seemed now to be the case, for she believed 
 we had been an hour and a half en route, and had 
 not yet taken the turn down the avenue. 
 
 Then Graham looked out, and perceiving only 
 dim-spread fields, with unfamiliar rows of pollards 
 and limes ranged along their else invisible sunk- 
 fences, began to conjecture how matters were, and 
 calling a halt and descending, he mounted the box 
 and took the reins himself. Thanks to him, we 
 arrived safe at home about an hour and a half 
 beyond our time. 
 
 Martha had not forgotten us ; a cheerful fire was 
 burning, and a neat supper spread in the dining- 
 room : we were glad of both. The winter dawn 
 was actually breaking before we gained our cham- 
 bers. I took off my pink dress and lace mantle 
 with happier feelings than I had experienced in 
 putting them on. Not all, perhaps, who had shone 
 brightly arrayed at that concert could say the same ; 
 for not all had been satisfied with friendship — with 
 its calm comfort and modest hope. 
 
126 VILLETTE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 REACTION. 
 
 Yet three days, and then I must go hack to the 
 Pensionnat. I almost numbered the moments of 
 these days upon the clock ; fain would I have 
 retarded their flight j but they glided by while 
 I watched them : they were already gone while I 
 yet feared their departure. 
 
 " Lucy will not leave us to-day," said Mrs. 
 Bretton, coaxingly, at breakfast ; " she knows we 
 can procure a second respite." 
 
 " I would not ask for one if I might have it for 
 a word," said I. " I long to get the good-bye over, 
 and to be settled in the Rue Fossette again. I 
 must go this morning : I m ust go directly ; my 
 trunk is packed and corded." 
 
 It appeared, however, that my going depended 
 upon Graham ; he had said he would accompany 
 
REACTION. 127 
 
 me, and it so fell out that he was engaged all day, 
 and only returned home at dusk. Then ensued a 
 little combat of words. Mrs. Bretton and her 
 son pressed me to remain one night more. I 
 could have cried, so irritated and eager was I to 
 be gone. I longed to leave them as the criminal 
 on the scaffold longs for the axe to descend : that 
 is, I wished the pang over. How much I wished it, 
 they could not tell. On these points, mine was a 
 state of mind out of their experience. 
 
 It was dark when Dr. John handed me from the 
 carriage at Madame Beck's door. The lamp above 
 was lit ; it rained a November drizzle, as it had 
 rained all day : the lamplight gleamed on the wet 
 pavement. Just such a night was it as that on 
 which, not a year ago, I had first stopped at this 
 very threshold ; just similar was the scene. I 
 remembered the very shapes of the paving-stones 
 which I had noted with idle eye, while, with a thick- 
 beating heart, I waited the unclosing of that door 
 at which I stood — a solitary and a suppliant. On 
 that night, too, I had briefly met him who now 
 stood with me. Had I ever reminded him of 
 that rencontre, or explained it? I had not, nor 
 ever felt the inclination to do so : it was a pleasant 
 
VILLETTE. 
 
 thought, laid by in my own mind, and best kept 
 there. 
 
 Graham rung the bell. The door was instantly 
 opened, for it was just that period of the evening 
 when the half-boarders took their departure — con- 
 sequently, Rosine was on the alert. 
 
 " Don't come in," said I to him ; but he stepped 
 a moment into the well-lighted vestibule. I had 
 not wished him to see that " the water stood in my 
 eyes," for his was too kind a nature ever to be 
 needlessly shown such signs of sorrow. He always 
 wished to heal — to relieve — when, physician as he 
 was, neither cure nor alleviation were, perhaps, in 
 his power. 
 
 " Keep up your courage, Lucy. Think of my 
 mother and myself as true friends. We will not 
 forget you." 
 
 " Nor will I forget you, Dr. John." 
 
 My trunk was now brought in. We had 
 shaken hands ; he had turned to go, but he was 
 not satisfied : he had not done or said enough to 
 content his generous impulses. 
 
 " Lucy," — stepping after me — " shall you feel 
 very solitary here 1 " 
 
 " At first I shall." 
 
REACTION. 129 
 
 " Well, my mother will soon call to see you ; and, 
 meantime, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll write 
 — just any cheerful nonsense that comes into my 
 head— shall I?" 
 
 "Good, gallant heart!" thought I to myself; 
 but I shook my head, smiling, and said, " Never 
 think of it: impose on yourself no such task. 
 You write to me! — you'll not have time." 
 
 " Oh ! I will find or make time. Good-bye ! " 
 
 He was gone. The heavy door crashed to : 
 the axe had fallen — the pang was experienced. 
 
 Allowing myself no time to think or feel — 
 swallowing tears as if they had been wine — I 
 passed to madame's sitting-room to pay the neces- 
 sary visit of ceremony and respect. She received 
 me with perfectly well-acted cordiality — was even 
 demonstrative, though brief, in her welcome. In 
 ten minutes I was dismissed. From the salle a 
 manger I proceeded to the refectory, where pupils 
 and teachers were now assembled for evening: 
 study : again I had a welcome, and one not, I 
 think, quite hollow. That over, I was free to 
 repair to the dormitory. 
 
 " And will Graham really write ? " I questioned, 
 as I sank tired on the edge of the bed. 
 
 VOL. IT. K 
 
130 VILLETTE. 
 
 Reason, coining stealthily up to me through the 
 twilight of that long, dim chamber, whispered 
 sedately, — 
 
 " He may write once. So kind is his nature, 
 it may stimulate him for once to make the effort. 
 But it cannot be continued — it may not be re- 
 peated. Great were that folly which should build 
 on such a promise — insane that credulity which 
 should mistake the transitory rain-pool, holding 
 in its hollow one draught, for the perennial spring 
 yielding the supply of seasons." 
 
 I bent my head : I sat thinking an hour longer. 
 Reason still whispered me, laying on my shoulder 
 a withered hand, and frostily touching my ear with 
 the chill blue lips of eld. 
 
 " If," muttered she, "if he should write, what 
 then ? Do you meditate pleasure in replying ? 
 Ah, fool ! I warn you ! Brief be your answer. 
 Hope no delight of heart — no indulgence of 
 intellect : grant no expansion to feeling — give 
 holiday to no single faculty : dally with no friendly 
 exchange : foster no genial intercommunion. . . ." 
 
 " But I have talked to Graham and you did 
 not chide," I pleaded. 
 
 " No," said she, ft I needed not. Talk for you 
 
REACTION. 131 
 
 is good discipline. You converse imperfectly. 
 While you speak, there can be no oblivion of 
 inferiority — no encouragement to delusion : pain, 
 privation, penury stamp your language ..." 
 
 " But," I again broke in, " where the bodily 
 presence is weak and the speech contemptible, 
 surely there cannot be error in making written 
 language the medium of better utterance than 
 faltering lips can achieve ? " 
 
 Reason only answered, " At your peril you 
 cherish that idea, or suffer its influence to animate 
 any writing of yours ! " 
 
 " But if I feel, may I never express ? " 
 
 " Never ! " declared Reason. 
 
 I groaned under her bitter sternness. Never — 
 never — oh, hard word ! This hag, this Reason, 
 would not let me look up, or smile, or hope: 
 she could not rest unless I were altogether crushed, 
 cowed, broken-in, and broken-down. According 
 to her, I was born only to work for a piece of 
 bread, to await the pains of death, and steadily 
 through all life to despond. Reason might be 
 right; yet no wonder we are glad at times to 
 defy her, to rush from under her rod and give 
 a truant hour to Imagination — her soft, bright foe, 
 
132 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 our sweet Help, our divine Hope. We shall and 
 must break bounds at intervals, despite the terrible 
 revenge that awaits our return. Reason is vin- 
 dictive as a devil : for me, she was always envenomed 
 as a step-mother. If I have obeyed her it has 
 chiefly been with the obedience of fear, not of love. 
 Long ago I should have died of her ill-usage : her 
 stint, her chill, her barren board, her icy bed, her 
 savage, ceaseless blows ; but for that kinder Power 
 who holds my secret and sworn allegiance. Often 
 has Reason turned me out by night, in mid-winter, 
 on cold snow, flinging for sustenance the gnawed 
 bone dogs had forsaken: sternly has she vowed 
 her r stores held nothing more for me — harshly- 
 denied my right to ask better things. . . . Then, 
 looking up, have I seen in the sky a head amidst 
 circling stars, of which the midmost and the 
 brightest lent a ray sympathetic and attent. A 
 spirit, softer and better than Human Reason, 
 has descended with quiet flight to the waste — 
 bringing all round her a sphere of air borrowed 
 of eternal summer ; bringing perfume of flowers 
 which cannot fade — fragrance of trees whose fruit 
 is life ; bringing breezes pure from a world whose 
 day needs no sun to lighten it. My hunger has 
 
REACTION. 133 
 
 this good angel appeased with food, sweet and 
 strange, gathered amongst gleaning angels, gar- 
 nering their dew-white harvest in the first fresh 
 hour of a heavenly day ; tenderly has she assuaged 
 the insufferable tears which weep away life itself — 
 kindly given rest to deadly weariness — generously 
 lent hope and impulse to paralyzed despair. 
 Divine, compassionate, succourahle influence ! 
 When I bend the knee to other than God, it 
 shall be at thy white and winged feet, beautiful on 
 mountain or on plain. Temples have been reared 
 to the Sun — altars dedicated to the Moon. Oh, 
 greater glory ! To thee neither hands build, nor 
 lips consecrate ; but hearts, through ages, are faith- 
 ful to thy worship. A dwelling thou hast, too 
 wide for walls, too high for dome — a temple 
 whose floors are space — rites whose mysteries 
 transpire in presence, to the kindling, the harmony 
 of worlds ! 
 
 Sovereign complete ! thou hadst, for endurance, 
 thy great army of martyrs; for achievement, thy 
 chosen band of worthies. Deity unquestioned, 
 thine essence foils decay ! 
 
 This daughter of Heaven remembered me to- 
 night; she saw me weep and she came with com- 
 
134 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 fort : " Sleep," she said. " Sleep, sweetly — I gild 
 thy dreams ! " 
 
 She kept her word, and watched me through a 
 night's rest; but at dawn Reason relieved the guard. 
 I awoke with a sort of start ; the rain was dashing 
 against the panes, and the wind uttering a peevish 
 cry at intervals ; the night-lamp was dying on the 
 black circular stand in the middle of the dormitory : 
 day had already broken. How I pity those whom 
 mental pain stuns instead of rousing ! This morning 
 the pang of waking snatched me out of bed like a 
 hand with a giant's gripe. How quickly I dressed 
 in the cold of the raw dawn ! How deeply I drank 
 of the ice-cold water in my carafe ! This was always 
 my cordial, to which, like other dram-drinkers, I had 
 eager recourse when unsettled by chagrin. 
 
 Ere long the bell rang its reveillee to the whole 
 school. Being dressed, I descended alone to the 
 refectory, where the stove was lit and the air was 
 warm ; through the rest of the house it was cold, 
 with the nipping severity of a continental winter: 
 though now but the beginning of November, a north 
 wind had thus early brought a wintry blight over 
 Europe. I remember the black stoves pleased me 
 little when I first came ; but now I began to associate 
 
REACTION. 135 
 
 with them a sense of comfort, and liked them, as in 
 England, we like a fireside. 
 
 Sitting down before this dark comforter, I pre- 
 sently fell into a deep argument with myself on life 
 and its chances, on destiny and her decrees. My 
 mind, calmer and stronger now than last night, 
 made for itself some imperious rules, prohibiting 
 under deadly penalties all weak retrospect of happi- 
 ness past ; commanding a patient journeying through 
 the wilderness of the present, enjoining a reliance 
 on faith — a watching of the cloud and pillar which 
 subdue while they guide, and awe while they illu- 
 mine — hushing the impulse to fond idolatry, check- 
 ing the longing out-look for a far-off promised land 
 whose rivers are, perhaps, never to be reached save 
 in dying dreams, whose sweet pastures are to be 
 viewed but from the desolate and sepulchral summit 
 of a Nebo. 
 
 By degrees, a composite feeling of blended strength 
 and pain wound itself wirily round my heart, sus- 
 tained, or at least restrained, its throbbings, and 
 made me fit for the day's work. I lifted my head. 
 
 As I said before, I was sitting near the stove, let 
 into the wall beneath the refectory and the carre, 
 and thus sufficing to heat both apartments. Piercing 
 
136 VILLETTE. 
 
 the same wall, and close beside the stove, was a 
 window, looking also into the carre ; as I looked up 
 a cap-tassel, a brow, two eyes filled a pane of that 
 window ; the fixed gaze of those two eyes hit right 
 against nay own glance : they were watching me. I 
 had not till that moment known that tears were on 
 my cheek, but I felt them now. 
 
 This was a strange house, where no corner was 
 sacred from intrusion, where not a tear could be 
 shed, nor a thought pondered, but a spy was at hand 
 to note and to divine. And this new, this out-door, 
 this male spy, what business had brought him to the 
 premises at this unwonted hour? What possible 
 right had he to intrude on me thus ? ISTo other pro- 
 fessor would have dared to cross the carre before the 
 class-bell rang. M. Emanuel took no account of 
 hours nor of claims : there was some book of refe- 
 rence in the first-class library which he had occasion 
 to consult ; he had come to seek it : on his way he 
 passed the refectory. It was very much his habit to 
 wear eyes before, behind, and on each side of him : 
 he had seen me through the little window — he now 
 opened the refectory door, and there he stood. 
 " Mademoiselle, vous etes triste." 
 ** Monsieur, j'en ai bien le droit." 
 
REACTION. 137 
 
 " Vous etes malade de coeur et d'humeur," he 
 pursued. " You are at once mournful and mutinous. 
 I see on your cheek two tears which I know are 
 hot as two sparks, and salt as two crystals of the sea. 
 While I speak you eye me strangely. Shall I tell 
 you of what I am reminded while watching you ? " 
 
 " Monsieur, I shall be called away to prayers 
 shortly ; my time for conversation is very scant and 
 brief at this hour — excuse — " 
 
 " I excuse everything," he interrupted ; " my 
 mood is so meek, neither rebuff nor, perhaps, 
 insult could ruffle it. You remind me, then, of a 
 young she wild creature, new caught, untamed, 
 viewing with a mixture of fire and fear the first 
 entrance of the breaker-in." 
 
 Unwarrantable accost ! — rash and rude if ad- 
 dressed to a pupil ; to a teacher inadmissible. He 
 thought to provoke a warm reply ; I had seen him 
 vex the passionate to explosion before now. In 
 me his malice should find no gratification ; I sat 
 silent. 
 
 " You look," said he, " like one who would 
 snatch at a draught of sweet poison, and spurn 
 wholesome bitters with disgust." 
 
 M Indeed, I never liked bitters : nor do I believe 
 
138 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 them wholesome. And to whatever is sweet, be it 
 poison or food, you cannot, at least, deny its own 
 delicious quality — sweetness. Better, perhaps, to 
 die quickly a pleasant death, than drag on long 
 a charmless life." 
 
 " Yet," said he, " you should take your bitter 
 dose duly and daily, if I had the power to ad- 
 minister it ; and, as to the well- beloved poison, I 
 would, perhaps, break the very cup which held it." 
 
 I sharply turned my head away, partly because 
 his presence utterly displeased me, and partly be- 
 cause I wished to shun questions : lest, in my present 
 mood, the effort of answering should overmaster 
 self-command. 
 
 " Come," said he, more softly, " tell me the 
 truth — you grieve at being parted from friends — is 
 it not so 1 " 
 
 The insinuating softness was not more acceptable 
 than the inquisitorial curiosity. I was silent. He 
 came into the room, sat down on the bench about 
 two yards from me, and persevered long, and, for 
 him, patiently, in attempts to di*aw me into conver- 
 sation — attempts necessarily unavailing, because I 
 could not talk. At last I entreated to be let alone. 
 In uttering the request, my voice faltered, my head 
 
EE ACTION. 139 
 
 sank on my arms and the table. I wept bitterly, 
 though quietly. He sat a while longer. I did not 
 look up nor speak, till the closing door and his 
 retreating step told me that he was gone. These 
 tears proved a relief. 
 
 I had time to bathe my eyes before breakfast, 
 and I suppose I appeared at that meal as serene as 
 any other person : not, however, quite as jocund- 
 looking as the young lady who placed herself in the 
 seat opposite mine, fixed on me a pair of somewhat 
 small eyes twinkling gleefully, and frankly stretched 
 across the table a white hand to be shaken. Miss 
 Fanshawe's travels, gaieties, and flirtations agreed 
 with her mightily ; she had become quite plump, 
 her cheeks looked as round as apples. I had seen 
 her last in elegant evening attire. I don't know that 
 she looked less charming now in her school-dress, a 
 kind of careless peignoir of a dark-blue material, 
 dimly and dingily plaided with black. I even think 
 this dusky wrapper gave her charms a triumph ; 
 enhancing by contrast the fairness of her skin, the 
 freshness of her bloom, the golden beauty of her 
 tresses. 
 
 " I am glad you are come back, Timon," said 
 she. Timon was one of her dozen names for me. 
 
140 VILLETTE. 
 
 " You don't know how often I have wanted you in 
 this dismal hole." 
 
 " Oh ! have you? Then, of course, if you 
 wanted me, you have something for me to do : 
 stockings to mend, perhaps 1 " I never gave 
 Ginevra a minute's or a farthing's credit for dis- 
 interestedness." 
 
 " Crabbed and crusty as ever!" said she. "I 
 expected as much : it would not be you if you did 
 not snub one. Bat now, come, grandmother, I 
 hope you like coffee as much, and pistolets as little 
 as ever : are you disposed to barter ? " 
 
 " Take your own way." 
 
 This way consisted in a habit she had of making 
 me convenient. She did not like the morning cup of 
 coffee; its school brewage not being strong or sweet 
 enough to suit her palate; and she had an excel- 
 lent appetite,like any other healthy school-girl, for the 
 morning pistolets or rolls, which were new-baked 
 and very good, and of which a certain allowance 
 was served to each. This allowance being more than 
 I needed, I gave half to Ginevra; never varying 
 in my preference, though many others used to covet 
 the superfluity; and she in return would sometimes 
 give me a portion of her coffee. This morning I 
 
REACTION. 141 
 
 was glad of the draught ; hunger I had none, and 
 with thirst I was parched. I don't know why I 
 choose to give my bread rather to Ginevra than 
 to another ; nor why, if two had to share the con- 
 venience of one drinking-vessel, as sometimes hap- 
 pened — for instance, when we took a long walk 
 into the country, and halted for refreshment at a 
 farm — I always contrived that she should be my 
 convive, and rather liked to let her take the lion's 
 share, whether of the white beer, the sweet wine, or 
 the new milk: so it was, however, and she knew it; 
 and, therefore, while we wrangled daily, we were 
 never alienated. 
 
 After breakfast my custom was to withdraw to the 
 first classe, and sit and read, or think (oftenest the 
 latter) there alone, till the nine o'clock bell threw 
 open all doors, admitted the gathered rush of ex- 
 ternes and demi-pensionnaires, and gave the signal 
 for entrance on that bustle and business to which, 
 till five p. m., there was no relax. 
 
 I was just seated this morning, when a tap came 
 to the door. 
 
 " Pardon, mademoiselle," said a pensionnaire, 
 entering gently ; and having taken from her desk 
 some necessary book or paper, she withdrew on tip- 
 
142 VILLETTE. 
 
 toe, murmuring, as she passed me, " Que mademoi- 
 selle est appliquee ! " 
 
 Appliquee, indeed ! The means of application 
 were spread before me, but I was doing nothing, 
 and had done nothing, and meant to do nothing. 
 Thus does the world give us credit for merits we 
 have not. Madame Beck herself deemed me a 
 regular bas-bleu, and often and solemnly used to 
 warn me not to study too much, lest " the blood 
 should all go to my head." Indeed, everybody in 
 the Rue Fossette held a superstition that " Meess 
 Lucie " was learned ; with the notable exception of 
 M. Emanuel : who, by means peculiar to himself, 
 and quite inscrutable to me, had obtained a not 
 inaccurate inkling of my real qualifications, and 
 used to take quiet opportunities of chuckling 
 in my ear his malign glee over their scant 
 measure. For my part, I never troubled myself 
 about this penury. I dearly like to think my own 
 thoughts ; I had great pleasure in reading a few 
 books, but not many : preferring always those in 
 whose style or sentiment the writer's individual 
 nature was plainly stamped; flagging inevitably 
 over characterless books, however clever and meri- 
 torious : perceiving well that, as far as my own 
 
REACTION. 143 
 
 mind was concerned, God had limited its powers 
 and its action — thankful, I trust, for the gift be- 
 stowed, but unambitious of higher endowments, 
 not restlessly eager after higher culture. 
 
 The polite pupil was scarcely gone, when, un- 
 ceremoniously, without tap, in burst a second 
 intruder. Had I been blind I should have known 
 who this was. A constitutional reserve of manner 
 had by this time told with wholesome and, for me, 
 commodious effect, on the manners of my co-inmates ; 
 rarely did I now suffer from rude or intrusive 
 treatment. When I first came, it would happen 
 once and again that a blunt German would clap me 
 on the shoulder, and ask me to run a race ; or a 
 riotous Labassecourienne seize me by the arm and 
 drag me towards the play-ground : urgent pro- 
 posals to take a swing at the " Pas de Geant," 
 or to join in a certain romping hide-and-seek game 
 called " Un, deux, trois," were formerly also of 
 hourly occurrence; but all these little attentions 
 had ceased some time ago — ceased, too, without 
 my finding it necessary to be at the trouble of 
 point-blank cutting them short. I had now no 
 familiar demonstration to dread or endure, save 
 from one quarter ; and as that was English I could 
 
144 VILLETTE. 
 
 bear it. Ginevra Fanshawe made no scruple of — 
 at times — catching me as I was crossing the carre, 
 whirling me round in a compulsory waltz, and 
 heartily enjoying the mental and physical discom- 
 fiture her proceeding induced. Ginevra Fanshawe it 
 was who now broke in upon my " learned leisure." 
 She carried a huge music-book under her arm. 
 
 "Go to your practising," said I to her at once: 
 " away with you to the little salon ! " 
 
 " Not till I have had a talk with you, chere amie. 
 I know where you have been spending your vaca- 
 tion, and how you have commenced sacrificing to 
 the graces, and enjoying life like any other belle. 
 I saw you at the concert the other night, dressed, 
 actually, like anybody else. Who is your tail- 
 leuse?" 
 
 " Tittle-tattle : how prettily it begins ! My tail- 
 leuse ! — a fiddlestick! Come, sheer off, Ginevra. 
 I really don't want your company." 
 
 " But when I want yours so much, ange farouche, 
 what does a little reluctance on your part signify ? 
 Dieu merci ! we know how to manoeuvre with our 
 gifted compatriote — the learned ' ourse Britannique.' 
 And so, Ourson, you know Isidore ? " 
 
 " I know John Bretton." 
 
REACTION. 145 
 
 " Oh, hush ! " (putting her fingers in her ears) " you 
 crack my tympanums with your rude Anglicisms. 
 But, how is our well-beloved John? Do tell me 
 about him. The poor man must be in a sad way. 
 What did he say to my behaviour the other night ? 
 Wasn't I cruel?" 
 
 "Do you think I noticed you ? " 
 
 " It was a delightful evening. Oh, that divine 
 de Hamal ! And then to watch the other sulking 
 and dying in the distance ; and the old lady — my 
 future mama-in-law ! But I am afraid I and Lady 
 Sara were a little rude in quizzing her." 
 
 " Lady Sara never quizzed her at all ; and for 
 what you did, don't make yourself in the least un- 
 easy : Mrs. Bretton will survive your sneer." 
 
 " She may : old ladies are tough ; but that poor 
 son of hers ! Do tell me what he said : I saw he 
 was terribly cut up." 
 
 u He said you looked as if, at heart, you were 
 already Madame de Hamal." 
 
 " Did he ? " she cried, with delight. " He noticed 
 that ? How charming ! I thought he would be 
 mad with jealousy." 
 
 " Ginevra, have you seriously done with Dr. 
 Bretton ? Do you want him to give you up ? " 
 
 VOL. II. l 
 
146 VILLETTE. 
 
 "Oh! you know he cant do that: but wasn't he 
 mad ? " 
 
 " Quite mad," I assented ; " as mad as a March 
 hare." 
 
 " Well, and how ever did you get him home ? " 
 
 " How ever, indeed ! Have you no pity on his 
 poor mother and me ? Fancy us holding him 
 tight down in the carriage, and he raving between 
 us, fit to drive everybody delirious. The very coach- 
 man went wrong, somehow, and we lost our way." 
 
 "You don't say so? You are laughing at me. 
 Now, Lucy Snowe " 
 
 " I assure you it is fact — and fact, also, that Dr. 
 Bretton would not stay in the carriage : he broke 
 from us, and would ride outside." 
 
 " And afterwards ? " 
 
 " Afterwards — when we did reach home — the 
 scene transcends description." 
 
 "Oh, but describe it — you know it is such fun ! " 
 
 " Fun for you, Miss Fanshawe ; but" (with stern 
 gravity) " you know the proverb — ' What is sport to 
 one may be death to another.' '' 
 
 " Go on, there's a darling Timon." 
 
 " Conscientiously, I cannot, unless you assure mc 
 you have some heart." 
 
REACTION. 147 
 
 " I have — such an immensity, you don't know ! " 
 
 " Good ! In that case, you will be able to con- 
 ceive Dr. Graham Bretton rejecting his supper in 
 the first instance — the chicken, the sweet-bread 
 prepared for his refreshment, left on the table un- 
 touched. Then -but it is of no use dwelling at 
 
 length on harrowing details. Suffice it to say, that 
 never, in the most stormy fits and moments of his 
 infancy, had his mother such work to tuck the 
 sheets about him as she had that night." 
 
 "He wouldn't lie still?" 
 
 " He wouldn't lie still : there it was. The sheets 
 might be tucked in, but the thing was to keep them 
 tucked in." 
 
 "And what did he say?" 
 
 " Say ! Can't you imagine him demanding his 
 divine Ginevra, anathematizing that demon, De 
 Hamal — raving about golden locks, blue eyes, white 
 arms, glittering bracelets?" 
 
 " No, did he ? He saw the bracelet ? " 
 
 " Saw the bracelet ? Yes, as plain as I saw it : 
 and, perhaps, for the first time, he saw also the 
 brand-mark with which its pressure has circled 
 your arm. Ginevra," (rising, and changing my 
 tone) " come, we will have an end of this. Go 
 
148 VILLETTE. 
 
 away to your practising." And I opened the 
 door. 
 
 " But you 've not told me all." 
 
 " You had better not wait until I do tell you all. 
 Such extra communicativeness could give you no 
 pleasure. March ! " 
 
 " Cross thing ! " said she; but she obeyed: and, 
 indeed, the first classe was my territory, and she 
 could not there legally resist a notice of quittance 
 from me. 
 
 Yet, to speak the truth, never had I been less 
 dissatisfied with her than I was then. There was 
 pleasure in thinking of the contrast between the 
 reality and my description — to remember Dr. John 
 enjoying the drive home, eating his supper with 
 relish, and retiring to rest with Christian com- 
 posure. It was only when I saw him really unhappy 
 that I felt really vexed with the fair, frail cause of 
 his suffering. 
 
 A fortnight passed; I was getting once more 
 inured to the harness of school, and lapsing from 
 the passionate pain of change to the palsy of custom. 
 
REACTION. 149 
 
 One afternoon in crossing the carre, on my way to 
 the first class, where I was expected to assist at a 
 lesson of " style and literature," I saw, standing by 
 one of the long and large windows, Rosine, the 
 portress. Her attitude, as usual, was quite non- 
 chalante. She always " stood at ease ;" one of her 
 hands rested in her apron-pocket, the other, at this 
 moment, held to her eyes a letter, whereof Made- 
 moiselle coolly perused the address, and deliberately 
 studied the seal. 
 
 A letter ! The shape of a letter similar to that 
 had haunted my brain in its very core for seven 
 days past. I had dreamed of a letter last night. 
 Strong magnetism drew me to that letter now ; yet, 
 whether I should have ventured to demand of Rosine 
 so much as a glance at that white envelope, with the 
 spot of red wax in the middle, I know not. No ; I 
 think I should have sneaked past in terror of a 
 rebuff from Disappointment: my heart throbbed 
 now as if I already heard the tramp of her approach. 
 Nervous mistake ! It was the rapid step of the 
 Professor of Literature measuring the corridor. I 
 fled before him. Could I but be seated quietly at 
 my desk before his arrival, with the class under my 
 orders all in disciplined readiness, he would, perhaps, 
 
150 VILLETTE. 
 
 exempt me from notice ; but, if caught lingering in 
 the carre, I should be sure to come in for a special 
 harangue. I had time to get seated, to enforce 
 perfect silence, to take out my work, and to com- 
 mence it amidst the profoundest and best trained 
 hush, ere M. Emanuel entered with his vehement 
 burst of latch and panel, and his deep, redundant 
 bow, prophetic of choler. 
 
 As usual he broke upon us like a clap of thunder; 
 but instead of flashing lightning-wise from the door 
 to the estrade, his career halted midway at my desk. 
 Setting his face towards me and the window, his 
 back to the pupils and the room, he gave me a 
 look — such a look as might have licensed me to 
 stand straight up and demand what he meant — a 
 look of scowling distrust. 
 
 " Voila ! pour vous," said he, drawing his hand 
 from his waistcoat, and placing on my desk a letter 
 — the very letter I had seen in Rosine's hand — the 
 letter whose face of enamelled white and single 
 Cyclop's-eye of vermilion-red had printed them- 
 selves so clear and perfect on the retina of an inward 
 vision. I knew it, I felt it to be the letter of my 
 hope, the fruition of my wish, the release from my 
 doubt, the ransom from my terror. This letter M. 
 
REACTION. 151 
 
 Paul, with his unwarrantably interfering- habits, had 
 taken from the portress, and now delivered it 
 himself. 
 
 I might have been angry, but had not a second 
 for the sensation. Yes : I held in my hand not a 
 slighf note, but an envelope, which must, at least, 
 contain a sheet : it felt, not flimsy, but firm, substan- 
 tial, satisfying. And here was the direction, " Miss 
 Lucy Snowe," in a clean, clear, equal, decided hand ; 
 and here was the seal, round, full, deftly dropped by 
 untremulous fingers, stamped with the well-cut 
 impress of initials, " J. G. B." I experienced a 
 happy feeling — a glad emotion which went warm to 
 my heart, and ran lively through all my veins. For 
 once a hope was realized. I held in my hand a 
 morsel of real solid joy : not a dream, not an image of 
 the brain, not one of those shadowy chances imagina- 
 tion pictures, and on which humanity starves but 
 cannot live; not a mess of that manna I drearily 
 eulogized awhile ago — which, indeed, at first melts 
 on the lips with an unspeakable and preternatural 
 sweetness, but which, in the end, our souls full 
 surely loathe ; longing deliriously for natural and 
 earth-grown food, wildly praying Heaven's Spirits to 
 reclaim their own spirit-dew and essence — an aliment 
 
152 V1LLETTE. 
 
 divine, but for mortals deadly. It was neither sweet 
 hail, nor small coriander-seed — neither slight wafer, 
 nor luscious honey, I had lighted on; it was the wild 
 savoury mess of the hunter, nourishing and salu- 
 brious meat, forest-fed or desert-reared, fresh, 
 healthful, and life-sustaining. It was what the old 
 dying patriarch demanded of his son Esau, pro- 
 mising him in requital the blessing of his last 
 breath. It was a godsend ; and I inwardly thanked 
 the God who had vouchsafed it. Outwardly I only 
 thanked man, crying, " Thank you, thank you, 
 Monsieur!" 
 
 Monsieur curled his lip, gave me a vicious 
 glance of the eye, and strode to his estrade. M. 
 Paul was not at all a good little man, though he 
 had good points. 
 
 Did I read my letter there and then ? Did I 
 consume the venison at once and with haste, as if 
 Esau's shaft flew every day ? 
 
 I knew better. The cover with its address ; the 
 seal, with its three clear letters, was bounty and 
 abundance for the present. I stole from the room, 
 I procured the key of the great dormitory which was 
 kept locked by day. I went to my bureau ; with a 
 sort of haste and trembling lest Madame should 
 
REACTION. 153 
 
 creep up-stairs and spy me, I opened a drawer, un- 
 locked a box, and took out a case, and — having feasted 
 my eyes with one more look, and approached the 
 seal, with a mixture of awe and shame and delight, 
 to my lips — I folded the untasted treasure, yet all 
 fair and inviolate, in silver paper, committed it to 
 the case, shut up box and drawer, reclosed, relocked 
 the dormitory, and returned to class, feeling as if 
 fairy tales were true and fairy gifts no dream. 
 Strange, sweet insanity ! And this letter, the source 
 of my joy, I had not yet read: did not yet know the 
 number of its lines. 
 
 When I re-entered the school-room, behold M. 
 Paul raging like a pestilence ! Some pupil had not 
 spoken audibly or distinctly enough to suit his ear 
 and taste, and now she and others were weeping, 
 and he was raving from his estrade almost livid. 
 Curious to mention, as I appeared, he fell on me. 
 
 " Was I the mistress of these girls ? Did I 
 profess to teach them the conduct befitting ladies ? 
 — and did I permit and, he doubted not, encourage 
 them to strangle their mother-tongue in their 
 throats, to mince and mash it between their 
 teeth, as if they had some base cause to be 
 ashamed of the words they uttered I Was this 
 
154 VILLETTE. 
 
 modesty ? He knew better. It was a vile pseudo 
 sentiment — the offspring or the forerunner of 
 evil. Rather than submit to this mopping and 
 mowing, this mincing and grimacing, this grinding 
 of a noble tongue, this general affectation and 
 sickening stubbornness of the pupils of the first 
 class, he would throw them up for a set of insup- 
 portable petites maitresses, and confine himself to 
 teaching the A B C to the babies of the third 
 division." 
 
 What could I say to all this ? Really nothing ; 
 and I hoped he would allow me to be silent. 
 The storm recommenced. 
 
 " Every answer to his queries was then refused ? 
 It seemed to be considered in that place — that 
 conceited boudoir of a first class, with its preten- 
 tious book-cases, its green-baized desks, its rubbish 
 of flower-stands, its trash of framed pictures and 
 maps, and its foreign surveillante, forsooth ! — it 
 seemed to be the fashion to think there that the 
 Professor of Literature was not worthy of a reply ! 
 These were new ideas ; imported, he did not doubt, 
 straight from ' la Grande Bretaigne ' : they savoured 
 of island insolence and arrogance." 
 
 Lull the second — the girls, not one of whom 
 
REACTION. 155 
 
 was ever known to weep a tear for the rebukes 
 of any other master, now all melting like snow- 
 statues before the intemperate heat of M. Emanuel : 
 I, not yet much shaken, sitting down, and ven- 
 turing to resume my work. 
 
 Something — either in my continued silence or in 
 the movement of my hand, stitching — transported 
 M. Emanuel beyond the last boundary of patience ; 
 he actually sprung from his estrade. The stove 
 stood near my desk, and he attacked it; the little 
 iron door was nearly dashed from its hinges, the 
 fuel was made to fly. 
 
 " Est-ce que vous avez l'intention de m'in- 
 sulter?" said he to me, in a low, furious voice, 
 as he thus outraged, under pretence of arranging, 
 the fire. 
 
 It was time to soothe him a little if possible. 
 
 " Mais, monsieur," said I, " I would not insult 
 you for the world. I remember too well that you 
 once said we should be friends." 
 
 I did not intend my voice to falter, but it did : 
 more, I think, through the agitation of late delight 
 than in any spasm of present fear. Still there 
 certainly was something in M. Paul's anger — a 
 kind of passion of emotion — that specially tended to 
 
156 VILLETTE. 
 
 draw tears. I was not unhappy, nor much afraid, 
 yet I wept. 
 
 " Allons, allons ! " said he presently, looking 
 round and seeing the deluge universal. " Decidedly 
 I am a monster and a ruffian. I have only one 
 pocket-handkerchief," he added, " but if I had 
 twenty, I would offer you each one. Your 
 teacher shall be your representative. Here, Miss 
 Lucy." 
 
 And he took forth and held out to me a clean 
 silk handkerchief. Now a person who did not 
 know M. Paul, who was unused to him and his 
 impulses, would naturally have bungled at this 
 offer — declined accepting the same — etcetera. But 
 I too plainly felt this would never do : the slightest 
 hesitation would have been fatal to the incipient 
 treaty of peace. I rose and met the handkerchief 
 half-way, received it with decorum, wiped therewith 
 my eyes, and, resuming my seat, and retaining the 
 flag of truce in my hand and on my lap, took 
 especial care during the remainder of the lesson to 
 touch neither needle nor thimble, scissors nor 
 muslin. Many a jealous glance did M. Paul cast 
 at these implements ; he hated them mortally, 
 considering sewing a source of distraction from the 
 
REACTION. 157 
 
 attention due to himself. A very eloquent lesson 
 he gave, and very kind and friendly was he to 
 the close. Ere he had done, the clouds were 
 dispersed and the sun shining out — tears were 
 exchanged for smiles. 
 
 In quitting the room he paused once more at 
 my desk. 
 
 " And your letter ? " said he, this time not quite 
 fiercely. 
 
 " I have not yet read it, monsieur." 
 
 u Ah ! it is too good to read at once : you 
 save it, as, when I was a boy, I used to save a 
 peach whose bloom was very ripe ? " 
 
 The guess came so near the truth, I could not 
 prevent a suddenly-rising warmth in my face from 
 revealing as much. 
 
 " You promise yourself a pleasant moment," 
 said he, u in reading that letter ; you will open it 
 when alone — n'est ce pas ? Ah ! a smile answers. 
 Well, well ! one should not be too harsh ; ' la 
 jeunesse n'a qu'un temps. ' " 
 
 " Monsieur, monsieur ! " I cried or rather whis- 
 pered after him, as he turned to go, * do not leave me 
 under a mistake. This is merely a friend's letter. 
 Without reading it, I can vouch for that." 
 
158 VILLETTE. 
 
 " Je concois, je concois : on sait ce que c'est 
 qu'un ami. Bon-jour, mademoiselle ! " 
 
 " But, monsieur, here is your handker- 
 chief." 
 
 " Keep it, keep it, till the letter is read, then 
 bring it me ; I shall read the billet's tenor in 
 your eyes." 
 
 When he was gone, the pupils having already 
 poured out of the school-room into the berceau, and 
 thence into the garden and court to take their cus- 
 tomary recreation before the five o'clock dinner, I 
 stood a moment thinking, and absently twisting the 
 handkerchief round my arm. For some reason — 
 gladdened, I think, by a sudden return of the golden 
 glimmer of childhood, roused by an unwonted 
 renewal of its buoyancy, made merry by the liberty 
 of the closing hour, and, above all, solaced at heart 
 by the joyous consciousness of that treasure in the 
 case, box, drawer up-stairs, — I fell to playing with 
 the handkerchief as if it were a ball, casting it 
 into the air and catching it as it fell. The game 
 was stopped by another hand than mine — a 
 hand emerging from a paletot-sleeve and stretched 
 over my shoulder ; it caught the extemporized 
 plaything and bore it away with these sullen words : 
 
REACTION. 159 
 
 " Je vois bien que vous vous moquez de moi et 
 de mes effets." 
 
 Really that little man was dreadful : a mere 
 sprite of caprice and ubiquity : one never knew 
 either his whim or his whereabout. 
 
160 
 
 VILLKTTE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE LETTER. 
 
 When all was still in the house; when dinner was 
 over and the noisy recreation-hour past ; when 
 darkness had set in, and the quiet lamp of study 
 was lit in the refectory ; when the externes were 
 gone home, the clashing door and clamorous bell 
 hushed for the evening ; when Madame was safely 
 settled in the salle a manger in company with her 
 mother and some friends ; I then glided to the 
 kitchen, begged a bougie for one half hour for a 
 particular occasion, found acceptance of my petition 
 at the hands of my friend Goton, who answered 
 " Mais certainement, chou-chou, vous en aurez deux, 
 si vous voulez." And, light in hand, I mounted 
 noiseless to the dormitory. 
 
 Great was my chagrin to find in that apartment a 
 pupil gone to bed indisposed, — greater when I 
 
THE LETTER. 161 
 
 recognized amid the muslin night-cap borders, the 
 " figure chiffonee " of Mistress Ginevra Fanshawe ; 
 supine at this moment, it is true — but certain to 
 wake and overwhelm me with chatter when the 
 interruption would be least acceptable: indeed, as 
 I watched her, a slight twinkling of the eyelids 
 warned me that the present appearance of repose 
 might be but a ruse, assumed to cover sly vigilance 
 over " Timon's " movements : she was not to be 
 trusted. And I had so wished to be alone, just to 
 read my precious letter in peace. 
 
 Well, I must go to the classes. Having sought and 
 found my prize in its casket, I descended. Ill-luck 
 pursued me. The classes were undergoing sweep- 
 ing and purification by candle-light, according to 
 hebdomadal custom : benches were piled on desks, 
 the air was dim with dust, damp coffee-grounds 
 (used by Labassecourien housemaids instead of tea- 
 leaves) darkened the floor ; all was hopeless con- 
 fusion. Baffled, but not beaten, I withdrew, bent 
 as resolutely as ever on finding solitude somewhere. 
 
 Taking a key whereof I knew the repository, I 
 mounted three staircases in succession, reached a 
 dark, narrow, silent landing, opened a worm-eaten 
 door, and dived into the deep, black, cold garret. 
 
 VOL. II. m 
 
162 VILLETTE. 
 
 Here none would follow me — none interrupt — 
 not Madame herself. I shut the garret-door ; I 
 placed my light on a doddered and mouldy chest of 
 drawers ; I put on a shawl, for the air was ice-cold ; 
 I took my letter, trembling with sweet impatience ; 
 I broke its seal. 
 
 " Will it be long— will it be short ? " thought I, 
 passing my hand across my eyes to dissipate the 
 silvery dimness of a suave, south wind shower. 
 
 It was long. 
 
 " Will it be cool?— will it be kind? " 
 
 It was kind. 
 
 To my checked, bridled, disciplined expectation, 
 it seemed very kind ; to my longing and famished 
 thought it seemed, perhaps, kinder than it was. 
 
 So little had I hoped, so much had I feared ; 
 there was a fullness of delight in this taste of frui- 
 tion — such, perhaps, as many a human being passes 
 through life without ever knowing. The poor 
 English teacher in the frosty garret, reading by a 
 dim candle guttering in the wintry air, a letter simply 
 good-natured — nothing more : though that good- 
 nature then seemed to me god-like — was happier 
 than most queens in palaces. 
 
 Of course, happiness of such shallow origin could 
 
THE LETTER. 163 
 
 but be brief; yet, while it lasted, it was genuine 
 and exquisite: a bubble — but a sweet bubble — of 
 real honey-dew. Dr. John had written to me at 
 length ; he had written to me with- pleasure ; he 
 had written in benignant mood, dwelling with sunny 
 satisfaction on scenes that had passed before his 
 eyes and mine, — on places we had visited together — 
 on conversations we had held — on all the little 
 subject-matter, in short, of the last few halcyon 
 weeks. But the cordial core of the delight was, a 
 conviction the blithe, genial language generously 
 imparted, that it had been poured out — not merely 
 to content me — but to gratify himself. A gratification 
 he might never more desire, never more seek — an 
 hypothesis in every point of view approaching the 
 certain ; but that concerned the future. This present 
 moment had no pain, no blot, no want ; full, pure, 
 perfect, it deeply blessed me. A passing seraph 
 seemed to have rested beside me, leaned towards 
 my heart, and reposed on its throb a softening, 
 cooling, healing, hallowing wing. Dr. John, you 
 pained me afterwards : forgiven be every ill — freely 
 forgiven — for the sake of that one dear remembered 
 good! 
 
 Are there wicked things, not human, which envy 
 
164 VILLETTE. 
 
 human bliss? Are there evil influences haunting- 
 the air, and poisoning it for man ? What was near 
 me? . . . 
 
 Something .in that vast solitary garret sounded 
 strangely. Most surely and certainly I heard, as 
 it seemed, a stealthy foot on that floor : a sort of 
 gliding out from the direction of the black recess 
 haunted by the malefactor cloaks. I turned : my 
 light was dim ; the room was long — but, as I 
 live ! I saw in the middle of that ghostly 
 chamber a figure all black or white ; the skirts 
 straight, narrow, black ; the head bandaged, veiled, 
 white. 
 
 Say what you will, reader — tell me I was nervous, 
 or mad ; affirm that I was unsettled by the excite- 
 ment of that letter ; declare that I dreamed : this I 
 vow — I saw there — in that room — on that night — 
 an image like — a nun. 
 
 I cried out ; I sickened. Had the shape ap- 
 proached me I might have swooned. It receded : I 
 made for the door. How I descended all the stairs 
 I know not. By instinct I shunned the refectory, 
 and shaped my course to Madame's sitting-room : I 
 burst in. I said — 
 
 " There is something in the grenier : I have been 
 
THE LETTER. 165 
 
 there : I saw something. Go and look at it, all of 
 you!" 
 
 I said, " All of you ; " for the room seemed to me 
 full of people, though, in truth, there were but four 
 present : Madame Beck ; her mother, Madame Kint, 
 who was out of health, and now staying with her on 
 a visit ; her brother M. Victor Kint, and another 
 gentleman : who, when I entered the room, was 
 conversing with the old lady, and had his back 
 towards the door. 
 
 My mortal fear and faintness must have made me 
 deadly pale. I felt cold and shaking. They all 
 rose in consternation ; they surrounded me. I urged 
 them to go to the grenier ; the sight of the gentle- 
 men did me good and gave me courage : it seemed 
 as if there was some help and hope, with men at 
 hand. I turned to the door, beckoning them to 
 follow. They wanted to stop me ; but I said they 
 must come this way : they must see what I had 
 seen — something strange, standing in the middle of 
 the garret. And, now, I remembered my letter, left 
 on the drawers with the light. This precious letter ! 
 Flesh or spirit must be defied for its sake. I flew 
 up stairs, hastening the faster as I knew I was fol- 
 lowed : they were obliged to come.] 
 
1 66 VILLETTE. 
 
 Lo ! When I reached the garret-door, all within 
 was dark as a pit : the light was out. Happily, 
 some one — Madame, I think, with her usual calm 
 sense — had brought a lamp from the room ; speedily, 
 therefore, as they came up, a ray pierced the opaque 
 blackness. There stood the bougie quenched on the 
 drawers; but where was the letter? And I looked 
 for that now, and not for the nun. 
 
 " My letter ! my letter ! " I panted and plained, 
 almost beside myself. I groped on the floor, wring- 
 ing my hands wildly. Cruel, cruel doom ! To 
 have my bit of comfort preternaturally snatched 
 from me, ere I had well tasted its virtue ! 
 
 I don't know what the others were doing ; I could 
 not watch them : they asked me questions 1 did not 
 answer ; they ransacked all corners ; they prattled 
 about this and that, disarrangement of cloaks, a 
 breach or crack in the sky-light — I know not what. 
 " Something or somebody has been here," was 
 sagely averred. 
 
 " Oh ! they have taken my letter ! " cried the 
 grovelling, groping, monomaniac. 
 
 " What letter, Lucy? My dear girl, what letter?" 
 asked a known voice in my ear. Could I believe 
 that ear? No: and I looked up. Could I trust 
 
THE LETTER. 167 
 
 my eyes ? Had I recognized the tone ? Did I now 
 look on the face of the writer of that very letter ? 
 Was this gentleman near me in this dim garret, 
 John Graham — Dr. Bretton himself? 
 
 Yes : it was. He had been called in that very 
 evening to prescribe for some access of illness in old 
 Madame Kint ; he was the second gentleman pre- 
 sent in the salle a, manger when I entered. 
 
 " Was it my letter, Lucy ?" 
 
 " Your own : yours — the letter you wrote to me 
 I had come here to read it quietly. I could not 
 find another spot where it was possible to have 
 it to myself. I had saved it all day — never opened 
 it till this evening : it was scarcely glanced over : I 
 cannot bear to lose it. Oh, my letter ! " 
 
 " Hush! don't cry and distress yourself so 
 cruelly. What is it worth ? Hush ! Come out 
 of this cold room ; they are going to send for the 
 police now to examine further: we need not stay 
 here — come, we will go down." 
 
 A warm hand, taking my cold fingers, led me 
 down to a room where there was a fire. Dr. John 
 and I sat before the stove. He talked to me and 
 soothed me with unutterable goodness, promising 
 me twenty letters for the one lost. If there are 
 
168 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 words and wrongs like knives, whose deep-inflicted 
 lacerations never heal — cutting injuries and insults 
 of serrated and poison-dripping edge — so, too, there 
 are consolations of tone too fine for the ear not 
 fondly and for ever to retain their echo : caressing 
 kindnesses — loved, lingered over through a whole 
 life, recalled with unfaded tenderness, and answer- 
 ing the call with undimmed shine, out of that raven 
 cloud foreshadowing Death himself. I have been 
 told since, that Dr. Bretton was not so nearly 
 perfect as I thought him : that his actual character 
 lacked the depth, height, compass, and endurance 
 it possessed in my creed. I don't know : he was as 
 good to me as the well is to the parched wayfarer — 
 as the sun to the shivering jail-bird. I remember 
 him heroic. Heroic at this moment will I hold 
 him to be. 
 
 He asked me, smiling, why I cared for his 
 letter so very much. I thought, but did not 
 say, that I prized it like the blood in my veins. 
 I only answered that I had so few letters to care 
 for. 
 
 " I am sure you did not read it," said he ; " or you 
 would think nothing of it ! " 
 
 " I read it, but only once. I want to read it 
 
THE LETTER. 169 
 
 again. I am sorry it is lost." And I could not 
 help weeping afresh. 
 
 " Lucy, Lucy, my poor little god-sister (if there 
 be such a relationship), here — here is your letter. 
 Why is it not better worth such tears, and such 
 tenderly exaggerating faith ! " 
 
 Curious, characteristic manoeuvre! His quick 
 eye had seen the letter on the floor where I sought 
 it ; his hand, as quick, had snatched it up. He had 
 hidden it in his waistcoat t pocket. If my trouble 
 had wrought with a whit less stress and reality, I 
 doubt whether he would ever have acknowledged 
 or restored it. Tears of temperature one degree 
 cooler than those I shed would only have amused 
 Dr. John. 
 
 Pleasure at regaining made me forget merited 
 reproach for the teasing torment; my joy was 
 great ; it could not be concealed : yet I think it 
 broke out more in countenance than language. I 
 said little. 
 
 " Are you satisfied now ? " asked Dr. John. 
 
 I replied that I was — satisfied and happy. 
 
 " Well then," he proceeded, " how do you feel 
 physically ? Are you growing calmer ? Not much ; 
 for you tremble like a leaf still." 
 
170 VILLETTE. 
 
 It seemed to me, however, that I was sufficiently 
 calm : at least I felt no longer terrified. I expressed 
 myself composed. 
 
 " You are able, consequently, to tell me what 
 you saw? Your account was quite vague, do you 
 know ? You looked white as the wall ; but you 
 only spoke of ' something,' not defining what. Was 
 it a man ? Was it an animal 1 What was it?" 
 
 " I never will tell exactly what I saw," said I, 
 " unless some one else sees it too, and then I will 
 give corroborative testimony ; but otherwise, I shall 
 be discredited and accused of dreaming." 
 
 " Tell me," said Dr. Bretton ; " I will hear it in 
 my professional character : I look on you now from 
 a professional point of view, and I read, perhaps, all 
 you would conceal — in your eye, which is curiously 
 vivid and restless ; in your cheek, which the blood 
 has forsaken ; in your hand, which you cannot 
 steady. Come, Lucy, speak and tell me." 
 
 " You would laugh ? " 
 
 " If you don't tell me you shall have no more 
 letters." 
 
 " You are laughing now." 
 
 " I will again take away that single epistle : being 
 mine, I think I have a right to reclaim it." 
 
THE LETTER. 171 
 
 I felt raillery in his words : it made me grave 
 and quiet ; but I folded up the letter and covered 
 it from sight. 
 
 " You may hide it, but I can possess it any 
 moment I choose. You don't know my skill in 
 sleight of hand : I might practise as a conjuror 
 if I liked. Mama says sometimes, too, that 
 I have an harmonizing property of tongue and 
 eye ; but you never saw that in me — did you 
 Lucy ? " 
 
 " Indeed — indeed — when you were a mere boy I 
 used to see both : far more then than now — for now 
 you are strong, and strength dispenses with sub- 
 tlety. But still, Dr. John, you have what they call 
 in this country 'un air fin,' that nobody can mis- 
 take. Madame Beck saw it, and " 
 
 " And liked it," said he, laughing, " because 
 she has it herself. But, Lucy, give me that letter — 
 you don't really care for it." 
 
 To this provocative speech I made no answer. 
 Graham in mirthful mood must not be humoured 
 too far. Just now there was a new sort of smile 
 playing about his lips — very sweet, but it grieved 
 me somehow — a new sort of light sparkling in his 
 
172 VILLETTE. 
 
 eyes : not hostile, but not reassuring. I rose to go 
 — I bid him good night a little sadly. 
 
 His sensitiveness — that peculiar, apprehensive, 
 detective faculty of his — felt in a moment the un- 
 spoken complaint — the scarce-thought reproach. 
 He asked quietly if I was offended. I shook my 
 head as implying a negative. 
 
 " Permit me, then, to speak a little seriously to 
 you before you go. You are in a highly nervous 
 state. I feel sure from what is apparent in your 
 look and manner, however well - controlled, that 
 whilst alone this evening in that dismal, perish- 
 ing sepulchral garret — that dungeon under the 
 leads, smelling of damp and mould, rank with 
 pthisis and catarrh : a place you never ought to 
 enter — that you saw, or thought you saw, some 
 appearance peculiarly calculated to impress the 
 imagination. I know you are not, nor ever were, 
 subject to material terrors, fears of robbers, &c. — I 
 am not so sure that a visitation, bearing a spectral 
 character, would not shake your very mind. Be 
 calm now. This is all a matter of the nerves, I 
 see : but just specify the vision." 
 
 " You will tell nobody ? " 
 
THE LETTER. 173 
 
 " Nobody — most certainly. You may trust me 
 as implicitly as you did Pere Silas. Indeed, the 
 doctor is perhaps the safer confessor of the two, 
 though he has not gray hair." 
 
 " You will not laugh ? " 
 
 " Perhaps I may, to do you good ; but not in 
 scorn. Lucy, I feel as a friend towards you, 
 though your timid nature is slow to trust." 
 
 He now looked like a friend : that indescribable 
 smile and sparkle were gone ; those formidable 
 arched curves of lip, nostril, eyebrow, were de- 
 pressed ; repose marked his attitude — attention 
 sobered his aspect. Won to confidence, I told him 
 exactly what I had seen: ere now I had narrated 
 to him the legend of the house — whiling away with 
 that narrative an hour of a certain mild October 
 afternoon, when he and I rode through Bois 
 l'Etang. 
 
 He sat and thought, and while he thought, we 
 heard them all coming down stairs. 
 
 " Are they going to interrupt? " said he, glancing 
 at the door with an annoyed expression. 
 
 " They will not come here," I answered ; for we 
 were in the little salon where Madame never sat 
 in the evening, and where it was by mere chance 
 
] 74 VILLETTE. 
 
 that heat was still lingering in the stove. They 
 passed the door and went on to the salle-a-manger. 
 
 " Now," he pursued, "they will talk about thieves, 
 burglars, and so on : let them do so — mind you 
 say nothing, and keep your resolution of describing 
 your nun to nobody. She may appear to you 
 again : don't start." 
 
 "You think then," I said, with secret horror, 
 " she came out of my brain, and is now gone in 
 there, and may glide out again at an hour and a 
 day when I look not for her ? " 
 
 " I think it a case of spectral illusion : I fear, 
 following on and resulting from long-continued 
 mental conflict." 
 
 " Oh, Doctor John — I shudder at the thought of 
 being liable to such an illusion ! It seemed so real. 
 Is there no cure ? — no preventive ? " 
 
 "Happiness is the cure — a cheerful mind the 
 preventive : cultivate both." 
 
 ~No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so 
 hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. 
 What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a 
 potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with 
 manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down 
 upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which 
 
THE LETTER. 175 
 
 the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels 
 dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and 
 golden fruitage of Paradise. 
 
 " Cultivate happiness ! " I said briefly to the 
 doctor: "do you cultivate happiness? How do you 
 manage ? " 
 
 " I am a cheerful fellow by nature : and then 
 ill-luck has never dogged me. Adversity gave me 
 and my mother one passing scowl and brush, but 
 we defied her, or rather laughed at her, and she 
 went by." 
 
 " There is no cultivation in all this." 
 
 " I do not give way to melancholy." 
 
 "Yes : I have seen you subdued by that feeling." 
 
 " About Ginevra Fanshawe — eh ? " 
 
 " Did she not sometimes make you miserable ? " 
 
 " Pooh ! stuff ! nonsense ! You see I am better 
 now." 
 
 If a laughing eye with a lively light, and a face 
 bright with beaming and healthy energy, could 
 attest that he was better, better he certainly was. 
 
 " You do not look much amiss, or greatly out 
 of condition," I allowed. 
 
 " And why, Lucy, can't you look and feel as I do 
 — buoyant, courageous, and fit to defy all the nuns 
 
176 
 
 V1LLETTE. 
 
 and flirts in Christendom ? I would give gold on 
 the spot just to see you snap your fingers. Try 
 the manoeuvre." 
 
 " If I were to bring Miss Fanshawe into your 
 presence just now?" 
 
 " I vow, Lucy, she should not move me : or, she 
 should move me but by one thing — true, yes, 
 and passionate love. I would accord forgiveness at 
 no less a price." 
 
 " Indeed ! a smile of hers would have been a 
 fortune to you a while since." 
 
 " Transformed,Lucy : transformed ! Remember, you 
 once called me a slave! but I am a free man now ! " 
 
 He stood up : in the port of his head, the carriage 
 of his figure, in his beaming eye and mien, there 
 revealed itself a liberty which was more than ease 
 — a mood which was disdain of his past bondage. 
 
 " Miss Fanshawe," he pursued, " has led me 
 through a phase of feeling which is over : I have 
 entered another condition, and am now much dis- 
 posed to exact love for love — passion for passion — 
 and good measure of it too." 
 
 " Ah, Doctor ! Doctor ! you said it was your 
 nature to pursue Love under difficulties — to be 
 charmed by a proud insensibility !" 
 
THE LETTER. 177 
 
 He laughed, and answered, " My nature varies : 
 the mood of one hour is sometimes the mockery of 
 the next. Well, Lucy " (drawing on his gloves), 
 " will the Nun come again to-night, think you ? " 
 
 " I don't think she will." 
 
 " Give her my compliments, if she does — Dr. 
 John's compliments — and entreat her to have the 
 goodness to wait a visit from him. Lucy, was she 
 a pretty nun ? Had she a pretty face? You have 
 not told me that yet ; and that is the really im- 
 portant point." 
 
 " She had a white cloth over her face," said I, 
 " but her eyes glittered." 
 
 "Confusion to her goblin trappings!" cried he, 
 irreverently : " but at least she had handsome eyes — 
 bright and soft." 
 
 " Cold and fixed," was my reply. 
 
 " No, no, we'll none of her: she shall not haunt 
 you, Lucy. Give her that shake of the hand, if she 
 comes again. Will she stand that, do you think 1" 
 
 " I thought it too kind and cordial for a ghost to 
 stand ; and so was the smile which matched it, and 
 accompanied his ' Good night.' " 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
178 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 And had there been anything in the garret? 
 What did they discover ? I believe, on the closest 
 examination, their discoveries amounted to very 
 little. They talked, at first, of the cloaks being 
 disturbed ; but Madame Beck told me afterwards 
 she thought they hung much as usual : and as for 
 the broken pane in the skylight, she affirmed that 
 aperture was rarely without one or more panes 
 broken or cracked : and besides, a heavy hail-storm 
 had fallen a few days ago. Madame questioned me 
 very closely as to what I had seen, but I only 
 described an obscure figure clothed in black : I took 
 care not to breathe the word "nun," certain that 
 this word would at once suggest to her mind an 
 idea of romance and unreality. She charged me to 
 say nothing on the subject to any servant, pupil, or 
 teacher, and highly commended my discretion in 
 coming to her private salle-a-manger, instead of 
 carrying the tale of horror to the school refectory. 
 Thus the subject dropped. I was left secretly and 
 sadly to wonder, in my own mind, whether that 
 strange thing was of this world, or of a realm be- 
 yond the grave ; or whether indeed it was only the 
 child of malady, and I of that malady the prey. 
 
VASHTI. 179 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 VASHTI. 
 
 To wonder sadly, did I say ? No : a new influence 
 began to act upon my life, and sadness, for a certain 
 space, was held at bay. Conceive a dell, deep- 
 hollowed in forest secresy ; it lies in dimness and 
 mist : its turf is dank, its herbage pale and humid. 
 A storm or an axe makes a wide gap amongst the 
 oak-trees ; the breeze sweeps in ; the sun looks 
 down ; the sad, cold dell, becomes a deep cup of 
 lustre ; high summer pours her blue glory and her 
 golden light out of that beauteous sky, which till 
 now the starved hollow never saw. 
 
 A new creed became mine — a belief in happiness. 
 
 It was three weeks since the adventure of the 
 garret, and I possessed in that case, box, drawer up 
 stairs, casketed with that first letter, four com- 
 panions like to it, traced by the same firm pen, 
 
180 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 sealed with the same clear seal, full of the same 
 vital comfort. Vital comfort it seemed to me then : 
 I read them in after years ; they were kind letters 
 enough — pleasing letters, because composed by one 
 well-pleased ; in the two last there were three or 
 four closing lines half-gay, half-tender, " by feeling 
 touched, but not subdued." Time, dear reader, mel- 
 lowed them to a beverage of this mild quality ; but 
 when I first tasted their elixir, fresh from the fount 
 so honoured, it seemed juice of a divine vintage : a 
 draught which Hebe might fill, and the very gods 
 approve. 
 
 Does the reader, remembering what was said 
 some pages back, care to ask how I answered these 
 letters : whether under the dry, stinting check of 
 Reason, or according to the full, liberal impulse of 
 Feeling? 
 
 To speak truth, I compromised matters ; I served 
 two masters : I bowed down in the house of Rim- 
 mon, and lifted the heart at another shrine. I 
 wrote to these letters two answers — one for my own 
 relief, the other for Graham's perusal. 
 
 To begin with : Feeling and I turned Reason out 
 of doors, drew against her bar and bolt, then we sat 
 down, spread our paper, dipped in the ink an eager 
 
VASHTI. 181 
 
 pen, and, with deep enjoyment, poured out our sin- 
 cere heart. When we had done — when two sheets 
 were covered with the language of a strongly-ad- 
 herent affection, a rooted and active gratitude — (once, 
 for all, in this parenthesis, I disclaim, with the utmost 
 scorn, every sneaking suspicion of what are called 
 " warmer feelings :" women do not entertain these 
 " warmer feelings" where, from the commencement, 
 through the whole progress of an acquaintance, they 
 have never once been cheated of the conviction that 
 to do so would be to commit a mortal absurdity : 
 nobody ever launches into Love unless he has seen 
 or dreamed the rising of Hope's star over Love's 
 troubled waters) — when, then, I had given expression 
 to a closely-clinging and deeply-honouring attach- 
 ment — an attachment that wanted to attract to itself 
 and take into its own lot all that was painful in the 
 destiny of its object ; that would, if it could, have 
 absorbed and conducted away all storms and light- 
 nings from an existence viewed with a passion of 
 solicitude — then, just at that moment, the doors 
 of my heart would shake, bolt and bar would 
 yield, Reason would leap in, vigorous and re- 
 vengeful, snatch the full sheets, read, sneer, 
 erase, tear up, re-write, fold, seal, direct, and 
 
182 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 send a terse, curt missive of a page. She did 
 right. 
 
 I did not live on letters only : I was visited, I was 
 looked after ; once a week I was taken out to La 
 Terrasse ; always I was made much of. Dr. Bretton 
 failed not to tell me why he was so kind : " To keep 
 away the nun," he said; "he was determined to 
 dispute with her her prey. He had taken," he 
 declared, " a thorough dislike to her, chiefly on ac- 
 count of that white face- cloth, and those cold gray 
 eyes : the moment he heard of those odious parti- 
 culars," he affirmed, " consummate disgust had in- 
 cited him to oppose her ; he was determined to try 
 whether he or she was the cleverest, and he only 
 wished she would once more look in upon me when 
 he was present:" but that she never did. In short, 
 he regarded me scientifically in the light of a patient, 
 and at once exercised his professional skill, and gra- 
 tified his natural benevolence, by a course of cordial 
 and attentive treatment. 
 
 One evening, the first in December, I was walk- 
 ing by myself in the carre ; it was six o'clock ; the 
 classe-doors were closed; but within, the pupils, 
 rampant in the license of evening recreation, were 
 counterfeiting a miniature chaos. The carre was 
 
VASHTI. 183 
 
 quite dark, except a red light shining under and 
 about the stove ; the wide glass-doors and the long 
 windows were frosted over ; a crystal sparkle of 
 starlight, here and there spangling this blanched 
 winter veil, and breaking with scattered brilliants 
 the paleness of its embroidery, proved it a clear 
 night, though moonless. That I should dare to re- 
 main thus alone in darkness, showed that my nerves 
 were regaining a healthy tone : I thought of the 
 nun, but hardly feared her; though the staircase 
 was behind me, leading up, through blind, black 
 night, from landing to landing, to the haunted 
 grenier. Yet I own my heart quaked, my pulse 
 leaped, when I suddenly heard breathing and rust- 
 ling, and turning, saw in the deep shadow of the 
 steps a deeper shadow still— a shape that moved and 
 descended. It paused a while at the classe door, 
 and then it glided before me. Simultaneously came 
 a clangor of the distant door-bell. Life-like sounds 
 bring life-like feelings : this shape was too round 
 and low for my gaunt nun : it was only Madame 
 Beck on duty. 
 
 " Mademoiselle Lucy ! " cried Rosiue, bursting 
 in, lamp in hand, from the corridor, " On est la 
 pour vous au salon." 
 
184 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 Madame saw me, I saw Madame, Rosine saw us 
 both : there was no mutual recognition. I made 
 straight for the salon. There I found what I own 
 I anticipated I should find — Dr. Bretton ; but he 
 was in evening-dress. 
 
 "The carriage is at the door," said he; "my 
 mother has sent it to take you to the theatre ; she 
 was going herself but an arrival has prevented her : 
 she immediately said, 'Take Lucy in my place.' 
 Will you go?" 
 
 " Just now ? I am not dressed," cried I, glancing 
 despairingly at my dark merino. 
 
 "You have half an hour to dress. I should have 
 given you notice, but. I only determined on going 
 since five o'clock, when I heard there was to be a 
 genuine regale in the presence of a great actress." 
 
 And he mentioned a name that thrilled me — a 
 name that, in those days, could thrill Europe. It 
 is hushed now : its once restless echoes are all still ; 
 she who bore it went years ago to her rest : night 
 and oblivion long since closed above her ; but then 
 her day — a day of Sirius — stood at its full height, 
 light and fervour. 
 
 " I '11 go ; I will be ready in ten minutes," I 
 vowed. And away I flew, never once checked, 
 
VASHTI. 185 
 
 reader, by the thought which perhaps at this mo- 
 ment checks you : namely that to go anywhere with 
 Graham and without Mrs. Bretton could he objec- 
 tionable. I could not have conceived, much less have 
 expressed, to Graham such thought — such scruple — 
 without risk of exciting a tyrannous self-contempt ; 
 of kindling an inward fire of shame so quenchless, 
 and so devouring, that I think it would soon have 
 licked up the very life in my veins. Besides, my 
 godmother, knowing her son, and knowing me, 
 would as soon have thought of chaperoning a sister 
 with a brother, as of keeping anxious guard over 
 our incomings and outgoings. 
 
 The present was no occasion for showy array ; my 
 dun-mist crape would suffice, and I sought the same 
 in the great oak-wardrobe in the dormitory, where 
 hung no less than forty dresses. But there had 
 been changes and reforms, and some innovating 
 hand had pruned this same crowded wardrobe, and 
 carried divers garments to the grenier — my crape 
 amongst the rest. I must fetch it. I got the key, 
 and went aloft fearless, almost thoughtless. I un- 
 locked the door, I plunged in. The reader may 
 believe it or not, but when I thus suddenly entered, 
 that garret was not wholly dark as it should have 
 
186 VILLETTE. 
 
 been : from one point there shone a solemn light, 
 like a star, but broader. So plainly it shone, that 
 it revealed the deep alcove with a portion of the 
 tarnished scarlet curtain drawn over it. Instantly, 
 silently, before my eyes, it vanished ; so did the 
 curtain and alcove : all that end of the garret 
 became black as night. I ventured no research ; 
 I had not time nor will ; snatching my dress, which 
 hung on the wall, happily near the door, I rushed 
 out, relocked the door with convulsed haste, and 
 darted downwards to the dormitory. 
 
 But I trembled too much to dress myself: im- 
 possible to arrange hair or fasten hooks-and-eyes 
 with such fingers, so I called Rosine and bribed 
 her to help me. Rosine liked a bribe, so she did 
 her best, smoothed and plaited my hair as well as 
 a coiffeur would have done, placed the lace collar 
 mathematically straight, tied the neck-ribbon ac- 
 curately — in short, did her work like the neat- 
 handed Phillis she could be when she chose. Hav- 
 ing given me my handkerchief and gloves, she took 
 the candle and lighted me down stairs. After all, 
 I had forgotten my shawl ; she ran back to fetch 
 it ; and I stood with Dr. John in the vestibule, 
 waiting. 
 
VASHTI. 187 
 
 " What is this, Lucy ? " said he, looking down, 
 at me narrowly. "Here is the old excitement. 
 Ha ! the nun again ? " 
 
 But I utterly denied the charge: I was vexed 
 to be suspected of a second illusion. He was 
 sceptical. 
 
 " She has been, as sure as I live," said he ; " her 
 figure crossing your eyes leaves on them a peculiar 
 gleam and expression not to be mistaken." 
 
 "She has not been," I persisted: for, indeed, I 
 could deny her apparition with truth. 
 
 " The old symptoms are there," he affirmed ; " a 
 particular pale, and what the Scotch call a ' raised' 
 look." 
 
 He was so obstinate, I thought it better to tell 
 him what I really had seen. Of course with him, it 
 was held to be another effect of the same cause : 
 it was all optical illusion — nervous malady, and so 
 on. Not one bit did I believe him ; but I dared 
 not contradict : doctors are so self-opinionated, so 
 immovable in their dry, materialist views. 
 
 Rosine brought the shawl, and I was bundled 
 into the carriage. 
 
188 VILLETTE. 
 
 The theatre was full — crammed to its roof : 
 royal and noble were there ; palace and hotel had 
 emptied their inmates into those tiers so thronged 
 and so hushed. Deeply did I feel myself privi- 
 leged in having a place before that stage ; I longed 
 to see a being of whose powers I had heard reports 
 which made me conceive peculiar anticipations. I 
 wondered if she would justify her renown: with 
 strange curiosity, with feelings severe and austere, 
 yet of riveted interest, I waited. She was a study 
 of such nature as had not encountered my eyes 
 yet : a great and new planet she was : but in what 
 shape ? I waited her rising. 
 
 She rose at nine that December night : above 
 the horizon I saw her come. She could shine yet 
 with pale grandeur and steady might ; but that star 
 verged already on its judgment-day. Seen near, 
 it was a chaos — hollow, half-consumed : an orb 
 perished or perishing — half lava, half glow. 
 
 I had heard this woman termed " plain," and I 
 expected bony harshness and grimness — something 
 large, angular, sallow. What I saw was the shadow 
 of a royal Vashti : a queen, fair as the day once, 
 turned pale now like twilight, and wasted like wax 
 in flame. 
 
VASHTI. 189 
 
 For awhile — a long- while — I thought it was only 
 a woman, though an unique woman, who moved 
 in might and grace before this multitude. By-and- 
 by I recognized my mistake. Behold! I found 
 upon her something neither of woman nor of man : 
 in each of her eyes sat a devil. These evil forces 
 bore her through the tragedy, kept up her feeble 
 strength — for she was but a frail creature ; and as 
 the action rose and the stir deepened, how wildly 
 they shook her with their passions of the pit ! 
 They wrote hell on her straight, haughty brow. 
 They tuned her voice to the note of torment. They 
 writhed her regal face to a demoniac mask. Hate 
 and Murder and Madness incarnate, she stood. 
 
 It was a marvellous sight : a mighty revelation. 
 
 It was a spectacle low, horrible, immoral. 
 
 Swordsmen thrust through, and dying in their 
 blood on the arena sand ; bulls goring horses dis- 
 embowelled, make a meeker vision for the public 
 — a milder condiment for a people's palate — than 
 Vashti torn by seven devils : devils which cried 
 sore and rent the tenement they haunted, but 
 still refused to be exorcised. 
 
 Suffering had struck that stage empress ; and she 
 stood before her audience neither yielding to, nor 
 
190 VILLETTE. 
 
 enduring, nor in finite measure, resenting it : she 
 stood locked in struggle, rigid in resistance. She 
 stood, not dressed, but draped in pale antique folds, 
 long and regular like sculpture. A background 
 and entourage and flooring of deepest crimson 
 threw her out, white like alabaster — like silver : 
 rather be it said, like Death.. 
 
 Where was the artist of the Cleopatra? Let 
 him come and sit down and study this different 
 vision. Let him seek here the mighty brawn, 
 the muscle, the abounding blood, the full-fed flesh 
 he worshipped : let all materialists draw nigh and. 
 look on. 
 
 I have said that she does not resent her grief. 
 No ; the weakness of that word would make it a 
 lie. To her, what hurts becomes immediately em- 
 bodied : she looks on it as a thing that can be 
 attacked, worried down, torn in shreds. Scarcely 
 a substance herself, she grapples to conflict with 
 abstractions. Before calamity she is a tigress ; she 
 rends her woes, shivers them in convulsed abhor- 
 rence. Pain, for her, has no result in good ; tears 
 water no harvest of wisdom : on sickness, on death 
 itself, she looks with the eye of a rebel. Wicked, 
 perhaps, she is, but also she is strong ; and her 
 
VASHTI. 191 
 
 strength has conquered Beauty, has overcome 
 Grace, and bound both at her side, captives peer- 
 lessly fair, and docile as fair. Even in the uttermost 
 frenzy of energy is each maenad movement royally, 
 imperially, incedingly upborne. Her hair, flying 
 loose in revel or war, is still an angel's hair, and 
 glorious under a halo. Fallen, insurgent, banished, 
 she remembers the heaven where she rebelled. 
 Heaven's light, following her exile, pierces its con- 
 fines, and discloses their forlorn remoteness. 
 
 Place now the Cleopatra, or any other slag, 
 before her as an obstacle, and see her cut through 
 the pulpy mass as the scimitar of Saladin clove the 
 down cushion. Let Paul Peter Rubens wake from 
 the dead, let him rise out of his cerements, and 
 bring into this presence all the army of his fat 
 women ; the magian power or prophet-virtue gift- 
 ing that slight rod of Moses, could, at one waft, 
 release and re-mingle a sea spell-parted, whelming 
 the heavy host with the down-rush of overthrown 
 sea-ramparts. 
 
 Vashti was not good, I was told ; and I have said 
 she did not look good : though a spirit, she was a 
 spirit out of Tophet. Well, if so much of unholy 
 force can arise from below, may not an equal 
 
192 VILLETTE. 
 
 efflux of sacred essence descend one day from 
 above ? 
 
 What thought Dr. Graham of this being ? 
 
 For long intervals I forgot to look how he de- 
 meaned himself, or to question what he thought. 
 The strong magnetism of genius drew my heart 
 out of its wonted orbit ; the sunflower turned from 
 the south to a fierce light, not solar — a rushing, 
 red, cometary light — hot on vision and to sensation. 
 I had seen acting before, but never anything like 
 this : never anything which astonished Hope and 
 hushed Desire ; which outstripped Impulse and 
 paled Conception ; which, instead of merely irri- 
 tating imagination with the thought of what 
 might be done, at the same time fevering the 
 nerves because it was not done, disclosed power 
 like a deep, swollen, winter river, thundering in 
 cataract, and bearing the soul, like a leaf, on the 
 steep and steely sweep of its descent. 
 
 Miss Fanshawe, with her usual ripeness of judg- 
 ment, pronounced Dr. Bretton a serious, impas- 
 sioned man, too grave and too impressible. Not in 
 such light did I ever see him: no such faults could 
 I lay to his charge. His natural attitude was not 
 the meditative, nor his natural mood the senti- 
 
VASHTI. 193 
 
 mental ; impressionable he was as dimpling water, but, 
 almost as water, unimpressible : the breeze, the sun, 
 moved him — metal could not grave, nor fire brand. 
 Dr. John could think, and think well, but he was 
 rather a man of action than of thought ; he could 
 feel, and feel vividly in his way, but his heart had 
 no chord for enthusiasm : to bright, soft, sweet in- 
 fluences his eyes and lips gave bright, soft, sweet 
 welcome, beautiful to see as dyes of rose and silver, 
 pearl and purple, embuing summer clouds; for 
 what belonged to storm, what was wild and intense, 
 dangerous, sudden, and flaming, he had no sym- 
 pathy, and held with it no communion. When I 
 took time and regained inclination to glance at him, 
 it amused and enlightened me to discover that he 
 was watching that sinister and sovereign Vashti, 
 not with wonder, nor worship, nor yet dismay, 
 but simply with intense curiosity. Her agony did 
 not pain him, her wild moan — worse than a shriek 
 — did not much move him ; her fury revolted him 
 somewhat, but not to the point of horror. Cool 
 young Briton ! The pale cliffs of his own England 
 do not look down on the tides of the channel more 
 calmly than he watched the Pythian inspiration of 
 that night. 
 
 VOL. II. o 
 
194 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 Looking at his face, I longed to know his exact 
 opinions, and at last I put a question tending to 
 elicit them. At the sound of my voice he awoke 
 as if out of a dream ; for he had been thinking, 
 and very intently thinking, his own thoughts, after 
 his own manner. " How did he like Vashti ? " I 
 wished to know. 
 
 " Hm-m-m," was the first scarce articulate but 
 expressive answer ; and then such a strange smile 
 went wandering round his lips, a smile so critical, 
 so almost callous ! I suppose that for natures of 
 that order his sympathies were callous. In a few 
 terse phrases he told me his opinion of, and feeling 
 towards, the actress : he judged her as a woman, 
 not an artist : it was a branding judgment. 
 
 That night was already marked in my book of 
 life, not with white, but with a deep-red cross. But 
 I had not done with it yet ; and other memoranda 
 were destined to be set down in characters of tint 
 indelible. 
 
 Towards midnight, when the deepening tragedy 
 blackened to the death scene, and all held their 
 breath, and even Graham bit in his under lip, and 
 knit his brow, and sat still and struck — when the 
 whole theatre was hushed, when the vision of all 
 
VASHTI. 195 
 
 eyes centred in one point, when all ears listened 
 towards one quarter — nothing being seen but the 
 white form sunk on a seat, quivering in conflict 
 with her last, her worst-hated, her visibly-conquer- 
 ing foe — nothing heard but her throes, her gasp- 
 ings, breathing yet of mutiny, panting still defiance : 
 when, as it seemed, an inordinate will, convulsing 
 a perishing mortal frame, bent it to battle with 
 doom and death, fought every inch of ground, sold 
 dear every drop of blood, resisted to the latest 
 the rape of every faculty, would see, would hear, 
 would breathe, would live, up to, within, well nigh 
 beyond the moment when death says to all sense 
 and all being — 
 
 u Thus far and no farther ! " 
 
 Just then a stir, pregnant with omen, rustled 
 behind the scenes — feet ran, voices spoke. What 
 was it ? demanded the whole house. A flame, a 
 smell of smoke replied. 
 
 " Fire ! " rang through the gallery. " Fire ! " was 
 repeated, re-echoed, yelled forth: and then, and 
 faster than pen can set it down, came panic, rushing, 
 crushing — a blind, selfish, cruel chaos. 
 
 And Dr. John ? Reader, I see him yet, with his 
 look of comely courage and cordial calm. 
 
196 VILLETTE. 
 
 " Lucy will sit still, I know," said he, glancing 
 down at me with the same serene goodness, the 
 same repose of firmness that I have seen in him 
 when sitting at his side amid the secure peace of 
 his mother's hearth. Yes, thus adjured, I think I 
 would have sat still under a rocking crag : but, 
 indeed, to sit still in actual circumstances was my 
 instinct ; and at the price of my very life, I would 
 not have moved to give him trouble, thwart his 
 will, or make demands on his attention. We were 
 in the stalls, and for a few minutes there was a 
 most terrible, ruthless pressure about us. 
 
 " How terrified are the women ! " said he ; " but 
 if the men were not almost equally so, order might 
 be maintained. This is a sorry scene: I see fifty 
 selfish brutes at this moment, each of whom, if I 
 were near, I could conscientiously knock down. 
 I see some women braver than some men. There 
 is one yonder — Good God !" 
 
 While Graham was speaking, a young girl who 
 had been very quietly and steadily clinging to a 
 gentleman standing before us, was suddenly struck 
 from her protector's arms by a big, butcherly in- 
 truder, and hurled under the feet of the crowd. 
 Scarce two seconds lasted her disappearance. Gra- 
 
VASHTI. 197 
 
 ham rushed forwards; he and the gentleman, a 
 powerful man though gray-haired, united their 
 strength to thrust hack the throng; her head and 
 long hair fell hack over his shoulder : she seemed 
 unconscious. 
 
 "Trust her with me ; I am a medical man," said 
 Dr. John. 
 
 " If you have no lady with you, be it so," was the 
 answer. " Hold her, and I will force a passage : 
 we must get her to the air." 
 
 " I have a lady," said Graham, " hut she will he 
 neither hindrance nor incumbrance." 
 
 He summoned me with his eye : we were sepa- 
 rated. Resolute, however, to rejoin him, I pene- 
 trated the living barrier, creeping under, where I 
 could not get between or over. 
 
 " Fasten on me, and don't leave go," he said ; and 
 I obeyed him. 
 
 Our pioneer proved strong and adroit ; he opened 
 the dense mass like a wedge ; with patience and toil 
 he at last bored through the flesh-and-blood rock — 
 so solid, hot, and suffocating — and brought us to 
 the fresh, freezing night. 
 
 " You are an Englishman ! " said he, turning 
 shortly on Dr. Bretton, when we got into the street- 
 
198 VILLETTE. 
 
 "An Englishman. And I speak to a country- 
 man ? " was the reply. 
 
 " Right. Be good enough to stand here two 
 minutes, whilst I find my carriage." 
 
 " Papa, I am not hurt," said a girlish voice, 
 " am I with papa?" 
 
 " You are with a friend, and your father is close 
 at hand." 
 
 " Tell him I am not hurt, except just in my 
 shoulder. Oh, my shoulder ! They trode just 
 here." 
 
 " Dislocation, perhaps ! " muttered the Doctor : 
 "let us hope there is no worse injury done. Lucy, 
 lend a hand one instant." 
 
 And I assisted while he made some arrangement 
 of drapery and position for the ease of his suffering 
 burden. She suppressed a moan, and lay in his 
 arms quietly and patiently. 
 
 " She is very light," said Graham, " like a child ! " 
 and he asked in my ear, " Is she a child, Lucy ? 
 Did you notice her age ? " 
 
 " I am not a child — I am a person of seventeen," 
 responded the patient demurely and with dignity. 
 Then, directly after : 
 
 " Tell papa to come ; I get anxious." 
 
VASHTI. 199 
 
 The carriage drove up ; her father relieved Gra- 
 ham; but in the exchange from one bearer to 
 another she was hurt, and moaned again. 
 
 " My darling ! " said the father tenderly ; then 
 turning to Graham, " You said, sir, you are a 
 medical man?" 
 
 " I am : Dr. Bretton, of La Terrasse." 
 
 " Good. Will you step into my carriage ? " 
 
 " My own carriage is here : I will seek it, and 
 accompany you." 
 
 " Be pleased, then, to follow us." And he named 
 his address : " The Hotel Crecy, in the Rue Crecy." 
 
 We followed ; the carriage drove fast ; myself 
 and Graham were silent. This seemed like an ad- 
 venture. 
 
 Some little time being lost in seeking our own 
 equipage, we reached the hotel, perhaps, about ten 
 minutes after these strangers. It was an hotel in 
 the foreign sense : a collection of dwelling-houses, 
 not an inn — a vast, lofty pile, with a huge arch to 
 its street-door, leading through a vaulted covered 
 way, into a square all built round. 
 
 We alighted, passed up a wide, handsome public 
 staircase, and stopped at Numero 2 on the second 
 landing; the first floor comprising the abode of I 
 
200 VILLETTE. 
 
 know not what " prince Russe," as Graham informed 
 me. On ringing the bell at a second great door, we 
 were admitted to a suite of very handsome apart- 
 ments. Announced by a servant in livery, we en- 
 tered a drawing-room whose hearth glowed with an 
 English fire, and whose walls gleamed with foreign 
 mirrors. Near the hearth appeared a little group ; 
 a slight form sunk in a deep arm-chair, one or two 
 women busy about it, the iron-gray gentleman 
 anxiously looking on. 
 
 " Where is Harriet ? I wish Harriet would come 
 to me," said the girlish voice, faintly. 
 
 " Where is Mrs. Hurst ?■" demanded the gentle- 
 man impatiently and somewhat sternly of the man- 
 servant who had admitted us. 
 
 " I am sorry to say she is gone out of town, sir ; 
 my young lady gave her leave till to-morrow." 
 
 "Yes — I did — I did. She is gone to see her 
 sister ; I said she might go : I remember now," in- 
 terposed the young lady ; " but I am so sorry, for 
 Manon and Lonison cannot understand a word I say, 
 and they hurt me without meaning to do so." 
 
 Dr. John and the gentleman now interchanged 
 greetings ; and while they passed a few minutes in 
 consultation, I approached the easy-chair, and see- 
 
VASHTI. 201 
 
 ing what the faint and sinking girl wished to have 
 done, I did it for her. 
 
 I was still occupied in the arrangement, when 
 Graham drew near ; he was no less skilled in sur- 
 gery than medicine, and, on examination, found that 
 no further advice than his own was necessary to the 
 treatment of the present case. He ordered her to 
 he carried to her chamber, and whispered to me : — 
 
 " Go with the women, Lucy ; they seem but dull ; 
 you can at least direct their movements, and thus 
 spare her some pain. She must be touched very 
 tenderly." 
 
 The chamber was a room shadowy with pale-blue 
 hangings, vaporous with curtainings and veilings of 
 muslin ; the bed seemed to me like snow-drift and 
 mist — spotless, soft, and gauzy. Making the women 
 stand apart, I undressed their mistress, without their 
 well-meaning but clumsy aid. I was not in a suf- 
 ficiently collected mood to note with separate distinct- 
 ness every detail of the attire I removed, but I 
 received a general impression of refinement, delicacy, 
 and perfect personal cultivation ; which, in a period 
 of after-thought, offered in my reflections a singular 
 contrast to notes retained of Miss Ginevra Fan- 
 shawe's appointments. 
 
202 VILLETTE. 
 
 This girl was herself a small, delicate creature, 
 but made like a model. As I folded back her plen- 
 tiful yet fine hair, so shining and soft, and so 
 exquisitely tended, I had under my observation a 
 young, pale, weary, but high-bred face. The brow 
 was smooth and clear ; the eyebrows were distinct, 
 but soft, and melting to a mere trace at the temples; 
 the eyes were a rich gift of nature — fine and full, 
 large, deep, seeming to hold dominion over the 
 slighter subordinate features — capable, probably, of 
 much significance at another hour and under other 
 circumstances than the present, but now languid and 
 suffering. Her skin was perfectly fair, the neck 
 and hands veined finely like the petals of a flower; 
 a thin glazing of the ice of pride, polished this deli- 
 cate exterior, and her lip wore a curl — I doubt not 
 inherent and unconscious, but which, if I had seen 
 it first with the accompaniments of health and state, 
 would have struck me as unwarranted, and proving 
 in the little lady a quite mistaken view of life and 
 her own consequence. 
 
 Her demeanour under the Doctor's hands at first 
 excited a smile : it was not puerile — rather, on the 
 whole, patient and firm — but yet, once or twice she 
 addressed him with suddenness and sharpness, say- 
 
VASHTI. 203 
 
 ing that he hurt her, and must contrive to give her 
 less pain ; I saw her large eyes, too, settle on his 
 face like the solemn eyes of some pretty, wondering 
 child. I know not whether Graham felt this ex- 
 amination : if he did, he was cautious not to check or 
 discomfit it by any retaliatory look. I think he per- 
 formed his work with extreme care and gentleness, 
 sparing her what pain he could ; and she acknow- 
 ledged as much, when he had done, by the words : — 
 
 " Thank you, Doctor, and good night," very 
 gratefully pronounced : as she uttered them, how- 
 ever, it was with a repetition of the serious, direct 
 gaze, I thought, peculiar in its gravity and intent- 
 ness 
 
 The injuries, it seems, were not dangerous : an. 
 assurance which her father received with a smile 
 that almost made one his friend — it was so glad and 
 gratified. He now expressed his obligations to 
 Graham with as much earnestness as was befitting 
 an Englishman addressing one who has served him, 
 but is yet a stranger ; he also begged him to call 
 the next day. 
 
 " Papa," said a voice from the veiled couch, 
 " thank the lady, too : is she there? " 
 
 I opened the curtain with a smile, and looked in 
 
204 VILLETTE. 
 
 at her. She lay now at comparative ease; she 
 looked pretty, though pale ; her face was delicately 
 designed, and if at first sight it appeared proud, I 
 believe custom might prove it to he soft. 
 
 " I thank the lady very sincerely," said her father : 
 " I fancy she has been very good to my child. I 
 think we scarcely dare tell Mrs. Hurst who has 
 been her substitute and done her work ; she will 
 feel at once ashamed and jealous." 
 
 And thus, in the most friendly spirit, parting 
 greetings were interchanged ; and refreshment having 
 been hospitably offered, but by us, as it was late, 
 refused, we withdrew from the Hotel Crecy. 
 
 On our way back we repassed the theatre. All 
 was silence and darkness : the roaring, rushing 
 crowd all vanished and gone — the lamps, as well as 
 the incipient fire, extinct and forgotten. Next 
 morning's papers explained that it was but some 
 loose drapery on which a spark had fallen, and 
 which had blazed up and been quenched in a 
 moment. 
 
M. DE BASSOMPIERRE. 205 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 M. DE BASSOMPIEERE. 
 
 Those who live in retirement, whose lives have 
 fallen amid the seclusion of schools or of other 
 walled-in and guarded dwellings, are liable to be 
 suddenly and for a long while dropped out of the 
 memory of their friends, the denizens of a freer 
 world. Unaccountably, perhaps, and close upon 
 some space of unusually frequent intercourse — some 
 congeries of rather exciting little circumstances, 
 whose natural sequel would rather seem to be the 
 quickening than the suspension of communication — 
 there falls a stilly pause, a wordless silence, a long 
 blank of oblivion. Unbroken always is this blank ; 
 alike entire and unexplained. The letter, the mes- 
 sage once frequent, are cut off; the visit, formerly 
 periodical, ceases to occur; the book, paper, or 
 
206 VILLETTE. 
 
 other token that indicated remembrance, comes no 
 more. 
 
 Always there are excellent reasons for these 
 lapses, if the hermit but knew them. Though he is 
 stagnant in his cell, his connections without are whirl- 
 ing in the very vortex of life. That void interval 
 which passes for him so slowly that the very clocks 
 seem at a stand, and the wingless hours plod by 
 in the likeness of tired tramps prone to rest at 
 milestones — that same interval, perhaps, teems with 
 events, and pants with hurry for his friends. 
 
 The hermit — if he be a sensible hermit — will 
 swallow his own thoughts, and lock up his own 
 emotions during these weeks of inward winter. He 
 will know that Destiny designed him to imitate, on 
 occasion, the dormouse, and he will be conformable : 
 make a tidy ball of himself, creep into a hole of life's 
 wall, and submit decently to the drift which blows 
 in and soon blocks him up, preserving him in ice 
 for the season. 
 
 Let him say, " It is quite right : it ought to be 
 so, since so it is." And, perhaps, one day his snow- 
 sepulchre will open, spring's softness will return, 
 the sun and south-wind will reach him ; the budding 
 of hedges, and carolling of birds and singing of 
 
M. DE BASSOMPIEKRE. 207 
 
 liberated streams will call him to kindly resurrec- 
 tion. Perhaps this may be the case, perhaps not : 
 the frost may get into his heart and never thaw 
 more ; when spring comes, a crow or a pie may pick 
 out of the wall only his dormouse-bones. Well, 
 even in that case, all will be right : it is to be sup- 
 posed he knew from the first he was mortal, and 
 must one day go the way of all flesh, " As well soon 
 as syne." 
 
 Following that eventful evening at the theatre, 
 came for me seven weeks as bare as seven sheets of 
 blank paper : no word was written on one of them ; 
 not a visit, not a token. 
 
 About the middle of that time I entertained fan- 
 cies that something had happened to my friends 
 at La Terrasse. The mid-blank is always a be- 
 clouded point for the solitary : his nerves ache with 
 the strain of long expectancy ; the doubts hitherto 
 repelled gather now to a mass and — strong in accu- 
 mulation — roll back upon him with a force which 
 savours of vindictiveness. Mght, too, becomes an 
 unkindly time, and sleep and his nature cannot 
 agree : strange starts and struggles harass his 
 couch ; the sinister band of bad dreams, with horror 
 of calamity, and sick dread of entire desertion at 
 
208 VILLETTE. 
 
 their head, join the league against him. Poor 
 wretch! He does his best to bear up, but he 
 is a poor, pallid, wasting wretch, despite that 
 best. 
 
 Towards the last of those long seven weeks I 
 admitted, what through the other six I had jealously- 
 excluded — the conviction that these blanks were 
 inevitable : the result of circumstances, the fiat of 
 fate, a part of my life's lot, and — above all — a matter 
 about whose origin no question must ever be asked, for 
 whose painful sequence no murmur ever uttered. Of 
 course I did not blame myself for suffering : I thank 
 God I had a truer sense of justice than to fall into 
 any imbecile extravagances of self-accusation ; and 
 as to blaming others for silence, in my reason I well 
 knew them blameless, and in my heart acknow- 
 ledged them so : but it was a rough and heavy road 
 to travel, and I longed for better days. 
 
 I tried different expedients to sustain and fill 
 existence : I commenced an elaborate piece of lace- 
 work, I studied German pretty hard, I undertook 
 a course of regular reading of the driest and thickest 
 books in the library ; in all my efforts I was as 
 orthodox as I knew how to be. Was there error 
 somewhere ? Very likely. I only know the result 
 
M. DE BASSOMPIEEEE. 209 
 
 was as if I had gnawed a file to satisfy hunger, or 
 drank brine to quench thirst. 
 
 My hour of torment was the post-hour. Unfor- 
 tunately I knew it too well, and tried as vainly as 
 assiduously to cheat myself of that knowledge; 
 dreading the rack of expectation, and the sick col- 
 lapse of disappointment which daily preceded and 
 followed upon that well-recognized ring. 
 
 I suppose animals kept in cages, and so scantily 
 fed as to be always upon the verge of famine, 
 await their food as I awaited a letter. Oh! — to 
 speak truth, and drop that tone of a false calm 
 which long to sustain, outwears nature's endurance. 
 — I underwent in those seven weeks bitter fears and 
 pains, strange inward trials, miserable defections of 
 hope, intolerable encroachments of despair. This 
 last came so near me sometimes that her breath 
 went right through me. I used to feel it, like a 
 baleful air or sigh, penetrate deep, and make motion 
 pause at my heart, or proceed only under unspeak- 
 able oppression. The letter — the well-beloved let- 
 ter — would not come ; and it was all of sweetness in 
 life I had to look for. 
 
 In the very extremity of want, I had recourse 
 again, and yet again, to the little packet in the case 
 
 YOL. II. p 
 
210 VILLETTE. 
 
 — the five letters. How splendid that month seemed 
 whose skies had beheld the rising of these five 
 stars ! It was always at night I visited them, and 
 not daring to ask every evening for a candle in the 
 kitchen, I bought a wax-taper and matches to light 
 it, and at the study-hour stole up to the dormitory, 
 and feasted on my crust from the Barmecide's loaf. 
 It did not nourish me: I pined on it, and got as 
 thin as a shadow : otherwise I was not ill. 
 
 Heading there somewhat late one evening, and 
 feeling that the power to read was leaving me — for 
 the letters from incessant perusal were losing all 
 sap and significance: my gold was withering to 
 leaves before my eyes, and I was sorrowing over 
 the disillusion — suddenly a quick tripping foot ran 
 up the stairs. I knew Ginevra Fanshawe's step: 
 she had dined in town that afternoon ; she was now 
 returned, and would come here to replace her shawl, 
 &c., in the wardrobe. 
 
 Yes: in she came, dressed in bright silk, with 
 her shawl falling from her shoulders, and her curls, 
 half-uncurled in the damp of night, drooping care- 
 less and heavy upon her neck. I had hardly time 
 to recasket my treasures and lock them up when she 
 was at my side : her humour seemed none of the best. 
 
M. DE BASSOMPIERRE. 211 
 
 , r " It has been a stupid evening : they are stupid 
 people," she began. 
 
 " Who ? Mrs. Cholmondeley ? I thought you 
 always found her house charming." 
 
 " I have not been to Mrs. Cholmondeley 's." 
 
 " Indeed ! Have you made new acquaintance ? " 
 
 " My uncle de Bassompierre is come." 
 
 " Your uncle de Bassompierre ! Are you not 
 glad ? — I thought he was a favourite." 
 
 " You thought wrong : the man is odious ; I 
 hate him." 
 
 " Because he is a foreigner ? or for what other 
 reason of equal weight ? " 
 
 " He is not a foreigner. The man is English 
 enough, goodness knows ; and had an English name 
 till three or four years ago ; but his mother was 
 a foreigner, a de Bassompierre, and some of her 
 family are dead and have left him estates, a title, 
 and this name : he is quite a great man now." 
 
 " Do you hate him for that reason ? " 
 
 " Don't I know what mama says about him ? He 
 is not my own uncle, but married mama's sister. 
 Mama detests him ; she says he killed aunt Ginevra 
 with unkindness: he looks like a bear. Such a 
 dismal evening- ! " she went on. " I'll go no more 
 
212 VILLETTE. 
 
 to his big hotel. Fancy me walking into a room 
 alone, and a great man fifty years old coming for- 
 wards, and after a few minutes' conversation ac- 
 tually turning his back upon me, and then abruptly 
 going out of the room. Such odd ways ! I dare- 
 say his conscience smote him, for they all say at 
 home I am the picture of Aunt Ginevra. Mama 
 often declares the likeness is quite ridiculous." 
 
 " Were you the only visitor ? " 
 
 " The only visitor ? Yes, then there was missy, 
 my cousin : little spoiled, pampered thing." 
 
 " M. de Bassompierre has a daughter ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes : don't tease one with questions. Oh 
 dear ! I am so tired." 
 
 She yawned. Throwing herself without cere- 
 mony on my bed, she added, " It seems Made- 
 moiselle was nearly crushed to a jelly in a hubbub 
 at the theatre some weeks ago." 
 
 " Ah ! indeed. And they live at a large hotel in 
 theRueCrecy?" 
 
 " Justement. How do you know ? " 
 
 " I have been there." 
 
 " Oh you have ? Really ! You go everywhere 
 in these days. I suppose Mother Bretton took 
 you? She and Esculapius have the entree of the 
 
M. DE BASSOMPIERRE. 213 
 
 de Bassompierre apartments: it seems e my son 
 John ' attended missy on the occasion of her acci- 
 dent — accident ? Bah ! All affectation ! I don't 
 think she was squeezed more than she richly de- 
 serves for her airs. And now there is quite an in- 
 timacy struck up : I heard something about ' Auld 
 lang syne/ and what not ? Oh, how stupid they all 
 were ! " 
 
 " All! You said you were the only visitor? " 
 
 " Did I? You see one forgets to particularize 
 an old woman and her boy." 
 
 " Dr. and Mrs. Bretton were at M. de Bassom- 
 pierre's this evening ? " 
 
 "Ay, ay! as large as life; and missy played 
 the hostess. What a conceited doll it is ! " 
 
 Soured and listless, Miss Fanshawe was begin- 
 ning to disclose the causes of her prostrate condition. 
 There had been a retrenchment of incense, a diver- 
 sion or a total withholding of homage and atten- 
 tion : coquetry had failed of effect, vanity had 
 undergone mortification. She lay fuming in the 
 vapours. 
 
 "Is Miss de Bassompierre quite well now?" I 
 asked. 
 
 " As well as you or I, no doubt ; but she is an 
 
214 VILLETTE. 
 
 affected little thing, and gave herself invalid airs 
 to attract medical notice. And to see the old 
 dowager making her recline on a couch, and c my 
 son John ' prohibiting excitement, etcetera — faugh ! 
 the scene was quite sickening." 
 
 " It would not have been so if the object of 
 attention had been changed : if you had taken Miss 
 de Bassompierre's place." 
 
 " Indeed ! I hate ' my son John ! ' " 
 
 " ' My son John!' — whom do you indicate by that 
 name? Dr. Bretton's mother never calls him so." 
 
 " Then she ought. A clownish, bearish John he 
 is." 
 
 " You violate the truth in saying so ; and as the 
 whole of my patience is now spun off the distaff, I 
 peremptorily desire you to rise from that bed, and 
 vacate this room." 
 
 te Passionate thing ! Your face is the colour of a 
 coquelicot. I wonder what always makes you so 
 mighty testy a Tendroit du gros Jean ? e John 
 Anderson, my joe, John ! ' Oh ! the distinguished 
 name ! " 
 
 Thrilling with exasperation, to which it would 
 have been sheer folly to have given vent — for there 
 was no contending with that unsubstantial feather, 
 
M. DE BASSOMPIEKRE. 215 
 
 that mealy-winged moth — I extinguished my taper, 
 locked my bureau, and left her, since she would not 
 leave me. Small-beer as she was, she had turned 
 insufferably acid. 
 
 The morrow was Thursday and a half-holiday. 
 Breakfast was over ; I had withdrawn to the first 
 classe. The dreaded hour, the post-hour, was near- 
 ing, and I sat waiting it, much as a ghost-seer might 
 wait his spectre. Less than ever was a letter 
 probable ; still, strive as I would, I could not 
 forget that it was possible. As the moments 
 lessened, a restlessness and fear almost beyond the 
 average assailed me. It was a day of winter 
 east wind, and I had now for some time entered 
 into that dreary fellowship with the winds and their 
 ehanges, so little known, so incomprehensible to the 
 healthy. The north and east owned a terrific in- 
 fluence, making all pain more poignant, all sorrow 
 sadder. The south could calm, the west sometimes 
 cheer : unless, indeed, they brought on their wings 
 the burden of thunder-clouds, under the weight and 
 warmth of which all energy died. 
 
 Bitter and dark as was this January day, I re- 
 member leaving the classe, and running down 
 without bonnet to the bottom of the long gar- 
 
216 VILLETTE. 
 
 den, and then lingering amongst the stripped 
 shrubs ; in the forlorn hope that the postman's ring 
 might occur while I was out of hearing, and I might 
 thus be spared the thrill which some particular 
 nerve or nerves, almost gnawed through with the 
 unremitting tooth of a fixed idea, were becoming 
 wholly unfit to support. I lingered as long as I 
 dared without fear of attracting attention by my 
 absence. I muffled my head in my apron, and stop- 
 ped my ears in terror of the torturing clang, sure 
 to be followed by such blank silence, such barren 
 vacuum for me. At last I ventured to re-enter the 
 first-classe, where, as it was not yet nine o'clock, 
 no pupils had been admitted. The first thing seen 
 was a white object on my black desk, a white, flat 
 object. The post had, indeed, arrived ; by me 
 unheard. Eosine had visited my cell, and, like 
 some angel, had left behind her a bright token of 
 her presence. That shining thing on the desk was 
 indeed a letter, a real letter ; I saw so much at the 
 distance of three yards, and as I had but one cor- 
 respondent on earth, from that one it must come. 
 He remembered me yet. How deep a pulse of 
 gratitude sent new life through my heart. 
 
 Drawing near, bending and looking on the letter, 
 
M. DE BASSOMPIEEEE. 217 
 
 in trembling but almost certain Hope of seeing a 
 known hand, it was my lot to find, on the con- 
 trary, an autograph for the moment deemed un- 
 known — a pale female scrawl, instead of a firm 
 masculine character. I then thought fate was too 
 hard for me, and I said, audibly, " This is cruel." 
 
 But I got over that pain also. Life is still life, 
 whatever its pangs : our eyes and ears and their 
 use remain with us, though the prospect of what 
 pleases be wholly withdrawn, and the sound of what 
 consoles be quite silenced. 
 
 I opened the billet: by this time I had recog- 
 nized its handwriting as perfectly familiar. It was 
 dated " La Terrasse," and it ran thus : — 
 
 " Deae Lucy, — It occurs to me to inquire what 
 you have been doing with yourself for the last 
 month or two ? Not that I suspect you would have 
 the least difficulty in giving an account of your 
 proceedings. I daresay you have been just as busy 
 and happy as ourselves at La Terrasse. As to 
 Graham, his professional connection extends daily : 
 he is so much sought after, so much engaged, that 
 I tell him he will grow quite conceited. Like a 
 right good mother^ as I am, I do my best to keep 
 
218 VILLETTE. 
 
 him down : no flattery does he get from me, as you 
 know. And yet, Lucy, he is a fine fellow; his 
 mother's heart dances at the sight of him. After 
 being hurried here and there the whole day, and 
 passing the ordeal of fifty sorts of tempers, and 
 combating a hundred caprices, and sometimes wit- 
 nessing cruel sufferings — perhaps, occasionally, as I 
 tell him, inflicting them — at night he still comes 
 home to me in such kindly, pleasant mood, that, 
 really, I seem to live in a sort of moral antipodes, 
 and on these January evenings my day rises when 
 other people's night sets in. 
 
 " Still he needs keeping in order, and correcting, 
 
 ft 
 
 and repressing, and I do him that good service ; 
 but the boy is so elastic there is no such thing as 
 vexing him thoroughly. When I think I have at 
 last driven him to the sullens, he turns on me with 
 jokes for retaliation : but you know him and all 
 his iniquities, and I am but an elderly simpleton to 
 make hin the subject of this epistle. 
 
 "As for me, I have had my old Bretton agent 
 here on a visit, and have been plunged over head 
 and ears in business matters. I do so wish to 
 regain for Graham at least some part of what his 
 father left him. He laughs to scorn my anxiety 
 
M. DE BASSOMPIERRE. 219 
 
 on this point, bidding me look and see how he 
 can provide for himself and me too, and asking 
 what the old lady can possibly want that she has 
 not; hinting about sky-blue turbans; accusing me 
 of an ambition to wear diamonds, keep livery ser- 
 vants, have an hotel, and lead the fashion amongst 
 the English clan in Villette. 
 
 " Talking of sky-blue turbans, I wished you had 
 been with us the other evening. He had come 
 in really tired ; and after I had given him his tea, 
 he threw himself into my chair with his customary 
 presumption. To my great delight, he dropped 
 asleep. (You know how he teazes me about being 
 drowsy ; I, who never, by any chance, close an 
 eye by daylight). While he slept, I thought he 
 looked very bonny, Lucy : fool as I am to be so 
 proud of him: but who can help it? Show me 
 his peer. Look where I will I see nothing like 
 him in Villette. Well, I took it into my head to 
 play him a trick: so I brought out the sky-blue 
 turban, and handling it and him with gingerly 
 precaution, I managed to invest his brows with 
 this grand adornment. I assure you it did not at 
 all misbecome him ; he looked quite Eastern, 
 except that he is so fair. Nobody, however, can 
 
220 VILLETTE. 
 
 accuse him of having red hair now — it is genuine 
 chestnut — a dark, glossy chestnut; and when I 
 put my large Cashmere about him, there was as 
 fine a young bey, dey, or pacha improvised as you 
 would wish to see. 
 
 "It was good entertainment; but only half- 
 enjoyed, since I was alone : you should have been 
 there. 
 
 " In due time my lord awoke : the looking-glass 
 above the fireplace soon intimated to him his plight : 
 as you may imagine, I now live under threat and 
 dread of vengeance. 
 
 " But to come to the gist of my letter. I know 
 Thursday is a half-holiday in the Rue Fossette : be 
 ready, then, by five in the afternoon, at which 
 hour I will send the carriage to take you out to 
 La Terrasse. Be sure to come : you may meet 
 some old acquaintance. Good-by, my wise, dear, 
 grave little god-daughter. — Very truly, yours, 
 
 " Louisa Bretton." 
 
 Now, a letter like that sets one to rights! I 
 might still be sad after reading that letter, but I 
 was more composed ; not exactly cheered, perhaps, 
 but relieved. My friends, at least, were well and 
 
M. DE BASSOMPIEEEE. 221 
 
 happy : no accident had occurred to Graham ; no 
 illness had seized his mother — calamities that had 
 so long been my dream and thought. Their 
 feelings for me too were — as they had been. Yet, 
 how strange it was to look on Mrs. Bretton's seven 
 weeks and contrast them with my seven weeks ! 
 Also, how very wise it is in people placed in an 
 exceptional position to hold their tongues and not 
 rashly declare how such position galls them ! The 
 world can understand well enough the process of 
 perishing for want of food : perhaps few persons 
 can enter into or follow out that of going mad from 
 solitary confinement. They see the long-buried 
 prisoner disinterred, a maniac or an idiot! — how 
 his senses left him — how his nerves, first inflamed, 
 underwent nameless agony, and then sunk to palsy 
 — is a subject too intricate for examination, too 
 abstract for popular comprehension. Speak of it ! 
 you might almost as well stand up in an European 
 market-place, and propound dark sayings in that 
 language and mood wherein Nebuchadnezzar, the 
 imperial hypochondriac, communed with his baffled 
 Chaldeans. And long, long may the minds to 
 whom such themes are no mystery — by whom their 
 bearings are sympathetically seized — be few in 
 
222 VILLETTE. 
 
 number, and rare of rencounter. Long may it be 
 generally thought that physical privations alone 
 merit compassion, and that the rest is a figment. 
 When the world was younger and haler than now, 
 moral trials were a deeper mystery still: perhaps 
 in all the land of Israel there was but one Saul — 
 certainly but one David to soothe or comprehend 
 him. 
 
 The keen, still cold of the morning was suc- 
 ceeded, later in the day, by a sharp breathing from 
 Russian wastes : the cold zone sighed over the 
 temperate zone, and froze it fast. A heavy firma- 
 ment, dull, and thick with snow, sailed up from 
 the north, and settled over expectant Europe. 
 Towards afternoon began the descent. I feared no 
 carriage would come — the white tempest raged so 
 dense and wild. But trust my godmother! Once 
 having asked, she wouid have her guest. About 
 six o'clock I was lifted from the carriage over the 
 already blocked-up front steps of the chateau, and 
 put in at the door of La Terrasse. 
 
 Running through the vestible, and up-stairs to 
 the drawing-room, there I found Mrs. Bretton — a 
 summer-day in her own person. Had I been twice 
 
M. DE BASSOMPIEREE. 223 
 
 as cold as I was, her kind kiss and cordial clasp 
 would have warmed me. Inured now for so long a 
 time to rooms with bare boards, black benches, desks, 
 and stoves, the blue saloon seemed to me gorgeous. 
 In its Christmas-like fire alone there was a clear and 
 crimson splendour which quite dazzled me. 
 
 When my godmother had held my hand for a 
 little while, and chatted with me, and scolded me 
 for having become thinner than when she last saw 
 me, she professed to discover that the snow -wind 
 had disordered my hair, and sent me up-stairs to 
 make it neat, and remove my shawl. 
 
 Repairing to my oWn little sea-green room, there 
 also I found a bright fire, and candles too were 
 lit: a tall waxlight stood on each side the great 
 looking-glass; but between the candles, and before 
 the glass, appeared something dressing itself — an 
 airy, fairy thing — small, slight, white — a winter 
 spirit. 
 
 I declare, for one moment I thought of Graham 
 and his spectral illusions. "With distrustful eye I 
 noted the details of this new vision. It wore 
 white, sprinkled slightly with drops of scarlet; its 
 girdle was red ; it had something in its hair leafy, 
 yet shining — a little wreath with an evergreen 
 
224 VILLETTE. 
 
 gloss. Spectral or not, here truly was nothing 
 frightful, and I advanced. 
 
 Turning quick upon me, a large eye, under long 
 lashes, flashed over me, the intruder : the lashes 
 were as dark as long, and they softened with their 
 pencilling the orb they guarded. 
 
 " Ah ! you are come ! " she breathed out, in a 
 soft, quiet voice, and she smiled slowly, and gazed 
 intently. 
 
 I knew her now. Having only once seen that 
 sort of face, with that cast of fine and delicate 
 featuring, I could not but know her. 
 
 (( Miss de Bassompierre," I pronounced. 
 
 " No," was the reply, " not Miss de Bassompierre 
 for you." I did not inquire Avho then she might 
 be, but waited voluntary information. 
 
 " You are changed, but still you are yourself," 
 she said, approaching nearer. " I remember you 
 well — your countenance, the colour of your hair, 
 the outline of your face. . . ." 
 
 I had moved to the fire, and she stood opposite, 
 and gazed into me ; and as she gazed, her face 
 became gradually more and more expressive of 
 thought and feeling, till at last a dimness quenched 
 her clear vision. 
 
M. DE BASSOMPIEREE. 225 
 
 " It makes me almost cry to look so far back," 
 said she ; " but as to being sorry, or sentimental, 
 don't think it : on the contrary, I am quite pleased 
 and glad." 
 
 Interested, yet altogether at fault, I knew not 
 what to say. At last I stammered, "I think I 
 never met you till that night, some weeks ago, 
 when you were hurt . . . ? " 
 
 She smiled. "You have forgotten then that I 
 have sat on your knee, been lifted in your arms, 
 even shared your pillow? You no longer remem- 
 ber the night when I came crying, like a naughty 
 little child as I was, to your bedside, and you 
 took me in ? You have no memory for the comfort 
 and protection by which you soothed an acute 
 distress? Go back to Bretton. Remember Mr. 
 Home." 
 
 At last I saw it all. " And you are little 
 Polly?" 
 
 "lam Paulina Mary Home de Bassompierre." 
 
 How time can change ! Little Polly wore in her 
 pale, small features, her fairy symmetry, her 
 varying expression, a certain promise of interest 
 and grace; but Paulina Mary was become beau- 
 tiful—not with the beauty that strikes the eye 
 
 VOL. II. q 
 
226 VILLETTE. 
 
 like a rose — orbed, ruddy, and replete ; not with 
 the plump, and pink, and flaxen attributes of her 
 blond cousin Ginevra ; but her seventeen years had 
 brought her a refined and tender charm which did 
 not lie in complexion, though hers was fair and 
 clear ; nor in outline, though her features were 
 sweet, and her limbs perfectly turned ; but, I think, 
 rather in a subdued glow from the soul outward. 
 This was not an opaque vase, of material however 
 costly, but a lamp chastely lucent, guarding from 
 extinction, yet not hiding from worship, a flame 
 vital and vestal. In speaking of her attractions, 
 I would not exaggerate language; but, indeed, 
 they seemed to me very real and engaging. What 
 though all was on a small scale, it was the perfume 
 which gave this white violet distinction, and made 
 it superior to the broadest camelia — the fullest 
 dahlia that ever bloomed. 
 
 " Ah ! and you remember the old time at 
 Eretton?" 
 
 (t Better," said she, " better, perhaps, than you. 
 I remember it with minute distinctness: not only 
 the time, but the days of the time, and the hours 
 of the days." 
 
 " You must have forgotten some things?" 
 
M. DE BASSOMPIEERE. 227 
 
 " Very little, I imagine." 
 
 u You were then a little creature of quick 
 feelings : you must, long ere this, have outgrown 
 the impressions with which joy and grief, affection 
 and bereavement, stamped your mind ten years 
 ago?" 
 
 "You think I have forgotten whom I liked, and 
 in what degree I liked them when a child?" 
 
 " The sharpness must be gone — the point, the 
 poignancy — the deep imprint must be softened away 
 and effaced?" 
 
 " I have a good memory for those days." 
 
 She looked as if she had. Her eyes were the 
 eyes of one who can remember; one whose child- 
 hood does not fade like a dream, nor whose youth 
 vanish like a sunbeam. She would not take life, 
 loosely and incoherently, in parts, and let one 
 season slip as she entered on another: she would 
 retain and add; often review from the commence- 
 ment, and so grow in harmony and consistency as 
 she grew in years. Still I could not quite admit 
 the conviction that all the pictures which now 
 crowded upon me were vivid and visible to her. 
 Her fond attachments, her sports and contests with 
 a well-loved playmate, the patient, true devotion 
 
228 VILLETTE. 
 
 of her child's heart, her fears, her delicate reserves, 
 her little trials, the last piercing pain of separation, 
 
 I retraced these things, and shook my head 
 
 incredulous. She persisted. "The child of seven 
 years lives yet in the girl of seventeen," said 
 she. 
 
 11 You used to be excessively fond of Mrs. 
 Bretton," I remarked, intending to test her. She 
 set me right at once. 
 
 " Not excessively fond," said she ; u I liked her : 
 I respected her, as I should do now : she seems to 
 me very little altered." 
 
 " She is not much changed," I assented. 
 
 We were silent a few minutes. Glancing round 
 the room, she said — 
 
 " There are several things here that used to be 
 at Bretton. I remember that pincushion and that 
 looking-glass." 
 
 Evidently she was not deceived in her estimate 
 of her own memory ; not, at least, so far. 
 
 " You think, then, you would have known Mrs. 
 Bretton?" I went on. 
 
 " I perfectly remembered her ; the turn of her 
 features, her olive complexion, and black hair, her 
 height, her walk, her voice." 
 
M. DE BASSOMPIERRE. 229 
 
 " Dr. Bretton, of course," I pursued, " would be 
 out of the question : and, indeed, as I saw your 
 first interview with him, I am aware that he ap- 
 peared to you as a stranger." 
 
 " That first night I was puzzled," she answered. 
 
 " How did the recognition between him and your 
 father come about?" 
 
 " They exchanged cards. The names Graham 
 Bretton and Home de Bassompierre give rise to 
 questions and explanations. That was on the 
 second day; but before then I was beginning to 
 know something." 
 
 "How — know something?" 
 
 "Why," she said, "how strange it is that most 
 people seem so slow to feel the truth — not to see, 
 but feel ! When Dr. Bretton had visited me a few 
 times, and sat near and talked to me ; when I had 
 observed the look in his eyes, the expression about 
 his mouth, the form of his chin, the carriage of his 
 head, and all that we do observe in persons who 
 approach us — how could I avoid being led by associa- 
 tion to think of Graham Bretton? Graham was 
 slighter than he, and not grown so tall, and had a 
 smoother face, and longer and lighter hair, and 
 spoke — not so deeply — more like a girl ; but yet he 
 
230 VILLETTE. 
 
 is Graham, just as I am little Polly, or you are Lucy 
 Snowe." 
 
 I thought the same, but I wondered to find my 
 thoughts hers : there are certain things in which we 
 so rarely meet with our double that it seems a miracle 
 when that chance befals. 
 
 " You and Graham were once playmates." 
 
 " And do you remember that ?" she questioned in 
 her turn. 
 
 " No doubt he will remember it also," said L 
 
 " I have not asked him : few things would surprise 
 me so much as to find that he did. I suppose his 
 disposition is still gay and careless?" 
 
 " Was it so formerly ? Did it so strike you ? Do 
 you thus remember him?" 
 
 " I scarcely remember him in any other light. 
 Sometimes he was studious; sometimes he was 
 merry : but whether busy with his books or disposed 
 for play, it was chiefly the books or game he thought 
 of; not much heeding those with whom he read or 
 amused himself." 
 
 " Yet to you he was partial." 
 
 "Partial to me? Oh, no! he had other play- 
 mates — his school -fellows; I was of little conse- 
 quence to him, except on Sundays : yes, he was kind 
 
M. DE BASSOMPIEERE. 231 
 
 on Sundays. I remember walking with him hand in 
 hand to St. Mary's, and his finding the places in my 
 prayer-book; and how good and still he was on 
 Sunday evenings ! So mild for such a proud, lively 
 boy; so patient with all my blunders in reading; 
 and so wonderfully to be depended on, for he never 
 spent those evenings from home : I had a constant 
 fear that he would accept some invitation and for- 
 sake us ; but he never did, nor seemed ever to wish to 
 do it. Thus, of course, it can be no more. I sup- 
 pose Sunday will now be Dr. Bretton's dining-out 
 
 day ?" 
 
 " Children, come down ! " here called Mrs. rBretton 
 from below. Paulina would still have lingered, but 
 I inclined to descend : we went down. 
 
232 VILLETTE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 THE LITTLE COUNTESS. 
 
 Cheerful as my godmother naturally was, and 
 entertaining as, for our sakes, she made a point of 
 being, there was no true enjoyment that evening at 
 La Terrasse, till, through the wild howl of the 
 winter-night, were heard the signal sounds of arrival. 
 How often, while women and girls sit warm at 
 snug fire-sides, their hearts and imaginations are 
 doomed to divorce from the comfort surrounding 
 their persons, forced out by night to wander through 
 dark ways, to dare stress of weather, to contend with 
 the snow-blast, to wait at lonely gates and stiles in 
 wildest storms, watching and listening to see and 
 hear the father, the son, the husband coming 
 home. 
 
 Father and son came at last to the chateau : for 
 the Count de Bassompierre that night accompanied 
 
THE LITTLE COUNTESS. 233 
 
 Dr. Bretton. I know not which of our trio heard 
 the horses first; the asperity, the violence of the 
 weather warranted our running down into the hall 
 to meet and greet the two riders as they came in ; 
 but they warned us to keep our distance : both were 
 white — two mountains of snow; and indeed Mrs. 
 Bretton, seeing their condition, ordered them in- 
 stantly to the kitchen; prohibiting them, at their 
 peril, from setting foot on her carpeted staircase till 
 they had severally put off that mask of Old Christ- 
 mas they how affected. Into the kitchen, however, 
 we could not help following them : it was a large 
 old Dutch kitchen, picturesque and pleasant. The 
 little white Countess danced in a circle about her 
 equally white sire, clapping her hands and cry- 
 ing,— 
 
 "Papa, papa, you look like an enormous Polar 
 bear." 
 
 The bear shook himself, and the little sprite fled far 
 from the frozen shower. Back she came, however, 
 laughing, and eager to aid in removing the arctic 
 disguise. The Count, at last issuing from his dread- 
 nought, threatened to overwhelm her with it as with 
 an avalanche. 
 
 " Come, then," said she, bending to invite the fall, 
 
234 VILLETTE. 
 
 and when it was playfully advanced above her head, 
 bounding out of reach like some little chamois. 
 
 Her movements had the supple softness, the velvet 
 grace of a kitten; her laugh was clearer than the 
 ring of silver and crystal : as she took her sire's cold 
 hands and rubbed them, and stood on tiptoe to reach 
 his lips for a kiss, there seemed to shine round her a 
 halo of loving delight. The grave and reverend 
 signior looked down on her as men do look on what 
 is the apple of their eye. 
 
 " Mrs. Bretton," said he ; " what am I to do 
 with this daughter or daughterling of mine ? She 
 neither grows in wisdom nor in stature. Don't 
 you find her pretty nearly as much the child as 
 she was ten years ago?" 
 
 " She cannot be more the child than this great 
 boy of mine," said Mrs. Bretton, who was in con- 
 flict with her son about some change of dress she 
 deemed advisable, and which he resisted. He stood 
 leaning against the Dutch dresser, laughing and 
 keeping her at arms' length. 
 
 " Come, mama/' said he, " by way of compromise, 
 and to secure for us inward as well as outward 
 warmth, let us have a Christmas wassail-cup, and 
 toast Old England here, on the hearth." 
 
THE LITTLE COUNTESS. 235 
 
 So, while the Count stood by the fire, and Paulina 
 Mary still danced to and fro — happy in the liberty 
 of the wide hall-like kitchen — Mrs. Bretton herself 
 instructed Martha to spice and heat the wassail- 
 bowl, and, pouring the draught into a Bretton 
 flagon, it was served round, reaming hot, by means 
 of a small silver vessel, which I recognised as Gra- 
 ham's christening-cup. 
 
 " Here's to Auld Lang Syne!" said the Count; 
 holding the glancing cup on high. Then, looking 
 at Mrs. Bretton: — 
 
 " We twa ha' paidlet i' the burn 
 Fra morning-sun till dine, 
 But seas between us braid ha' roared 
 Sin' auld lang syne. 
 
 " And surely ye '11 be your pint-stoup, 
 As surely I '11 be mine ; 
 And we '11 taste a cup o' kindness yet 
 For auld lang syne." 
 
 " Scotch! Scotch!" cried Paulina; " papa is 
 talking Scotch: and Scotch he is, partly. We 
 are Home and De Bassompierre, Caledonian and 
 Gallic." 
 
 " And is that a Scotch reel you are dancing, 
 
236 VILLETTE. 
 
 you Highland fairy?" asked her father. "Mrs. 
 Bretton, there will be a green ring growing up in 
 the middle of your kitchen shortly. I would' not 
 answer for her being quite cannie : she is a strange 
 little mortal." 
 
 " Tell Lucy to dance with me, papa : there is 
 Lucy Snowe." 
 
 Mr. Home (there was still quite as much about 
 him of plain Mr. Home as of proud Count de 
 Bassompierre) held his hand out to me, saying 
 kindly, " he remembered me well ; and, even had 
 his own memory been less trustworthy, my name 
 was so often on his daughter's lips, and he had 
 listened to so many long tales about me, I should 
 seem like an old acquaintance." 
 
 Every one now had tasted the wassail-cup except 
 Paulina, whose pas de fee, ou de fantaisie, nobody 
 thought of interrupting to offer so profanatory a 
 draught; but she was not to be overlooked, nor 
 baulked of her mortal privileges. 
 
 " Let me taste," said she to Graham, as he was 
 putting the cup on the shelf of the dresser out of her 
 reach. 
 
 Mrs. Bretton and Mr. Home were now engaged 
 in conversation. Dr. John had not been unob- 
 
THE LITTLE COUNTESS. 237 
 
 servant of the fairy's dance; he had watched it, 
 and he had liked it. To say nothing of the softness 
 and beauty of the movements, eminently grateful 
 to his grace-loving eye, that ease in his mothers' 
 house charmed him, for it set him at ease: again 
 she seemed a child for k him — again, almost his 
 playmate. I wondered how he would speak to 
 her ; I had not yet seen him address her ; his 
 first words proved that the old days of " little 
 Polly" had been recalled to his mind by this 
 evening's child-like light-heartedness. 
 
 " Your ladyship wishes for the tankard ? " 
 
 " I think I said so. I think I intimated as 
 much." 
 
 " Couldn't consent to a step of the kind on any 
 account. Sorry for it, but couldn't do it." 
 
 " Why ? I am quite well now : it can't break 
 my collar-bone again, or dislocate my shoulder. Is 
 it wine?" 
 
 " No ; nor dew." 
 
 " I don't want dew; I don't like dew: but what 
 is it?" 
 
 "Ale — strong ale — old October; brewed, per- 
 haps, when I was born." 
 
 " It must be curious : is it good ? " 
 
238 YILLETTE. 
 
 " Excessively good." 
 
 And he took it down, administered to himself 
 a second dose of this mighty elixir, expressed in 
 his mischievous eyes extreme contentment with the 
 same, and solemnly replaced the cup on the shelf. 
 
 " I should like a little," said Paulina, looking up ; 
 " I never had any ( old October :' is it sweet ?" 
 
 " Perilously sweet," said Graham. 
 
 She continued to look up exactly with the coun- 
 tenance of a child that longs for some prohibited 
 dainty. At last the Doctor relented, took it down, 
 and indulged himself in the gratification of letting 
 her taste from his hand ; his eyes, always expressive 
 in the revelation of pleasurable feelings, luminously 
 and smilingly avowed that it was a gratification ; 
 and he prolonged it by so regulating the position 
 of the cup that only a drop at a time could reach 
 the rosy, sipping lips by which its brim was 
 courted. 
 
 " A little more — a little more," said she, petu- 
 lantly touching his hand with her forefinger, to 
 make him incline the cup more generously and 
 yieldingly. " It smells of spice and sugar, but I 
 can't taste it ; your wrist is so stiff, and you are so 
 stingy." 
 
THE LITTLE COUNTESS. 239 
 
 He indulged her, whispering, however, with 
 gravity: "Don't tell my mother or Lucy; they 
 wouldn't approve." 
 
 " Nor do I," said she, passing into another tone 
 and manner as soon as she had fairly assayed the 
 beverage, just as if it had acted upon her like 
 some disenchanting draught, undoing the work of a 
 wizard : " I find it anything but sweet ; it is bitter 
 and hot, and takes away my breath. Your old 
 October was only desirable while forbidden. Thank 
 you, no more." 
 
 And, with a slight bend — careless, but as graceful 
 as her dance — she glided from him and rejoined 
 her father. 
 
 I think she had spoken truth : the child of seven 
 was in the girl of seventeen. 
 
 Graham looked after her a little baffled, a little 
 puzzled; his eye was on her a good deal during 
 the rest of the evening, but she did not seem to 
 notice him. 
 
 As we ascended to the drawing-room for tea, 
 she took her father's arm : her natural place seemed 
 to be at his side; her eyes and her ears were 
 dedicated to him. He and Mrs. Bretton were 
 the chief talkers of our little party, and Paulina 
 
240 VILLETTE. 
 
 was their best listener, attending closely to all 
 that was said, prompting the repetition of this or 
 that trait or adventure. 
 
 " And where were you at such a time, papa? 
 And what did you say then ? And tell Mrs. Bretton 
 what happened on that occasion." Thus she drew 
 him out. 
 
 She did not again yield to any effervescence of 
 glee; the infantine sparkle was exhaled for the 
 night : she was soft, thoughtful, and docile. It 
 was pretty to see her bid good-night; her manner 
 to Graham was touched with dignity: in her very 
 slight smile and quiet bow spoke the Countess, and 
 Graham could not but look grave, and bend respon- 
 sive. I saw he hardly knew how to blend together 
 in his ideas the dancing fairy and delicate dame. 
 
 Next day, when we were all assembled round 
 the breakfast table, shivering and fresh from the 
 morning's chill ablutions, Mrs. Bretton pronounced 
 a decree that nobody, who was not forced by dire 
 necessity, should quit her house that day. 
 
 Indeed, egress seemed next to impossible; the 
 drift darkened the lower panes of the casement, 
 and, on looking out, one saw the sky and air 
 vexed and dim, the wind and snow in angry con- 
 
THE LITTLE COUNTESS. 241 
 
 flict. There was no fall now, but what had already- 
 descended was torn up from the earth, whirled 
 round by brief shrieking gusts, and cast into a 
 hundred fantastic forms. 
 
 The Countess seconded Mrs. Bretton. 
 
 " Papa shall not go out," said she, " placing a 
 seat for herself beside her father's arm-chair. " I 
 will look after him. You won't go into town, will 
 you, papa?" 
 
 (i Aye, and No," was the answer. " If you and 
 Mrs. Bretton are very good to me, Polly — kind, 
 you know, and attentive ; if you pet me in a very- 
 nice manner, and make much of me, I may possibly 
 be induced to wait an hour after breakfast and see 
 whether this razor-edged wind settles. But, you 
 see, you give me no breakfast; you offer me 
 nothing: you let me starve." 
 
 " Quick ! please, Mrs. Bretton, and pour out the 
 coffee," entreated Paulina, " whilst I take care of 
 the Count de Bassompierre in other respects : since 
 he grew into a Count, he has needed so much 
 attention." 
 
 She separated and prepared a roll. 
 
 " There, papa, are your ( pistolets' charged?" said 
 she. " And there is some marmalade, just the same 
 
 VOL. II. R 
 
242 VILLETTE. 
 
 sort of marmalade we used to have at Bretton, and 
 which you said was as good as if it had been con- 
 served in Scotland " 
 
 " And which your little ladyship used to beg 
 for my boy — do you remember that ? " interposed 
 Mrs. Bretton. " Have you forgotten how you 
 would come to my elbow and touch my sleeve with 
 the whisper, e please ma'am, something good for 
 Graham — a little marmalade, or honey, or jam ? ' " 
 
 te No, mama," broke in Dr. John, laughing, yet 
 reddening ; " it surely was not so : I could not 
 have cared for these things." 
 
 " Did he or did he not, Paulina ? " 
 
 " He liked them," asserted Paulina. 
 
 " Never blush for it, John," said Mr. Home, 
 encouragingly. " I like them myself yet, and 
 always did. And Polly showed her sense in cater- 
 ing for a friend's material comforts : it was I who 
 put her into the way of such good manners — nor 
 do I let her forget them. Polly, offer me a small 
 slice of that tongue." 
 
 " There, papa : but remember you are only waited 
 upon with this assiduity, on condition of behig per- 
 suadable, and reconciling yourself to La Terrasse 
 for the day." 
 
THE LITTLE COUNTESS. 243 
 
 " Mrs. Bretton," said the Count, " I want to 
 get rid of my daughter, to send her to school. Do 
 you know of any good school?" 
 
 " There is Lucy's place — Madame Beck's." 
 
 " Miss Snowe is in a school ? " 
 
 " I am a teacher," I said, and was rather glad 
 of the opportunity of saying this. For a little 
 while I had been feeling as if placed in a false 
 position. Mrs. Bretton and son knew my circum- 
 stances; but the Count and his daughter did not. 
 They might choose to vary by some shades their 
 hitherto cordial manner towards me, when aware 
 of my grade in society. I spoke then readily : but 
 a swarm of thoughts, I had not anticipated nor 
 invoked, rose dim at the words, making me sigh 
 involuntarily. Mr. Home did not lift his eyes from 
 his breakfast-plate for about two minutes, nor did 
 he speak; perhaps he had not caught the words — 
 perhaps he thought that on a confession of that 
 nature, politeness would interdict comment : the 
 Scotch are proverbially proud ; and homely as was 
 Mr. Home in look, simple in habits and tastes, I 
 have all along intimated that he was not without 
 his share of the national quality. Was his a pseudo 
 pride ? was it real dignity ? I leave the question 
 
244 VILLETTE. 
 
 undecided in its wide sense. Where it concerned 
 me individually I can only answer : then, and 
 always, he showed himself a true-hearted gentle- 
 man. 
 
 By nature he was a feeler and a thinker; over 
 his emotions and his reflections spread a mellowing 
 of melancholy ; more than a mellowing : in trouble 
 and bereavement it became a cloud. He did not 
 know much about Lucy Snowe ; what he knew, he 
 did not very accurately comprehend : indeed his 
 misconceptions of my character often made me 
 smile ; but he saw my walk in life lay rather on 
 the shady side of the hill; he gave me credit for 
 doing my endeavour to keep the course honestly 
 straight ; he would have helped me if he could : 
 having no opportunity of helping, he still wished 
 me well. When he did look at me, his eye was 
 kind ; when he did speak, his voice was benevolent, 
 
 " Yours," said he, " is an arduous calling. I 
 wish you health and strength to win in it — success. 
 
 His fair little daughter did not take the in- 
 formation quite so composedly: she fixed on me a 
 pair of eyes wide with wonder — almost with dis- 
 may. 
 
 "Are you a teacher?" cried she. Then, having 
 
THE LITTLE COUNTESS. 245 
 
 paused on the unpalatable idea, " Well, I never 
 knew what you were, nor ever thought of asking : 
 for me, you were always Lucy Snowe." 
 
 "And what am I now?" I could not forbear 
 inquiring. 
 
 "Yourself, of course. But do you really teach 
 here,in Villette?" 
 
 " I really do." 
 
 "And do you like it?" 
 
 " Not always." 
 
 " And why do you go on with it?" 
 
 Her father looked at, and, I feared, was going 
 to check her; but he only said, "Proceed, Polly, 
 proceed with that catechism — prove yourself the 
 little wiseacre you are. If Miss Snowe were to 
 blush and look confused, I should have to bid you 
 hold your tongue; and you and I would sit out 
 the present meal in some disgrace; but she only 
 smiles, so push her hard, multiply the cross-ques- 
 tions. Well, Miss Snowe, why do you go on with 
 it?" 
 
 " Chiefly, I fear, for the sake of the money I 
 get." 
 
 " Not then from motives of pure philanthropy ? 
 Polly and I were clinging to that hypothesis, as 
 
246 VILLETTE. 
 
 the most lenient way of accounting for your eccen- 
 tricity." 
 
 « JSTo — no, sir. Rather for the roof of shelter 1 
 am thus enabled to keep over my head ; and for 
 the comfort of mind it gives me to think that while 
 I can work for myself, I am spared the pain of 
 being a burden to anybody." 
 
 " Papa, say what you will, I pity Lucy." 
 
 " Take up that pity, Miss de Bassompierre : 
 take it up in both hands, as you might a little callow 
 gosling squattering out of bounds without leave ; 
 put it back in the warm nest of a heart whence 
 it issued, and receive in your ear this whisper. If 
 my Polly ever came to know by experience the 
 uncertain nature of this world's goods, I should like 
 her to act as Lucy acts : to work for herself, that 
 she might burden neither kith nor kin." 
 
 " Yes, papa," said she, pensively and tractably. 
 " But poor Lucy ! I thought she was a rich lady, 
 and had rich friends." 
 
 • e You thought like a little simpleton : I never 
 thought so. When I had time to consider Lucy's 
 manner and aspect, which was not often, I saw she 
 was one who had to guard and not be guarded; 
 •to act and not be served : and this lot has, I imagine, 
 
THE LITTLE COUNTESS. 247 
 
 helped her to an experience for which, if she live 
 long enough to realize its full benefit, she may yet 
 bless Providence. But this school," he pursued 
 changing his tone from grave to gay : " Would 
 Madame Beck admit my Polly, do you think, Miss 
 Lucy?" 
 
 I said, there needed but to try madame ; it would 
 soon be seen: she was fond of English pupils. "If 
 you, sir," I added, " will but take Miss de Bassom- 
 pierre in your carriage this very afternoon, I think 
 I can answer for it that Rosine, the portress, will 
 not be very slow in answering your ring; and 
 madame, I am sure, will put on her best pair of 
 gloves to come into the salon to receive you." 
 
 K In that case," responded Mr. Home, "I see 
 no sort of necessity there is for delay. Mrs. 
 Hurst can send, what she calls, her young lady's 
 e things' after her; Polly can settle down to her 
 horn-book before night; and you, Miss Lucy, I 
 trust, will not disdain to cast an occasional eye upon 
 her, and let me know, from time to time, how she 
 gets on. I hope you approve of the arrangement, 
 Countess de Bassompierre ?" 
 
 The Countess hemmed and hesitated. " I 
 thought," said she, "I thought I had finished my 
 education " 
 
248 VILLETTE. 
 
 ** That only proves how much we may be mis- 
 taken in our thoughts : I hold a far different 
 opinion, as most of those will who have been 
 auditors of your profound knowledge of life this 
 morning. Ah, my little girl, thou hast much to 
 learn; and papa ought to have taught thee more 
 than he has done! Come, there is nothing for it 
 but to try Madame Beck ; and the weather seems 
 settling, and I have finished my breakfast " 
 
 "But, papa!" 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " I see an obstacle." 
 
 " I don't at all." 
 
 " It is enormous, papa, it can never be got over ; 
 it is as large as you in your great coat, and the 
 snowdrift on the top." 
 
 " And, like that snowdrift, capable of melting ? " 
 
 " No ! it is of too — too solid flesh : it is just your 
 own self. Miss Lucy, warn Madame Beck not to 
 listen to any overtures about taking me, because, in 
 the end, it would turn out that she would have to 
 take papa too: as he is so teasing, I will just tell 
 tales about him. Mrs. Bretton and all of you 
 listen : About five years ago, when I was twelve 
 years old, he took it into his head that he was 
 
THE LITTLE COUNTESS. 249 
 
 spoiling me ; that I was growing unfitted for the 
 world, and I don't know what, and nothing would 
 serve or satisfy him, but I must go to school. I 
 cried, and so on; but M. de Bassompierre proved 
 hard-hearted, quite firm and flinty, and to school I 
 went. What was the result ? In the most admira- 
 ble manner, papa came to school likewise : every 
 other day he called to see me. Madame Aigredoux 
 grumbled, but it was of no use ; and so, at last, 
 papa and I were both, in a manner, expelled. Lucy 
 can just tell Madame Beck this little trait: it is 
 only fair to let her know what she has to expect." 
 
 Mrs. Bretton asked Mr. Home what he had to 
 say in answer to this statement. As he made no 
 defence, judgment was given against him, and 
 Paulina triumphed. 
 
 But she had other moods besides the arch and 
 naive. After breakfast, when the two elders with- 
 drew — I suppose to talk over certain of Mrs. Bret- 
 ton's business matters — and the Countess, Dr. 
 Bretton, and I were, for a short time, alone to- 
 gether — all the child left her ; with us, more nearly 
 her companions in age, she rose at once to the 
 little lady : her very face seemed to alter ; that play 
 of feature, and candour of look, which, when she 
 
250 VILLETTE. 
 
 spoke to her father, made it quite dimpled and 
 round, yielded to an aspect more thoughtful, and 
 lines distinoter and less mobile. 
 
 No doubt, Graham noted the change as well as 
 I. He stood for some minutes near the window, 
 looking out at the snow; presently he approached 
 the hearth, and entered into conversation, but not 
 quite with his usual ease : fit topics did not seem 
 to rise to his lips ; he chose them fastidiously, hesi- 
 tatingly, and consequently infelicitously : he spoke 
 vaguely of Villette — its inhabitants, its notable 
 sights and buildings. He was answered by Miss 
 de Bassompierre in quite womanly sort; with in- 
 telligence, with a manner not indeed wholly dis- 
 individualized : a tone, a glance, a gesture, here and 
 there, rather animated and quick than measured 
 and stately, still recalled little Polly ; but yet there 
 was so fine and even a polish, so calm and courteous 
 a grace, gilding and sustaining these peculiarities, 
 that a less sensitive man than Graham would not 
 have ventured to seize upon them as vantage points, 
 leading to franker intimacy. 
 
 Yet while Dr. Bretton continued subdued, and, 
 for him, sedate, he was still observant. Not one 
 of those pretty impulses and natural breaks escaped 
 
THE LITTLE COUNTESS. 251 
 
 him. He did not miss one characteristic movement, 
 one hesitation in language, or one lisp in utterance. 
 At times, in speaking fast, she still lisped: but 
 coloured whenever such lapse occurred, and in a 
 painstaking, conscientious manner, quite as amusing 
 as the slight error, repeated the word more ^dis- 
 tinctly. 
 
 Whenever she did this, Dr. Bretton smiled. 
 Gradually, as they conversed, the restraint on each 
 side slackened : might the conference have but been 
 prolonged, I believe it would soon have become 
 genial : already to Paulina's lip and cheek returned 
 the wreathing, dimpling smile ; she lisped once, and 
 forgot to correct herself. And Dr. John, I know 
 not how he changed, but change he did. He did not 
 grow gayer — no raillery, no levity sparkled across 
 his aspect — but his position seemed to become one 
 of more pleasure to himself, and he spoke his aug- 
 mented comfort in readier language, in tones more 
 suave. Ten years ago, this pair had always found 
 abundance to say to each other; the intervening 
 decade had not narrowed the experience or im- 
 poverished the intelligence of either : besides, there 
 are certain natures of which the mutual influence 
 is such, that the more they say, the more they have 
 
252 VILLETTE. 
 
 to say. For these, out of association grows adhesion, 
 and out of adhesion, amalgamation. 
 
 Graham, however, must go : his was a profession, 
 whose claims are neither to be ignored, nor deferred. 
 He left the room; but before he could leave the 
 house there was a return. I am sure he came 
 back — not for the paper, or card in his desk, 
 which formed his ostensible errand — but to assure 
 himself, by one more glance, that Paulina's aspect 
 was really such as memory was bearing away : that 
 he had not been viewing her somehow by a partial, 
 artificial light, and making a fond mistake. No ! 
 he found the impression true — rather, indeed, he 
 gained, than lost, by this return : he took away 
 with him a parting look — shy, but very soft — as 
 beautiful, as innocent, as any little fawn could lift 
 out of its cover of fern, or any lamb from its 
 meadow-bed. 
 
 Being left alone, Paulina and I kept silence for 
 some time ; we both took out some work, and plied 
 a mute and diligent task. The white-wood work- 
 box of old days, was now replaced by one inlaid 
 with precious mosaic, and furnished with implements 
 of gold; the tiny and trembling fingers that could 
 scarce guide the needle, though tiny still, were now 
 
THE LITTLE COUNTESS. 253 
 
 swift and skilful: but there was the same busy- 
 knitting of the brow, the same little dainty manner- 
 isms, the same quick turns and movements — now 
 to replace a stray tress; and anon to shake from 
 the silken skirt some imaginary atom of dust — some 
 clinging fibre of thread. 
 
 That morning I was disposed for silence: the 
 austere fury of the winter-day, had on me an awing, 
 hushing influence. That passion of January, so 
 white and so bloodless, was not yet spent : the 
 storm had raved itself hoarse, but seemed no nearer 
 exhaustion. Had Ginevra Fanshawe been my com- 
 panion in that morning-room, she would not have 
 suffered me to muse and listened undisturbed. The 
 presence just gone from us would have been her 
 theme ; and how she would have rung the changes 
 on one topic ! how she would have pursued and 
 pestered me with questions and surmises — worried 
 and oppressed me with comments and confidences 
 I did not want, and longed to avoid. 
 
 Paulina Mary cast once or twice towards me a 
 quiet, but penetrating glance of her dark, full eye ; 
 her lips half opened, as if to the impulse of coming 
 utterance : but she saw and delicately respected my 
 inclination for silence. 
 
254 VILLETTE. 
 
 " This will not hold long," I thought to myself 
 for I was not accustomed to find in women or girls 
 any power of self-control, or strength of self-denial. 
 As far as I knew them, the chance of a gossip about 
 their usually trivial secrets, their often very washy 
 and paltry feelings, was a treat not to be readily 
 foregone. 
 
 The little Countess promised an exception: she 
 sewed, till she was tired of sewing, and then she 
 took a book. 
 
 As chance would have it, she had sought it in 
 Dr. Bretton's own compartment of the book-case ; 
 and it proved to be an old Bretton book — some 
 illustrated work of natural history. Often had I 
 seen her standing at Graham's side, resting that 
 volume on his knee, and reading to his tuition ; and, 
 when the lesson was over, begging, as a treat, that 
 he would tell her all about the pictures. I watched 
 her keenly: here was a true test of that memory 
 she had boasted : would her recollections now be 
 faithful? 
 
 Faithful? It could not be doubted. As she 
 turned the leaves, over her face passed gleam 
 after gleam of expression, the least intelligent of 
 which was a full greeting to the Past. And then 
 
THE LITTLE COUNTESS. 255 
 
 she turned to the title-page, and looked at the 
 name written in the schoolboy hand. She looked 
 at it long ; nor was she satisfied with merely look- 
 ing : she gently passed over the characters the tips 
 of her fingers, accompanying the action with an 
 unconscious but tender smile, which converted the 
 touch into a caress. Paulina loved the Past; but 
 the peculiarity of this little scene was, that she said 
 nothing : she could feel, without pouring out her 
 feelings in a flux of words. 
 
 She now occupied herself at the bookcase for 
 nearly an hour ; taking down volume after volume, 
 and renewing her acquaintance with each. This, 
 done, she seated herself on a low stool, rested her 
 cheek on her hand, and thought, and still was 
 mute. 
 
 The sound of the front door opened below, a 
 rush of cold wind, and her father's voice speaking 
 to Mrs. Bretton in the hall, startled her at last. 
 She sprang up : she was down-stairs in one second, 
 
 t; Papa ! papa ! you are not going out?" 
 
 " My pet ; I must go into town." 
 
 " But it is too — too cold, papa." 
 
 And then I heard M. de Bassompierre showing 
 to her how he was well provided against the 
 
256 VILLETTE. 
 
 weather ; and how he was going to have the car- 
 riage, and to be quite snugly sheltered; and, in 
 short, proving that she need not fear for hiscomfort. 
 
 "But you will promise to come back here this 
 evening, before it is quite dark ; — you and Dr. 
 Bretton, both, in the carriage ? It is not fit to 
 ride." 
 
 "Well, if I see the Doctor, I will tell him a 
 lady has laid on him her commands to take care 
 of his precious health, and come home early under 
 my escort." 
 
 " Yes, you must say a lady ; and he will think 
 it is his mother, and be obedient. And, papa, 
 mind to come soon, for I shall watch and listen." 
 
 The door closed, and the carriage rolled softly 
 through the snow ; and back returned the Countess, 
 pensive and anxious. 
 
 She did listen, and watch, when evening closed ; 
 but it was in stillest sort : walking the drawing- 
 room with quite noiseless step. She checked at 
 intervals her velvet march; inclined her ear, and 
 consulted the night sounds : I should rather say, 
 the night silence; for now, at last, the wind was 
 fallen. The sky, relieved of its avalanche, lay 
 naked and pale : through the barren boughs of 
 
THE LITTLE COUNTESS. 257 
 
 the avenue we could see it well, and note also the 
 polar splendour of the new-year moon — an orb, 
 white as a world of ice. Nor was it late when 
 we saw also the return of the carriage. 
 
 Paulina had no dance of welcome for this evening. 
 It was with a sort of gravity that she took immediate 
 possession of her father, as he entered the room; 
 but she at once made him her entire property, led 
 him to the seat of her choice, and, while softly 
 showering round him honeyed words of commenda- 
 tion for being so good and coming home so soon, 
 you would have thought it was entirely by the 
 power of her little hands he was put into his chair, 
 and settled and arranged ; for" the strong man 
 seemed to take pleasure in wholly yielding himself 
 to this dominion — potent only by love. 
 
 Graham did not appear till some minutes after 
 the Count. Paulina half turned when his step was 
 heard : they spoke, but only a word or two ; their 
 fingers met a moment, but obviously with slight 
 contact. Paulina remained beside her father ; Gra- 
 ham threw himself into a seat on the other side of 
 the room. 
 
 It was well that Mrs. Bretton and Mr. Home had 
 a great deal to say to each other — almost an inex- 
 
 VOL. II. s 
 
258 VILLETTE. 
 
 haustible fund of discourse in old recollections ; 
 otherwise, I think, our party would have been but 
 a still one that evening. 
 
 After tea, Paulina's quick needle and pretty 
 golden thimble were busily plied by the lamp-light, 
 but her tongue rested, and her eyes seemed reluc- 
 tant to raise often their lids so smooth and so full- 
 fringed. Graham too must have been tired with 
 his day's work : he listened dutifully to his elders 
 and betters, said very little himself, and followed 
 with his eye the gilded glance of Paulina's thimble, 
 as if it had been some bright moth on the wing, or 
 the golden head of some darting little yellow 
 serpent. 
 
A BURIAL. 259 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 A BURIAL. 
 
 From this date my life did not want variety; I 
 went out a good deal, with the entire consent of 
 Madame Beck, who perfectly approved the grade of 
 my acquaintance. That worthy directress had 
 never from the first treated me otherwise than 
 with respect ; and when she found that I was liable 
 to frequent invitations from a chateau and a great 
 hotel, respect improved into distinction. 
 
 Not that she was fulsome about it: madame, in 
 all things worldly, was in nothing weak ; there was 
 measure and sense in her hottest pursuit of self-in- 
 terest, calm and considerateness in her closest clutch 
 of gain; without, then, laying herself open to my 
 contempt as a time-server and a toadie, she marked 
 with tact that she was pleased people connected with 
 her establishment should frequent such associates as 
 
260 VILLETTE. 
 
 must cultivate and elevate, rather than those who 
 might deteriorate and depress. She never praised 
 either me or my friends ; only once when she was 
 sitting in the sun in the garden, a cup of coffee at 
 her elbow and the Gazette in her hand, looking 
 very comfortable, and I came up and asked leave of 
 absence for the evening, she delivered herself in 
 this gracious sort : — 
 
 " Oui, oui, ma bonne amie : je vous donne la per- 
 mission de coeur et de gre. Votre travail dans ma 
 maison a toujours ete admirable, rempli de zele et 
 de discretion : vous avez bien le droit de vous amuser. 
 Sortez done tant que vous voudrez. Quant a votre 
 choix de connaissances, j'en suis contente ; e'est sage, 
 digne, louable." 
 
 She closed her lips and resumed the Gazette. 
 
 The reader will not too gravely regard the little 
 circumstance that about this time the triply-enclosed 
 packet of five letters temporarily disappeared from 
 my bureau. Blank dismay was naturally my first 
 sensation on making the discovery ; but in a moment 
 I took heart of grace. 
 
 " Patience ! " whispered I to myself. " Let me 
 say nothing, but wait peaceably ; they will come 
 back again." 
 
A BURIAL. 261 
 
 And they did come back : they had only been on 
 a short visit to madame's chamber; having passed 
 their examination, they came back duly and truly : I 
 found them all right the next day. 
 
 I wonder what she thought of my correspondence. 
 What estimate did she form of Dr. John Bretton's 
 epistolary powers? In what light did the often 
 very pithy thoughts, the generally sound, and some- 
 times original opinions, set, without pretension, in an 
 easily -flowing, spirited style, appear to her ? How 
 did she like that genial, half-humorous vein, which 
 to me gave such delight ? What did she think of the 
 few kind words scattered here and there — not thickly, 
 as the diamonds were scattered in the valley of 
 Sindbad, but sparely, as those gems lie in unfabled 
 beds ? Oh, Madame Beck ! how seemed these things 
 to you ? 
 
 I think in Madame Beck's eyes the five letters 
 found a certain favour. One day after she had 
 borrowed them of me (in speaking of so suave a little 
 woman, one ought to use suave terms), I caught her 
 examining me with a steady contemplative gaze, a 
 little puzzled, but not at all malevolent. It was 
 during that brief space between lessons, when the 
 pupils turned out into the court for a quarter of an 
 
262 VILLETTE. 
 
 hour's recreation; she and I remained in the first 
 elass alone : when I met her eye, her thoughts forced 
 themselves partially through her lips. 
 
 " II y a," said she, " quelquechose de bien remar- 
 quable dans le caractere Anglais." 
 
 "How, Madame?" 
 
 She gave a little laugh, repeating the word " how" 
 in English. 
 
 " Je ne saurais vous dire ' how ;' mais, enfin, 
 les Anglais ont des idees a eux, en amitie, en 
 amour, en tout. Mais au moins il n'est pas besoin 
 de les surveiller," she added, getting up and 
 trotting away like the compact little pony she 
 was. 
 
 " Then I hope," murmured I to myself, " you will 
 graciously let alone my letters for the future." 
 
 Alas ! something came rushing into my eyes, 
 dimming utterly their vision, blotting from sight the 
 schoolroom, the garden, the bright winter sun, as I 
 remembered that never more would letters, such as 
 she had read, come to me. I had seen the last of 
 them. That goodly river on whose banks I had 
 sojourned, of whose waves a few reviving drops had 
 trickled to my lips, was bending to another course : 
 it was leaving my little hut and field forlorn and sand- 
 
A BURIAL. 263 
 
 dry, pouring its wealth of waters far away. The change 
 was right, just, natural ; not a word could be said : 
 but I loved my Rhine, my Nile ; I had almost wor- 
 shipped my Ganges, and I grieved that the grand 
 tide should roll estranged, should vanish like a false 
 mirage. Though stoical, I was not quite a stoic; 
 drops streamed fast on my hands, on my desk: I 
 wept one sultry shower, heavy and brief. 
 
 But soon I said to myself, " the Hope 1 am be- 
 moaning suffered and made me suffer much : it did 
 not die till it was full time : following an agony so 
 lingering, death ought to be welcome." 
 
 Welcome I endeavoured to make it. Indeed, long 
 pain had made patience a habit. In the end I closed 
 the eyes of my dead, covered its face, and composed 
 its limbs with great calm. 
 
 The letters, however, must be put away, out of 
 sight : people who have undergone bereavement 
 always jealously gather together and lock away 
 mementos : it is not supportable] to be stabbed to the 
 heart each moment by sharp revival of regret. 
 
 One vacant holiday afternoon (the Thursday) 
 going to my treasure, with intent to consider its 
 final disposal, I perceived — and this time with a 
 strong impulse of displeasure — that it had been again 
 
264 TILLETTE. 
 
 tampered with : the packet was there, indeed, but 
 the ribbon which secured it had been untied and 
 re tied; and by other symptoms I knew that my 
 drawer had been visited. 
 
 This was a little too much. Madame Beck her- 
 self was the soul of discretion, besides having as 
 strong a brain and sound a judgment as ever fur- 
 nished a human head ; that she should know the 
 contents of my casket, was not pleasant, but might 
 be borne. Little Jesuit inquisitress, as she was, she 
 could see things in a true light, and understand them 
 in an unperverted sense ; but the idea that she had 
 ventured to communicate information, thus gained, 
 to others ; that she had, perhaps, amused herself 
 with a companion over documents, in my eyes most 
 sacred, shocked me cruelly. Yet, that such was the 
 case I now saw reason to fear : I even guessed her 
 confidant. Her kinsman, M. Paul Emanuel, had 
 spent yesterday evening with her : she was much in 
 the habit of consulting him, and of discussing with 
 him matters she broached to no one else. This very 
 morning, in class, that gentleman had favoured me 
 with a glance, which he seemed to have borrowed 
 from Vashti, the actress ; I had not at the moment 
 comprehended that blue, yet lurid, flash out of his 
 
A BURIAL. 265 
 
 angry eye, but I read its meaning now. He, I be- 
 lieved, was not apt to regard what concerned me 
 from a fair point of view, nor to judge me with 
 tolerance and candour: I had always found him 
 severe and suspicious: the thought that these 
 letters, mere friendly letters as they were, had fallen 
 once, and might fall again, into his hands, jarred my 
 very soul. 
 
 What should I do to prevent this? In what 
 corner of this strange house was it possible to find 
 security or secresy ? Where could a key be a safe- 
 guard, or a padlock a barrier ? 
 
 In the grenier ? No, I did not like the grenier. 
 Besides, most of the boxes and drawers there were 
 mouldering, and did not lock. Rats, too, gnawed 
 their way through the decayed wood; and mice 
 made nests amongst the litter of their contents : my 
 dear letters (most dear still, though Ichabod was 
 written on their covers) might be consumed by ver- 
 min; certainly the writing would soon become 
 obliterated by damp. No ; the grenier would not 
 do — but where then? 
 
 While pondering this problem, I sat in the dor- 
 mitory window-seat. It was a fine frosty afternoon ; 
 the winter sun, already setting, gleamed pale on the 
 
266 VILLETTE. 
 
 tops of the garden-shrubs in the " allee defendue." 
 One great old pear-tree — the nun's pear-tree — stood 
 up a tall dryad skeleton, gray, gaunt, and stripped. 
 A thought struck me — one of those queer fantastic 
 thoughts that will sometimes strike solitary people. 
 I put on my bonnet, cloak and furs, and went out 
 into the city. 
 
 Bending my steps to the old historical quarter of 
 the town, whose hoar and overshadowed precincts I 
 always sought by instinct in melancholy moods, 
 I wandered on from street to street, till, having 
 crossed a half-deserted " place" or square, I found 
 myself before a sort of broker's shop ; an ancient 
 place, full of ancient things. 
 
 What I wanted was a metal box which might be 
 soldered, or a thick glass jar or bottle which might be 
 stoppered and sealed hermetically. Amongst mis- 
 cellaneous heaps, I found and purchased the latter 
 article. 
 
 I then made a little roll of my letters, wrapped 
 them in oiled silk, bound them with twine, and, 
 having put them in the bottle, got the old Jew 
 broker to stopper, seal, and make it air-tight. While 
 obeying my directions, he glanced at me now and 
 then, suspiciously, from under his frost-white eye- 
 
A BURIAL. 267 
 
 lashes. I believe he thought there was some evil 
 deed on hand. In all this I had a dreary something 
 — not pleasure — but a sad, lonely satisfaction. The 
 impulse under which I acted, the mood controlling 
 me, were similar to the impulse and the mood which 
 had induced me to visit the confessional. With quick 
 walking I regained the pensionnat just at dark, and 
 in time for dinner. 
 
 At seven o'clock the moon rose. At half-past 
 seven, when the pupils and teachers were at study, 
 and Madame Beck was with her mother and chil- 
 dren in the salle a manger, when the half-boarders 
 were all gone home, and Rosine had left the vesti- 
 bule, and all was still — I shawled myself, and, 
 taking the sealed jar, stole out through the first- 
 classe door, into the berceau and thence into the 
 " allee defendue." 
 
 Methusaleh, the pear-tree, stood at the further end 
 of this walk, near my seat : he rose up, dim and gray, 
 above the lower shrubs round him. Now Methu- 
 saleh, though so very old, was of sound timber still; 
 only there was a hole, or rather a deep hollow, near 
 his root. I knew there was such a hollow, hidden 
 partly by ivy and creepers growing thick round ; and 
 there I meditated hiding my treasure. But I was 
 
268 VILLETTE. 
 
 not only going to hide a treasure — I meant also to 
 bury a grief. That grief over which I had lately been 
 weeping, as I wrapped it in its winding-sheet, must 
 be interred. 
 
 "Well, I cleared away the ivy, and found the 
 hole; it was large enough to receive the jar, and 
 I thrust it deep in. In a tool-shed at the bottom 
 of the garden, lay the relics of building-materials, 
 left by masons lately employed to repair a part of 
 the premises. I fetched thence a slate and some 
 mortar, put the slate on the hollow, secured it with 
 cement, covered the whole with black mould, and, 
 finally, replaced the ivy. This done, I rested, 
 leaning against the tree; lingering, like any other 
 mourner, beside a newly-sodded grave. 
 
 The air of the night was very still, but dim 
 with a peculiar mist, which changed the moonlight 
 into a luminous haze. In this air, or this mist, 
 there was some quality — electrical, perhaps — which 
 acted in strange sort upon me. I felt then as I 
 had felt a year ago in England — on a night when 
 the aurora borealis was streaming and sweeping 
 round heaven, when, belated in lonely fields, I 
 had paused to watch that mustering of an army 
 with banners — that quivering of serried lances — 
 
A BURIAL. 269 
 
 that swift ascent of messengers from below the 
 north star to the dark, high keystone of heaven's 
 arch. I felt, not happy, far otherwise, but strong 
 with reinforced strength. 
 
 If life be a war, it seemed my destiny to conduct 
 it single-handed. I pondered now how to break 
 up my winter- quarters — to leave an encampment 
 where food and forage failed. Perhaps, to eifect 
 this change, another pitched battle must be fought 
 with fortune ; if so, I had a mind to the encounter : 
 too poor to lose, God might destine me to gain. 
 But what road was open ? — what plan available ? 
 
 On this question I was still pausing, when the 
 moon, so dim hitherto, seemed to shine out some- 
 what brighter : a ray gleamed even white before 
 me, and a shadow became distinct and marked. I 
 looked more narrowly, to make out the cause of this 
 well-defined contrast appearing a little suddenly 
 in the obscure alley : whiter and blacker it grew 
 on my eye : it took shape with instantaneous trans- 
 formation. I stood about three yards from a tall, 
 sable-robed, snowy-veiled woman. 
 
 Five minutes passed. I neither fled nor shrieked. 
 She was there still. I spoke. 
 
 "Who are you? and why do you come to me?" 
 
270 VILLETTE. 
 
 She stood mute. She had no face — no features : 
 all below her brow was masked with a white cloth ; 
 but she had eyes, and they viewed me. 
 
 I felt, if not brave, yet a little desperate ; and 
 desperation will often suffice to fill the post and do 
 the work of courage. I advanced one step. I 
 stretched out my hand, for I meant to touch her. 
 She seemed to recede. I drew nearer : her recession, 
 still silent, became swift. A mass of shrubs, 
 full-leaved evergreens laurel and dense yew, in- 
 tervened between me and what I followed. Having 
 passed that obstacle, I looked and saw nothing. I 
 waited. I said, — " If you have any errand to me, 
 come back and deliver it." Nothing spoke or re- 
 appeared. 
 
 This time there was no Dr. John to whom to 
 have recourse : there was no one to whom I dared 
 whisper the words, " I have again seen the nun." 
 
 Paulina Mary sought my frequent presence in 
 the Rue Crecy. In the old Bretton days, though 
 she had never professed herself fond of me, my 
 society had soon become to her a sort of unconscious 
 necessary. I used to notice that if I withdrew to 
 
A BURIAL. 271 
 
 my room, she would speedily come trotting after 
 me, and opening the door and peeping in, say, with 
 her little peremptory accent, — 
 
 " Come down. Why do you sit here by your- 
 self? You must come into the parlour." 
 
 In the same spirit she urged me now — 
 
 " Leave the Rue Fossette," she said, " and come 
 and live with us. Papa would give you far more 
 than Madame Beck gives you." 
 
 Mr. Home himself offered me a handsome sum — 
 thrice my present salary — if I would accept the 
 office of companion to his daughter. I declined. I 
 think I should have declined had I been poorer 
 than I was, and with scantier fund of resource, more 
 stinted narrowness of future prospect. I had not 
 that vocation. I could teach ; I could give lessons ; 
 but to be either a private governess or a com- 
 panion was unnatural to me. Rather than fill the 
 former post in any great house, I would delibe- 
 rately have taken a housemaid's place, bought a 
 strong pair of gloves, swept bedrooms and stair- 
 cases, and cleaned stoves and locks, in peace and 
 independence. Rather than be a companion, I 
 would have made shirts, and starved. 
 
 I was no bright lady's shadow — not Miss de 
 
272 VILLETTE. 
 
 Bassornpierre's. Overcast enough it was my nature 
 often to be ; of a subdued habit I was : but the 
 dimness and depression must both be voluntary — 
 such as kept me docile at my desk, in the midst of 
 my now well-accustomed pupils in Madame Beck's 
 first classe ; or alone, at my own bedside, in her 
 dormitory, or in the alley and seat which were 
 called mine, in her garden : my qualifications were 
 not convertible, not adaptable ; they could not 
 be made the foil of any gem, the adjunct of any 
 beauty, the appendage of any greatness in Chris- 
 tendom. Madame Beck and I, without assimilating, 
 understood each other well. I was not her com- 
 panion, nor her children's governess ; she left me 
 free : she tied me to nothing — not to herself — not 
 even to her interests : once, when she had for a 
 fortnight been called from home by a near relation's 
 illness, and on her return, all anxious and full of 
 care about her establishment, lest something in her 
 absence should have gone wrong — finding that 
 matters had proceeded much as usual, and that 
 there was no evidence of glaring neglect — she made 
 each of the teachers a present, in acknowledgement 
 of steadiness. To my bedside she came at twelve 
 o'clock at night, and told me she had no present 
 
A BURIAL. 273 
 
 for me. "I must make fidelity advantageous to 
 the St. Pierre," said she ; " if I attempt to make 
 it advantageous to you, there will arise misunder- 
 standing between us — perhaps separation. One 
 thing, however, I can do to please you — leave you 
 alone with your liberty : e'est ce que je ferai." 
 
 She kept her word. Every slight shackle she 
 had ever laid on me, she, from that time, with quiet 
 hand removed. Thus I had pleasure in voluntarily- 
 respecting her rules ; gratification in devoting 
 double time, in taking double pains with the pupils 
 she committed to my charge. 
 
 As to Mary de Bassompierre, I visited her with 
 pleasure, though I would not live with her. My 
 visits soon taught me that it was unlikely even my 
 occasional and voluntary society would long be 
 indispensable to her. M. de Bassompierre, for his 
 part, seemed impervious to this conjecture, blind 
 to this possibility ; unconscious as any child to the 
 signs, the likelihoods, the fitful beginnings of what, 
 when it drew to an end, he might not approve. 
 
 Whether or not, he would cordially approve, I 
 used to speculate. Difficult to say. He was much 
 taken up with scientific interests ; keen, intent, and 
 somewhat oppugnant u in what concerned his fa- 
 
 VOL. II. T 
 
274 V1LLETTE. 
 
 vourite pursuits, but unsuspicious and trustful in 
 the ordinary affairs of life. From all I could gather, 
 he seemed to regard his u daughterling" as still but 
 a child, and probably had not yet admitted the 
 notion that others might look on her in a different 
 light : he would speak of what should be done when 
 " Polly" was a woman, when she should be grown 
 up ; and " Polly," standing beside his chair, would 
 sometimes smile and take his honoured head be- 
 tween her little hands, and kiss his iron-gray locks ; 
 and, at other times, she would pout and toss her 
 curls : but she never said, " Papa, I am grown up." 
 
 She had different moods for different , people. 
 With her father she really was still a child, or 
 child-like, affectionate, merry, and playful. With 
 me she was serious, and as womanly as thought 
 and feeling could make her. With Mrs. Bretton 
 she was docile and reliant, but not expansive. With 
 Graham she was shy, at present very shy; at 
 moments she tried to be cold; on occasion she en- 
 deavoured to shun him. His step made her start ; 
 his entrance hushed her ; when he spoke, her 
 answers failed of fluency ; when he took leave, she 
 remained self-vexed and disconcerted. Even her 
 father noticed this demeanour in her. 
 
A BURIAL. 275 
 
 " My little Polly," he said once, " you live too 
 retired a life; if you grow to be a woman with 
 these shy manners, you will hardly be fitted for 
 society. You really make quite a stranger of Dr. 
 Eretton: how is this? Don't you remember that, 
 as a little girl, you used to be rather partial to 
 him." 
 
 " Rather, papa," echoed she, with her slightly dry, 
 yet gentle and simple tone. 
 
 " And you don't like him now ? What has he 
 done?" 
 
 " Nothing. Y-e-s, I like him a little; but we 
 are grown strange to each other." 
 
 " Then rub it off, Polly : rub the rust and the 
 strangeness off. Talk away when he is here, and 
 have no fear of him ! " 
 
 " He does not talk much. Is he afraid of me, do 
 you think, papa ?" 
 
 " Oh, to be sure ! What man would not be afraid 
 of such a little silent lady ? " 
 
 lc Then tell him some day not to mind my being 
 silent. Say that it is my way, and that I have no 
 unfriendly intention." 
 
 " Your way, you little chatter-box? So far 
 from being your way, it is only your whim ! " 
 
276 VILLETTE. 
 
 f Well, I'll improve, papa." 
 
 And very pretty was the grace with which, the 
 next day, she tried to keep her word. I saw her 
 make the effort to converse affably with Dr. John 
 on general topics. The attention called ^into her 
 guest's face a pleasurable glow; he met her with 
 caution, and replied to her in his softest tones, as 
 if there was a kind of gossamer happiness hanging 
 in the air which he feared to disturb by drawing 
 too deep a breath. Certainly, in her timid yet 
 earnest advance to friendship, it could not be 
 denied that there was a most exquisite and fairy 
 charm. 
 
 When the Doctor was gone, she approached her 
 father's chair. 
 
 " Did I keep my word, papa ? Did I behave 
 better?" 
 
 " My Polly behaved like a queen. I shall be- 
 come quite proud of her if this improvement con- 
 tinues. By and by we shall see her receiving my 
 guests ] with quite a calm, grand manner. Miss 
 Lucy and I will have to look about us, and polish 
 up all our best airs and graces lest we should be 
 thrown into the shade. Still, Polly, there is a 
 little flutter, a little tendency to stammer now 
 
A BURIAL. 277 
 
 and then, and even to lisp as you lisped when you 
 were six years old." 
 
 " No, papa," interrupted she, indignantly, " that 
 can't be true." 
 
 " I appeal to Miss Lucy. Did she not, in answer- 
 ing Dr. Bretton's question as to whether she had 
 ever seen the palace of the Prince of Bois l'Etang, 
 say 'yeth,' she had been there s theveral' times." 
 
 " Papa, you are satirical, you are mediant ! I 
 can pronounce all the letters of the alphabet as 
 clearly as you can. But tell me this : you are very 
 particular in making me be civil to Dr. Bretton, do 
 you like him yourself?" 
 
 " To be sure : for old acquaintance sake I like 
 him : then he is a very good son to his mother ; be- 
 sides being a kind-hearted fellow and clever in his 
 profession : yes, the callant is well enough." 
 
 " Callant ! Ah, Scotchman ! Papa, is it the 
 Edinburgh or the Aberdeen accent you have ?" 
 
 " Both, my pet, both; and doubtless the Glaswe- 
 gian into the bargain : it is that which enables me 
 to speak French so well: a gude Scots tongue 
 always succeeds well at the French." 
 
 " The French ! Scotch again : incorrigible, papa ! 
 You, too, need schooling," 
 
278 VILLETTE. 
 
 " Well, Polly, you must persuade Miss Snowe to 
 undertake both you and me ; to make you steady 
 and womanly, and me refined and classical." 
 
 The light in which M. de Bassompierre evidently 
 regarded " Miss Snowe/' used to occasion me much 
 inward edification. What contradictory attributes of 
 character we sometimes find ascribed to us, according 
 to the eye with which we are viewed ! Madame Beck 
 esteemed me learned and blue ; Miss Fanshawe, 
 caustic, ironic, and cynical; Mr. Home, a model 
 teacher, the essence of the sedate and discreet : 
 somewhat conventional perhaps, too strict, limited 
 and scrupulous, but still the pink and pattern of 
 governess-correctness; whilst another person, Pro- 
 fessor Paul Emanuel, to wit, never lost an oppor- 
 tunity of intimating his opinion that mine was 
 rather a fiery and rash nature — adventurous, indocile, 
 and audacious. I smiled at them all. If any one 
 knew me it was little Paulina Mary. 
 
 As I would not be Paulina's nominal and paid 
 companion, genial and harmonious as I began to find 
 her intercourse, she persuaded me to join her in 
 some study, as a regular and settled means of sus- 
 taining communication : she proposed the German 
 language, which, like myself, she found difficult of 
 
A BURIAL. 279 
 
 mastery. We agreed to take our lessons in the Rue 
 Crecy of the same mistress ; this arrangement threw 
 us together for some hours of every week. M. de 
 Bassompierre seemed quite pleased : it perfectly met 
 his approbation that Madame Minerva Gravity 
 should associate a portion of her leisure with that 
 of his fair and dear child. 
 
 That other self-elected judge of mine, the pro- 
 fessor in the Hue Fossette, discovering by some 
 surreptitious, spying means, that I was no longer 
 so stationary as hitherto, but went out regularly at 
 certain hours of certain days, took it upon himself 
 to place me under surveillance. People said M. 
 Emanuel had been brought up amongst Jesuits. I 
 should more readily have accredited this report had 
 his manoeuvres been better masked. As it was I 
 doubted it. Never was a more undisguised schemer, 
 a franker, looser intriguer. He would analyze his 
 own machinations : elaborately contrive plots, and 
 forthwith indulge in explanatory boasts of their 
 skill. I know not whether I was more amused or 
 provoked, by his stepping up to me one morning and 
 whispering solemnly that he " had his eye on me : 
 he at least would discharge the duty of a friend and 
 not leave me entirely to my own devices. My pro- 
 
280 VILLETTE. 
 
 ceedings seemed at present very unsettled : he did 
 not know what to make of them : he thought his 
 cousin Beck very much to blame in suffering this 
 sort of fluttering inconsistency in a teacher attached 
 to her house. What had a person devoted to a 
 serious calling, that of education, to do with Counts 
 and Countesses, hotels and chateaux ? To him, I 
 seemed altogether ( en l'air.' On his faith, he be- 
 lieved I went out six days in the seven." 
 
 I said, " Monsieur exaggerated. I certainly had 
 enjoyed the advantage of a little change lately, but 
 not before it had become necessary ; and the privilege 
 was by no means exercised in excess." 
 
 " Necessary ! How was it necessary ? I was 
 well enough, he supposed ? Change necessary ! He 
 would recommend me to look at the Catholic ' reli- 
 gieuses,' and study their lives. They asked no change." 
 
 I am no judge of what expression crossed my face 
 when he thus spoke, but it was one which provoked 
 him : he accused me of being reckless, worldly, and 
 epicurean; ambitious of greatness and feverishly 
 athirst for the pomps and vanities of life. It seems I 
 had no " devouement," no " recueillement" in my 
 character ; no spirit of grace, faith, sacrifice, or self- 
 abasement. Feeling the inutility of answering these 
 
A BURIAL. 281 
 
 charges, I mutely continued the correction of a pile 
 of English exercises. 
 
 " He could see in me nothing Christian : like 
 many other Protestants, I revelled in the pride and 
 self-will of paganism." 
 
 I slightly turned from him, nestling still closer 
 under the wing of silence. 
 
 A vague sound grumbled between his teeth; it 
 could not surely be a "juron:" he was too religious 
 for that ; but I am certain I heard the word sacri. 
 Grievous to relate, the same word was repeated, 
 with the unequivocal addition of mille something, 
 when I passed him about two hours afterwards 
 in the corridor, prepared to go and take my German 
 lesson in the Rue Crecy. Never was a better 
 little man, in some points, than M. Paul : never, 
 in others, a more waspish little despot. 
 
 Our German mistress, Fraiilein Anna Braun, was 
 a worthy, hearty woman, of about forty-five; she 
 ought, perhaps, to have lived in the days of Queen 
 Elizabeth, as she habitually consumed, for her first 
 and second breakfasts, beer and beef: also, her 
 direct and downright Deutsch nature seemed to 
 
282 VILLETTE. 
 
 suffer a sensation of cruel restraint from what she 
 called our English reserve; though we thought 
 we were very cordial with her : but we did not slap 
 her on the shoulder, and if we consented to kiss 
 her cheek, it was done quietly, and without any 
 explosive smack. These omissions oppressed and 
 depressed her considerably; still, on the whole, we 
 got on very well. Accustomed to instruct foreign 
 girls, who hardly ever will think and study for 
 themselves — who have no idea of grappling with a 
 difficulty, and overcoming it by dint of reflection 
 or application — our progress, which, in truth, was 
 very leisurely, seemed to astound her. In her eyes, 
 we were a pair of glacial prodigies, cold, proud, 
 and preternatural. 
 
 The young Countess was a little proud, a little 
 fastidious : and perhaps, with her native delicacy and 
 beauty, she had a right to these feelings ; but I think 
 it was a total mistake to ascribe them to me. I 
 never evaded the morning salute, which Paulina 
 would slip when she could; nor was a certain little 
 manner of still disdain a weapon known in my 
 armoury of defence ; whereas, Paulina always kept 
 it clear, fine and bright, and any rough German 
 sally called forth at once its steely glisten. 
 
A BURIAL. 283 
 
 Honest Anna Braun, in some measure, felt this 
 difference; and while she half- feared, half- wor- 
 shipped Paulina, as a sort of dainty nymph — an 
 Undine — she took refuge with me, as a being all 
 mortal, and of easier mood. 
 
 A book we liked well to read and translate was 
 Schiller's Ballads; Paulina soon learned to read 
 them beautifully : the Fraiilein would listen to her 
 with a broad smile of pleasure, and say her voice 
 sounded like music. She translated them too with 
 a facile flow of language, and in a strain of kindred 
 and poetic fervour : her cheek would flush, her lips 
 tremblingly smile, her beauteous eyes kindle or 
 melt as she went on. She learnt the best by heart, 
 and would often recite them when we were alone 
 together. One she liked well was " Des M'adchens 
 Klage:" that is, she liked well to repeat the words, 
 she found plaintive melody in the sound ; the sense 
 she would criticise. She murmured, as we sat over 
 the fire one evening : — 
 
 " Du Heilige, rufe dein kind zuriick, 
 Ich habe genossen das irdische Gliick, 
 Ich habe gelebt und geliebet ! " 
 
 t( Lived and loved ! " said she, " is that the 
 
284 VILLETTE. 
 
 summit of earthly happiness, the end of life — to 
 love ? I don't think it is. It may be the extreme 
 of mortal misery, it may be sheer waste of time, 
 and fruitless torture of feeling. If Schiller had said 
 to be loved — he might have come nearer the truth. 
 Is not that another thing, Lucy, to be loved ? 
 
 " I suppose it may be : but why consider the sub- 
 ject ? What is love to you ? What do you know 
 about it ? " 
 
 She crimsoned, half in irritation, half in shame. 
 
 " Now, Lucy," she said, " I won't take that from 
 you. It may be well for papa to look on me as a 
 baby : I rather prefer that he should thus view me ; 
 hut you know and shall learn to acknowledge that 
 I am verging on my nineteenth year." 
 
 " No matter if it were your twenty-ninth ; we 
 will anticipate no feelings by discussion and con- 
 versation : we will not talk about love." 
 
 " Indeed, indeed ! " said she — all in hurry and 
 heat — " you may think to check and hold me in, as 
 much as you please ; but I have talked about it, and 
 heard about it too ; and a great deal and lately, and 
 disagreeably and detrimentally : and in a way you 
 wouldn't approve." 
 
 And the vexed, triumphant, pretty, naughty 
 
A BURIAL. 285 
 
 being laughed. I could not discern what she meant, 
 and I would not ask her : I was nonplussed. See- 
 ing, however, the utmost innocence in her coun- 
 tenance — combined with some transient perverse- 
 ness and petulance — I said at last, — 
 
 " Who talks to you disagreeably and detri- 
 mentally on such matters ? Who that has near 
 access to you would dare to do it ? " 
 
 " Lucy," replied she more softly, u it is a person 
 who makes me miserable sometimes ; and I wish she 
 would keep away — I don't want her." 
 
 * But who, Paulina, can it be ? You puzzle me 
 much." 
 
 " It is — it is my cousin Ginevra. Every time 
 she has leave] to visit Mrs. Cholmondeley she calls 
 here, and whenever she finds me alone she begins 
 to talk about her admirers. Love, indeed ! You 
 should hear all she has to say about love." 
 
 " Oh, I have heard it," said I, quite coolly ; w and 
 on the whole, perhaps, it is as well you should have 
 heard it too : it is not be regretted, it is all right. 
 Yet surely, Grinevra's mind cannot influence yours. 
 You can look over both her head and her heart." 
 
 " She does influence me very much. She has the 
 art of disturbing my happiness and unsettling my 
 
286 VILLETTE. 
 
 opinions. She hurts me through the feelings and 
 people dearest to me." 
 
 "What does she say, Paulina? Give me some 
 idea. There may be counteraction of the damage 
 done." 
 
 " The people I have longest and most esteemed 
 are degraded by her. She does not spare Mrs. 
 Bretton — she does not spare .... Graham." 
 
 " No, I dare say : and how does she mix up these 
 with her sentiment and her .... love ? She does 
 mix them, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Lucy, she is insolent ; and I believe, false. You 
 know Dr. Bretton. We both know him. He 
 may be careless and proud ; but when was he ever 
 mean or slavish ? Day after day she shows him to 
 me kneeling at her feet, pursuing her like her 
 shadow. She — repulsing him with insult, and he 
 imploring her with infatuation. Lucy, is it true? 
 Is any of it true ? " 
 
 " It may be true that he once thought her hand- 
 some: does she give him out as still her suitor?" 
 
 " She says she might marry him any day: he 
 only waits her consent." 
 
 " It is these tales which have caused that reserve 
 in your manner towards Graham which your father 
 noticed." 
 
A BURIAL. 287 
 
 " They have certainly made me all doubtful about 
 his character. As Ginevra speaks, they do not 
 carry with them the sound of unmixed truth: I 
 believe she exaggerates — perhaps invents — but I 
 want to know how far." 
 
 " Suppose we bring Miss Fanshawe to some proof. 
 Give her an opportunity of displaying the power she 
 boasts." 
 
 " I could do that to-morrow. Papa has asked 
 some gentlemen to dinner, all savants. Graham 
 who, papa is beginning to discover, is a savant, 
 too — skilled, they say, in more than one branch 
 of science — is among the number. Now I should 
 be miserable to sit at table unsupported, amidst such 
 
 a party. I could not talk to Messieurs A and 
 
 Z , the Parisian academicians : all my new credit 
 
 for manner would be put in peril. You and Mrs. 
 Bretton must come for my sake; Ginevra, at a 
 word, will join you." 
 
 " Yes ; then I will carry a message of invitation, 
 and she shall have the chance of justifying her cha- 
 racter for veracity." 
 
288 VILLETTE. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXVIII. 
 
 THE HOTEL CKECY. 
 
 The morrow turned out a more lively and busy 
 day than we — or than I, at least — had anticipated. 
 It seems it was the birthday of one of the young 
 princes of Labassecour — the eldest, I think, the 
 Due de Dindonneaux — and a general holiday was 
 given in his honour at the schools, and especially 
 at the principal " Athene e," or college. The youth 
 of that institution had also concocted, and were to 
 present a loyal address; for which purpose tbey 
 were to be assembled in the public building where 
 the yearly examinations were conducted, and the 
 prizes distributed. After the ceremony of pre- 
 sentation, an oration, or " discours" was to follow 
 from one of the professors. 
 
 Several of M. de Bassompierre's friends — the 
 savants — being more or less connected with the 
 
THE HOTEL CRECY. 289 
 
 Athenee, they were expected to attend on this oc- 
 casion; together with the worshipful municipality 
 of Villette, M. le Chevalier Staas, the burgo- 
 master, and the parents and kinsfolk of the 
 Athenians in general. M. de Bassompierre was 
 engaged by his friends to accompany them; his 
 fair daughter would, of course, be of the party, 
 and she wrote a little note to Ginevra and my- 
 self, bidding us come early that we might join 
 her. 
 
 As Miss Fanshawe and I were dressing in the 
 dormitory of the Rue Fossette, she (Miss F.) sud- 
 denly burst into a laugh. 
 
 K What now ? " I asked ; for she had suspended 
 the operation of arranging her attire, and was gazing 
 at me. 
 
 " It seems so odd," she replied, with her usual 
 half-honest, half-insolent unreserve, "that you and 
 I should now be so much on a level, visiting in 
 the same sphere ; having the same connections." 
 
 " Why yes," said I ; " I had not much respect 
 for the connections you chiefly frequented awhile 
 ago : Mrs. Cholmondeley and Co. would never have 
 suited me at all." 
 
 "Who are you, Miss Snowe?" she inquired, in 
 
 VOL. II. u 
 
290 YILLETTE. 
 
 a tone of such undisguised and unsophisticated cu- 
 riosity, as made me laugh in my turn. 
 
 " You used to call yourself a nursery-governess ; 
 when you first came here you really had the care 
 of the children in this house : I have seen you 
 carry little Georgette in your arms, like a bonne — 
 few governesses would have condescended so far — 
 and now Madame Beck treats you with more 
 courtesy than she treats the Parisienne, St. Pierre ; 
 and that proud chit, my cousin, makes you her 
 bosom friend ! " 
 
 " Wonderful ! " I agreed, much amused at her 
 mystification. " Who am I indeed? Perhaps a 
 personage in disguise. Pity I don't look the 
 character." 
 
 " I wonder you are not more flattered by all this," 
 she went on : " you take it with strange composure. 
 If you really are the nobody I once thought you, 
 you must be a cool hand." 
 
 " The nobody you once thought me ! " I repeated, 
 and my face grew a little hot ; but I would not be 
 angry : of what importance was a school-girl's crude 
 use of the terms nobody and somebody? I con- 
 fined myself, therefore, to the remark that I had 
 merely met with civility ; and asked " what she saw 
 
THE HOTEL CRECY. 291 
 
 in civility to throw the recipient into a fever of 
 confusion ? " 
 
 " One can't help wondering at some things," she 
 persisted. 
 
 " Wondering at marvels of your own manufacture. 
 Are you ready at last ?" 
 
 " Yes ; let me take your arm." 
 
 " I would rather not : we will walk side by 
 side." 
 
 When she took my arm, she always leaned upon 
 me her whole weight; and, as I was not a gentle- 
 man, or her lover, I did not like it. 
 
 " There, again !" she cried. " I thought, by offer- 
 ing to take your arm, to intimate approbation of 
 your dress and general appearance : I meant it as 
 a compliment." 
 
 " You did ? You meant, in short, to express 
 that you are not ashamed to be seen in the street 
 with me? That if Mrs. Cholmondeley should be 
 fondling her lap-dog at some window, or Colonel 
 de Hamal picking his teeth in a balcony, and should 
 catch a glimpse of us, you would not quite blush for 
 your companion?" 
 
 " Yes," said she, with that directness which was 
 her best point — which gave an honest plainness to 
 
292 VILLETTE. 
 
 her very fibs when she told them — which was, in 
 short, the salt, the sole preservative ingredient of a 
 character otherwise not formed to keep. 
 
 I delegated the trouble of commenting on this 
 " yes" to my countenance ; or rather, my under- lip 
 voluntarily anticipated my tongue : of course, reve- 
 rence and solemnity were not the feelings expressed 
 in the look I gave her. 
 
 " Scornful, sneering creature!" she went on, as 
 we crossed a great square, and entered the quiet, 
 pleasant park, our nearest way to the Rue Crecy. 
 " Nobody in this world was ever such a Turk to 
 me as you are !" 
 
 "You bring it on yourself: let me alone: have 
 the sense to be quiet : I will let you alone." 
 
 " As if one could let you alone, when you are so 
 peculiar and so mysterious !" 
 
 " The mystery and peculiarity being entirely the 
 conception of your own brain — maggots — neither 
 more nor less, be so good as to keep them out of 
 my sight." 
 
 " But are you anybody?" persevered she, pushing 
 her hand, in spite of me, under my arm; and that 
 arm pressed itself with inhospitable closeness against 
 my side, by way of keeping out the intruder. 
 
THE HOTEL CEECY. 293 
 
 " Yes," I said, " I am a rising character : once 
 an old lady's companion, then a nursery-governess, 
 now a school-teacher/' 
 
 " Do — do tell me who you are ? I '11 not repeat 
 it," she urged, adhering with ludicrous tenacity to 
 the wise notion of an incognito she had got hold 
 of; and she squeezed the arm of which she had 
 now obtained full possession, and coaxed and con- 
 jured till I was obliged to pause in the park to 
 laugh. Throughout our walk she rang the most 
 fanciful changes on this theme ; proving, by her ob- 
 stinate credulity, or incredulity, her incapacity to 
 conceive how any person not bolstered up by birth 
 or wealth, not supported by some consciousness of 
 name or connection, could maintain an attitude of 
 reasonable integrity. As for me, it quite sufficed 
 to my mental tranquillity that I was known where 
 it imported that known I should be; the rest sat 
 on me easily : pedigree, social position, and recondite 
 intellectual acquisition, occupied about the same 
 space and place in my interests and thoughts ; they 
 were my third class lodgers — to whom could be as- 
 signed only the small sitting-room and the little back 
 bed-room : even if the dining and drawing-rooms 
 stood empty, I never confessed it to them, as think- 
 
294 VILLETTE. 
 
 ing minor accommodations better suited to their 
 circumstances. The world, I soon learned, held a 
 different estimate : and I make no doubt, the world 
 is very right in its view, yet believe also that I am 
 not quite wrong in mine. 
 
 There are people whom a lowered position de- 
 grades morally, to whom loss of connection costs 
 loss of self-respect : are not these justified in placing 
 the highest value on that station and association 
 which is their safeguard from debasement ? If a 
 man feels that he would become contemptible in his 
 own eyes were it generally known that his ancestry 
 were simple and not gentle, poor and not rich, 
 workers and not capitalists, would it be right 
 severely to blame him for keeping these fatal facta 
 out of sight — for starting, trembling, quailing at the 
 chance which threatens exposure ? The longer we 
 live, the more our experience widens ; the less prone 
 are we to judge our neighbour's conduct, to question 
 the world's wisdom : wherever an accumulation of 
 small defences is found, whether surrounding the 
 prude's virtue or the man of the world's respec- 
 tability, there, be sure, it is needed. 
 
 We reached the Hotel Crecy ; Paulina was ready; 
 Mrs. Bretton was with her; and, under her escort 
 
THE HOTEL CRECT. 295 
 
 and that of M. de Bassompierre, we were soon con- 
 ducted to the place of assembly, and seated in good 
 seats, at a convenient distance from the Tribune. 
 The youth of the Athenee were marshalled before 
 us, the municipality and their bourgmestre were in 
 places of honour, the young princes, with their 
 tutors, occupied a conspicuous position, and the body 
 of the building was crowded with the aristocracy and 
 first burghers of the town. 
 
 Concerning the identity of the professor by whom 
 the " discours" was to be delivered, I had as yet 
 entertained neither care nor question. Some vague 
 expectation I had that a savant would stand up and 
 deliver a formal speech, half dogmatism to the 
 Athenians, half-flattery to the princes. 
 
 The Tribune was yet empty when we entered, but 
 in ten minutes after it was filled; suddenly, in a 
 second of time, a head, chest and arms, grew above 
 the crimson desk. This head I knew: its colour, 
 shape, port, expression, were familiar both to me and 
 Miss Fanshawe ; the blackness and closeness of 
 cranium, the amplitude and paleness of brow, the 
 blueness and fire of glance, were details so domesti- 
 cated in the memory, and so knit with many a 
 whimsical association, as almost by this their sud- 
 
266 VILLETTE. 
 
 den apparition, to tickle fancy to a laugh. Indeed, 
 I confess, for my part, I did laugh till I was warm ; 
 but then I bent my head, and made my handker- 
 chief and a lowered veil the sole confidants of my 
 mirth. 
 
 I think I was glad to see M. Paul ; I think it was 
 rather pleasant than otherwise, to behold him set up 
 there, fierce and frank, dark and candid, testy and 
 fearless, as when regnant on his estrade in class. 
 His presence was such a surprise : I had not once 
 thought of expecting him, though I knew he filled 
 the chair of Belles Lettres in the college. With 
 him in that Tribune, I felt sure that neither for- 
 malism nor flattery would be our doom ; but for what 
 was vouchsafed us, for what was poured suddenly, 
 rapidly, continuously, on our heads — I own I was 
 not prepared. 
 
 He spoke to the princes, the nobles, the magis- 
 trates and the burghers, with just the same ease, 
 with almost the same pointed, choleric earnestness, 
 with which he was wont to harangue the three 
 divisions of the Rue Fossette. The collegians he 
 addressed, not as school-boys, but as future citizens 
 and embryo patriots. The times which have since 
 come on Europe had not been foretold yet, and M. 
 
THE HOTEL CEECT. 297 
 
 Emanuel's spirit seemed new to me. Who would 
 have thought the flat and fat soil of Labassecour 
 could yield political convictions and national feelings, 
 such as were now strongly expressed ? Of the 
 bearing of his opinions I need here give no special 
 indication ; yet it may be permitted me to say that I 
 believed the little man not more earnest than right 
 in what he said : with all his fire he was severe and 
 sensible; he trampled Utopian theories under his 
 heel; he rejected wild dreams with scorn; — but, 
 when he looked in the face of tyranny — oh, then 
 there opened a light in his eye worth seeing ; and 
 when he spoke of injustice, his voice gave no uncer- 
 tain sound, but reminded me rather of the band- 
 trumpet, ringing at twilight from the park. 
 
 I do not think his audience were generally suscep- 
 tible of sharing his flame in its purity ; but some of 
 the college youth caught fire as he eloquently told 
 them what should be their path and endeavour in 
 their country's and in Europe's future. They gave 
 him a long, loud, ringing cheer, as he concluded : 
 with all his fierceness, he was their favourite pro- 
 fessor. 
 
 As our party left the Hall, he stood at the 
 entrance ; he saw and knew me, and lifted his hat ; 
 
298 VILLETTE. 
 
 he offered his hand in passing, and uttered the 
 words " Que 'en dites vous ? " — question eminently 
 characteristic, and reminding me, even in this his 
 moment of triumph, of that inquisitive restlessness, 
 that absence of what I considered desirable self- 
 control, which were amongst his faults. He should 
 not have cared just then to ask what I thought, or 
 what anybody thought ; but he did care, and he was 
 too natural to conceal, too impulsive to repress his 
 wish. Well ! if I blamed his over - eagerness, I 
 liked his naivete. I would have praised him : I had 
 plenty of praise in my heart ; but, alas ! no words 
 on my lips. Who has words at the right moment ? 
 I stammered some lame expressions ; but was truly 
 glad when other people, coming up with profuse 
 congratulations, covered my deficiency by their 
 redundancy. 
 
 A gentleman introduced him to M. de Bassom- 
 pierre; and the Count, who had likewise been highly 
 gratified, asked him to join his friends (for the most 
 part M. Emanuel's likewise), and to dine with them 
 at the Hotel Crecy. He declined dinner, for he 
 was a man always somewhat shy in meeting the 
 advances of the wealthy : there was a strength of 
 sturdy independence in the stringing of his sinews — 
 
THE HOTEL CRECY. 299 
 
 not obtrusive, but pleasant enough to discover as 
 one advanced in knowledge of his character; he 
 promised, however, to step in with his friend, 
 
 M. A , a French Academician, in the course of 
 
 the evening. 
 
 At dinner that day, Ginevra and Paulina each 
 looked, in- her own way, very beautiful; the former, 
 perhaps, boasted the advantage in material charms, 
 but the latter shone pre-eminent for attractions more 
 subtle and spiritual : for light and eloquence of eye, 
 for grace of mien, for winning variety of expression. 
 Ginevra 's dress of deep crimson relieved well her 
 light curls, and harmonized with her rose-like bloom. 
 Paulina's attire — in fashion close, though faultlessly 
 neat, but in texture clear and white — made the 
 eye grateful for the delicate life of her complexion, 
 for the soft animation of her countenance, for the 
 tender depth of her eyes, for the brown shadow 
 and bounteous flow of her hair — darker than that 
 of her Saxon cousin, as were also her eyebrows, her 
 eye-lashes, her full irids, and large mobile pupils. 
 Nature having traced all these details slightly, and 
 with a careless hand, in Miss Fanshawe's case; 
 and in Miss de Bassompierre's, wrought them to 
 a high and delicate finish. 
 
300 VILLETTE. 
 
 Paulina was awed by the savants, but not quite 
 to mutism : she conversed modestly, diffidently ; not 
 without effort, but with so true a sweetness, so fine 
 and penetrating a sense, that her father more than 
 once suspended his own discourse to listen, and fixed 
 on her an eye of proud delight. It was a polite 
 
 Frenchman, M. Z , a very learned, but quite 
 
 a courtly man, who had drawn her into discourse. 
 I was charmed with her French ; it was faultless — 
 the structure correct, the idioms true, the accent 
 pure ; Ginevra, who had lived half her life on the 
 Continent, could do nothing like it : not that words 
 ever failed Miss Fanshawe, but real accuracy and 
 purity she neither possessed, nor in any number of 
 years would acquire. Here, too, M. de Bassom- 
 pierre was gratified ; for, on the point of language, 
 he was critical. 
 
 Another listener and observer there was ; one 
 who, detained by some exigency of his profession, 
 had come in late to dinner. Both ladies were 
 quietly scanned by Dr. Bretton, at the moment of 
 taking his seat at the table ; and that guarded survey 
 was more than once renewed. His arrival roused 
 Miss Fanshawe, who had hitherto appeared listless : 
 she now became smiling and complacent, talked — 
 
THE HOTEL CRECY. 301 
 
 though what she said was rarely to the purpose — 
 or rather, was of a purpose somewhat mortifyingly 
 below the standard of the occasion. Her light, 
 disconnected prattle might have gratified Graham 
 once ; perhaps it pleased him still : perhaps it was 
 only fancy which suggested the thought that, while 
 his eye was filled and his ear fed, his taste, his 
 keen zest, his lively intelligence, were not equally 
 consulted and regaled. It is certain that, restless 
 and exacting as seemed the demand on his attention, 
 he yielded courteously all that was required : his 
 manner showed neither pique nor coolness : Ginevra 
 was his neighbour, and to her, during dinner, he 
 almost exclusively confined his notice. She ap- 
 peared satisfied, and passed to the drawing-room 
 in very good spirits. 
 
 Yet, no sooner had we reached that place of 
 refuge, than she again became flat and listless : 
 throwing herself on a couch, she denounced both 
 the "discours" and the dinner as stupid affairs, and 
 inquired of her cousin how she could hear such a 
 set of prosaic " gros-bonnets " as her father gathered 
 about him. The moment the gentlemen were heard 
 to move, her railings ceased : she started up, flew to 
 the piano, and dashed at it with spirit. Dr. Bretton 
 
302 VILLETTE. 
 
 entering, one of the first, took up his station beside 
 her. I thought he would not long maintain that 
 post : there was a position near the hearth to which 
 I expected to see him attracted : this position he 
 only scanned with his eye ; while he looked, others 
 drew in. The grace and mind of Paulina charmed 
 these thoughtful Frenchmen : the fineness of her 
 beauty, the soft courtesy of her manner, her imma- 
 ture, but real and inbred tact, pleased their national 
 taste ; they clustered about her, not indeed to talk 
 science, which would have rendered her dumb, but 
 to touch on many subjects in letters, in arts, in 
 actual life, on which it soon appeared that she had 
 both read and reflected. I listened. I am sure 
 that though Graham stood aloof, he listened too : 
 his hearing as well as his vision was very fine, 
 quick, discriminating. I knew he gathered the con- 
 versation ; I felt that the mode in which it was 
 sustained suited him exquisitely — pleased him 
 almost to pain. 
 
 In Paulina there was more force, both of feeling 
 and character, than most people thought — than 
 Graham himself imagined — than she would ever 
 show to those who did not wish to see it. To speak 
 truth, reader, there is no excellent beauty, no 
 
THE HOTEL CEECY. 303 
 
 accomplished grace, no reliable refinement, without 
 strength as excellent, as complete, as trustworthy. 
 As well might you look for good fruit and blossom 
 on a rootless and sapless tree, as for charms that 
 will endure in a feeble and relaxed nature. For a 
 little while, the blooming semblance of beauty may 
 flourish round weakness ; but it cannot bear a blast : 
 it soon fades, even in serenest sunshine. Graham 
 would have started had any suggestive spirit whis- 
 pered of the sinew and the stamina sustaining that 
 delicate nature; but I, who had known her as a 
 child, knew, or guessed, by what a good and strong 
 root her graces held to the firm soil of reality. 
 
 While Dr. Bretton listened, and waited an open- 
 ing in the magic circle, his glance, restlessly 
 sweeping the room at intervals, lighted by chance 
 on me ; where I sat in a quiet nook not far from 
 my godmother and M. de Bassompierre, who, as 
 usual, were engaged in what Mr. Home called "a 
 two-handed crack:" what the Count would have 
 interpreted as a tete-a-tete. Graham smiled recog- 
 nition, crossed the room, asked me how I was, told 
 me I looked pale. I also had my own smile at my 
 own thought : it was now about three months since 
 Dr. John had spoken to me — a lapse of which he 
 
304 VILLETTE. 
 
 was not even conscious. He sat down, and became 
 silent. His wish was rather to look than converse. 
 Ginevra and Paulina were now opposite to him : he 
 could gaze his fill : he surveyed both forms — studied 
 both faces. 
 
 Several new guests, ladies as well as gentlemen, 
 had entered the room since dinner, dropping in for 
 the evening conversation ; and amongst the gentle- 
 men, I may incidentally observe, I had already 
 noticed by glimpses, a severe, dark professoral out- 
 line, hovering aloof in an inner saloon, seen only in 
 vista. M. Emanuel knew many of the gentlemen 
 present, but I think was a stranger to most of the 
 ladies, excepting myself; in looking towards the 
 hearth, he could not but see me, and naturally made 
 a movement to approach; seeing, however, Dr. 
 Bretton also, he changed his mind and held back. 
 If that had been all, there would have been no cause 
 for quarrel ; but not satisfied with holding back, he 
 •puckered up his eye-brows, protruded his lip, and 
 looked so ugly that I averted my eyes from the dis- 
 pleasing spectacle. M. Joseph Emanuel had arrived, 
 as well as his austere brother, and at this very 
 moment was relieving Ginevra at the piano. What 
 a master-touch succeeded her school-girl jingle ! In 
 
THE HOTEL CRECY. 305 
 
 what grand, grateful tones the instrument acknow- 
 ledged the hand of the true artist ! 
 
 " Lucy/' began Dr. Bretton, breaking silence and 
 smiling, as Ginevra glided before him, casting a 
 glance as she passed by, " Miss Fanshawe is certainly 
 a fine girl." 
 
 Of course I assented. 
 
 " Is there," he pursued, " another in the room as 
 lovely?" 
 
 " I think there is not another as handsome." 
 
 " I agree with you, Lucy : you and I do often 
 agree in opinion, in taste, I think ; or at least in 
 judgment." 
 
 " Do we?" I said, somewhat doubtfully. 
 
 " I believe if you had been a boy, Lucy, instead 
 of a girl — my mother's god-son instead of her god- 
 daughter — we should have been good friends : our 
 opinions would have melted into each other." 
 
 He had assumed a bantering air : a light, half- 
 caressing half-ironic, shone aslant in his eye. Ah, 
 Graham! I have given more than one solitary 
 moment to thoughts and calculations of your estimate 
 of Lucy Snowe : was it always kind or just ? Had 
 Lucy been intrinsically the same, but possessing the 
 additional advantages of wealth and station, would 
 
 VOL. II. X 
 
306 VILLETTE. 
 
 your manner to her, your value for her have been 
 quite what they actually were ? And yet by 
 these questions I would not seriously infer blame. 
 No ; you might sadden and trouble me sometimes ; 
 but then mine was a soon - depressed, an easily- 
 deranged temperament — it fell if a cloud crossed 
 the sun. Perhaps before the eye of severe equity, 
 I should stand more at fault than you. 
 
 Trying then to keep down the unreasonable pain 
 which thrilled my heart, on thus being made to feel 
 that while Graham could devote to others the most 
 grave and earnest, the manliest interest, he had no 
 more than light raillery for Lucy, the friend of lang 
 syne, I inquired calmly, — 
 
 " On what points are we so closely in accord- 
 ance ? " 
 
 " We each have an observant faculty. You, 
 perhaps, don't give me credit for the possession ; yet 
 I have it." 
 
 *• But you were speaking of tastes : we may see 
 the same objects, yet estimate them differently ? " 
 
 " Let us bring it to the test. Of course, you 
 cannot but render homage to the merits of Miss 
 Fanshawe : now, what do you think of others in the 
 room ? — my mother, for instance ; or the lions, 
 
THE HOTEL CRECY. 307 
 
 yonder, Messieurs A and Z ; or, let us 
 
 say, that pale little lady, Miss de Bassompierre ? " 
 
 " You know what I think of your mother. I have 
 not thought of Messieurs A and Z ." 
 
 « And the other ?" 
 
 " I think she is, as you say, a pale little lady — 
 pale, certainly, just now, when she is fatigued with 
 over-excitement. " 
 
 " You don't remember her as a child?" 
 
 " I wonder, sometimes, whether you do?" 
 
 " I had forgotten her ; but it is noticeable, that cir- 
 cumstances, persons, even words and looks, that had 
 slipped your memory, may, under certain conditions, 
 certain aspects of your own or another's mind, revive." 
 
 " That is possible enough." 
 
 " Yet," he continued, " the revival is imperfect — 
 needs confirmation, partakes so much of the dim 
 character of a dream,, or of the airy one of a fancy, 
 that the testimony of a witness becomes necessary 
 for corroboration. Were you not a guest at Bretton 
 ten years ago, when Mr. Home brought his little 
 girl, whom we then called l little Polly,' to stay with 
 mama?" 
 
 " I was there the night she came, and also the 
 morning she went away." 
 
308 VILLETTE. 
 
 " Rather a peculiar child ; was she not ? I 
 wonder how I treated her. Was I fond of children 
 in those days ? Was there anything gracious or 
 kindly about me — great, reckless, school-hoy as I 
 was ? But you don't recollect me, of course ?" 
 
 " You have seen your own picture at La Terrasse. 
 It is like you personally. In manner, you were 
 almost the same yesterday as to-day." 
 
 " But, Lucy, how is that ? Such an oracle really 
 whets my curiosity. What am I to-day ? What was 
 I the yesterday often years hack ?" 
 
 " Gracious to whatever pleased you — unkindly or 
 cruel to nothing." 
 
 " There you are wrong ; I think I was almost a 
 brute to you, for instance." 
 
 " A brute ! No, Graham : I should never have 
 patiently endured brutality." 
 
 " This, however, I do remember : quiet Lucy 
 Snowe tasted nothing of my grace." 
 
 " As little of your cruelty." 
 
 " Why, had I been Nero himself, I could not 
 have tormented a being inoffensive as a shadow." 
 
 " I smiled ; but I also hushed a groan. Oh ! — I 
 wished he would just let me alone — cease allusion 
 to me. These epithets — these attributes I put from 
 
THE HOTEL CRECY. 309 
 
 me. His " quiet Lucy Snowe," his " inoffensive 
 shadow," I gave him back ; not with scorn, but with 
 extreme weariness : theirs was the coldness and the 
 pressure of lead ; let him whelm me with no such 
 weight. Happily, he was soon on another theme. 
 
 " On what terms were ' little Polly ' and I ? 
 Unless my recollections deceive me, we were not 
 foes " 
 
 " You speak very vaguely. Do you think little 
 Polly's memory not more definite ? " 
 
 " Oh! we don't talk of c little Polly' now. Pray 
 say, Miss de Bassompierre ; and, of course, such a 
 stately personage remembers nothing of Bretton. 
 Look at her large eyes, Lucy ; can they read a word 
 in the page of memory ? Are they the same which 
 I used to direct to a horn-book? She does not 
 know that I partly taught her to read." 
 
 " In the Bible on Sunday nights ? " 
 
 " She has a calm, delicate, rather fine profile 
 now: once what a little restless, anxious coun- 
 tenance was hers ! What a thing is a child's pre- 
 ference — what a bubble! Would you believe it? 
 that lady was fond of me ! " 
 
 " I think she was in some measure fond of you," 
 eaid I, moderately. 
 
310 VILLETTE. 
 
 " You don't remember then ? / had forgotten ; 
 but I remember now. She liked me the best of 
 whatever there was at Bretton." 
 
 " You thought so." 
 
 " I quite well recall it. I wish I could tell her 
 all I recall; or rather, I wish some one, you for 
 instance, Avould go behind and whisper it all in her 
 ear, and I could have the delight — here, as I sit — of 
 watching her look under the intelligence. Could 
 you manage that, think you, Lucy, and make me 
 ever grateful?" 
 
 " Could I manage to make you ever grateful?" 
 said I. " No, / could not." And I felt my fingers 
 work and my hands interlock : I felt, too, an inward 
 courage, warm and resistant. In this matter I was 
 not disposed to gratify Dr. John : not at all. "With 
 now welcome force, I realized his entire misappre- 
 hension of my character and nature. He wanted 
 always to give me a role not mine. Nature and 
 I opposed him. He did not at all guess what I 
 felt : he did not read my eyes, or face, or gestures ; 
 though, I doubt not, all spoke. Leaning towards 
 me coaxingly, he said, softly, "Do content me, 
 Lucy." 
 
 And I would have contented, or, at least, I would 
 
THE HOTEL CRECY. 311 
 
 clearly have enlightened him, and taught him well 
 never again to expect of me the part of officious 
 soubrette in a love drama ; when, following his soft, 
 eager murmur, meeting almost his pleading, mellow 
 — " Do content me, Lucy!" — a sharp hiss pierced 
 my ear on the other side. 
 
 "Petite chatte, doucerette, coquette!" sibillated 
 the sudden boa-constrictor ; " vous avez l'air bien 
 triste, soumise, reveuse, mais vous ne l'etes pas ; c'est 
 moi qui vous le dis : Sauvage ! la flamme a l'ame, 
 l'eclair aux yeux ! " 
 
 " Oui; j'ai la flamme a l'ame, et je dois l'avoir!" 
 retorted I, turning in just wrath ; but Professor 
 Emanuel had hissed his insult and was gone. 
 
 The worst of the matter was, that Dr. Bretton, 
 whose ears, as I have said, were quick and fine, 
 caught every word of this apostrophe; he put his 
 handkerchief to his face and laughed till he shook. 
 
 " Well done, Lucy," cried he ; " capital ! petite 
 chatte, petite coquette ! Oh, I must tell my mother ! 
 Is it true, Lucy, or half-true ? I believe it is : you 
 redden to the colour of Miss Fanshawe's gown. 
 And really, by my word, now I examine him, that 
 is the same little man who was so savage with you 
 at the concert: the very same, and in his soul he 
 
312 VILLETTE. 
 
 is frantic at this moment because he sees me laugh- 
 ing. Oh ! I must tease him." 
 
 And Graham, yielding to his bent for mischief, 
 laughed, jested, and whispered on till I could bear 
 no more, and my eyes filled. 
 
 Suddenly he was sobered: a vacant space ap- 
 peared near Miss de Bassompierre ; the circle sur- 
 rounding her seemed about to dissolve. This move- 
 ment was instantly caught by Graham's eye — ever- 
 vigilant, even while laughing ; he rose, took his 
 courage in both hands, crossed the room, and made 
 the advantage his own. Dr. John, throughout his 
 whole life, was a man of luck — a man of success. 
 And why? Because he had the eye to see his 
 opportunity, the heart to prompt to well-timed 
 action, the nerve to consummate a perfect work. 
 And no tyrant-passion dragged him back; no en- 
 thusiasms, no foibles encumbered his way. How 
 well he looked at this very moment ! When Paulina 
 looked up as he reached her side, her glance mingled 
 at once with an encountering glance, animated, yet 
 modest ; his colour, as he spoke to her, became half 
 a blush, half a glow. He stood in her presence 
 brave and bashful: subdued and unobtrusive, yet 
 decided in his purpose and devoted in his ardour. 
 
THE HOTEL CKECY. 313 
 
 I gathered all this by one view. I did not prolong 
 my observation — time failed me, had inclination 
 served : the night wore late ; Ginevra and I ought 
 already to have been in the Rue Fossette. I rose, 
 and bade good- night to my godmother and M. de 
 Bassompierre. 
 
 I know not whether Professor Emanuel had no- 
 ticed my reluctant acceptance of Dr. Bretton's 
 badinage, or whether he perceived that I was pained, 
 and that, on the whole, the evening had not been 
 one flow of exultant enjoyment for the volatile, 
 pleasure-loving, Mademoiselle Lucie ; but, as I was 
 leaving the room, he stepped up and inquired 
 whether I had any one to attend me to the Rue 
 Fossette. The professor now spoke politely, and 
 even deferentially, and he looked apologetic and 
 repentant; but I could not recognise his civility 
 at a word, nor meet his contrition with crude, 
 premature oblivion. Never hitherto had I felt 
 seriously disposed to resent his brusqueries, or freeze 
 before his fierceness; what he had said to-night, 
 however, I considered unwarranted: my extreme 
 disapprobation of the proceeding must be marked, 
 however slightly. I merely said : — 
 
 " I am provided with attendance." 
 
314 VILLETTE. 
 
 Which was true, as Ginevra and I were to be 
 sent home in the carriage ; and I passed him with 
 the sliding obeisance with which he was wont to be 
 saluted in classe by pupils crossing his estrade. 
 
 Having sought my shawl I returned to the vesti- 
 bule. M. Emanuel stood there as if waiting. He 
 observed that the night was fine. 
 
 " Is it ? " I said, with a tone and manner 
 whose consummate chariness and frostiness I could 
 not but applaud. It was so seldom I could pro- 
 perly act out my own resolution to be reserved 
 and cool where I had been grieved or hurt, that 
 I felt almost proud of this one successful effort. 
 That " Is it ? " sounded just like the manner of 
 other people. I had heard hundreds of such little 
 minced, docked, dry phrases, from the pursed-up 
 coral lips of a score of self-possessed, self-sufficing 
 misses and mesdemoiselles. That M. Paul would 
 not stand any prolonged experience of this sort of 
 dialogue I knew ; but he certainly merited a sam- 
 ple of the curt and arid. I believe he thought so 
 himself, for he took the dose quietly. He looked 
 at my shawl and objected to its lightness. I 
 decidedly told him it was as heavy as I wished. 
 Receding aloof, and standing apart, I leaned on 
 
THE HOTEL CRECY. 315 
 
 the banister of the stairs, folded my shawl about 
 me, and fixed my eyes on a dreary religious paint- 
 ing darkening the wall. 
 
 Ginevra was long in coming : tedious seemed her 
 loitering. M. Paul was still there, my ear expected 
 from his lips an angry tone. He came nearer. 
 " Now for another hiss ! " thought I : had not the 
 action been too uncivil I could have stopped my 
 ears with my fingers in terror of the thrill. Nothing 
 happens as we expect : listen for a coo or a mur- 
 mur ; it is then you will hear a cry of prey or pain. 
 Await a piercing shriek, an angry threat, and wel- 
 come an amicable greeting, a low kind whisper. 
 M. Paul spoke gently : — 
 
 " Friends," said he, " do not quarrel for a word. 
 Tell me, was it I or ce grand fat d' Anglais " (so he 
 profanely denominated Dr. Bretton), " who made 
 your eyes so humid, and your cheeks so hot as they 
 are even now ? " 
 
 " I am not conscious of you, monsieur, or of any 
 other having excited such emotion as you indicate," 
 was my answer ; and in giving it, I again surpassed 
 my usual self, and achieved a neat, frosty false- 
 hood. 
 
 " But what did I say ? " he pursued, " tell me : 
 
316 VILLETTE. 
 
 I was angry : I have forgotten my words ; what 
 were they." 
 
 "Such as it is best to forget!" said I, still quite 
 calm and chill. 
 
 " Then it was my words which wounded you ? 
 Consider them unsaid: permit my retractation; 
 accord my pardon." 
 
 " I am not angry, monsieur." 
 
 " Then you are worse than angry — grieved. For- 
 give me, Miss Lucy." 
 
 "M. Emanuel, I do forgive you." 
 
 " Let me hear you say, in the voice natural to 
 you, and not in that alien tone, ■ Mon ami, je vous 
 pardonne.' " 
 
 He made me smile. Who could help smiling at 
 his wistfulness, his simplicity, his earnestness ? 
 
 " Bon !" he cried ; "Voila que le jour va poindre ! 
 Dites done, mon ami." 
 
 " Monsieur Paul, je vous pardonne." 
 
 " I will have no monsieur : speak the other word, 
 or I shall not believe you sincere : another effort — 
 mon ami, or else in English, — my friend !" 
 
 Now, " my friend " had rather another sound and 
 significancy than " mon ami ," it did not breathe the 
 same sense of domestic and intimate affection : 
 
THE HOTEL CEECT. 317 
 
 " mon amV I could not say to M. Paul; "my 
 friend," I could, and did say without difficulty. 
 This distinction existed not for him, however, and 
 he was quite satisfied with the English phrase. He 
 smiled. You should have seen him smile, reader; 
 and you should have marked the difference between 
 his countenance now, and that he wore half an hour 
 ago, I cannot affirm that I had ever witnessed the 
 smile of pleasure, or content, or kindness round 
 M. Paul's lips, or in his eyes before. The ironic, 
 the sarcastic, the disdainful, the passionately exul- 
 tant, I had hundreds of times seen him express by 
 what he called a smile, but any illuminated sign of 
 milder or warmer feeling struck me as wholly new 
 in his visage. It changed it as from a mask to 
 a face : the deep lines left his features ; the very 
 complexion seemed clearer and fresher ; that swart, 
 sallow, southern darkness which spoke his Spanish 
 blood, became displaced by a lighter hue. I know 
 not that I have ever seen in any other human face 
 an equal metamorphosis from a similar cause. He 
 now took me to the carriage ; at the same moment 
 M. de Bassompierre came out with his niece. 
 
 In a pretty humour was Mistress Fanshawe ; she 
 had found the evening a grand failure : completely 
 
318 VILLETTE. 
 
 upset as to temper, she gave way to the most un- 
 controlled moroseness as soon as we were seated, 
 and the carriage- door closed. Her invectives against 
 Dr. Bretton had something venomous in them. 
 Having found herself impotent either to charm or 
 sting him, hatred was her only resource ; and this 
 hatred she expressed in terms so unmeasured and 
 proportion so monstrous, that, after listening for 
 a while with assumed stoicism, my outraged sense 
 of justice at last and suddenly caught fire. An 
 explosion ensued : for I could be passionate, too ; 
 especially with my present fair but faulty associate, 
 who never failed to stir the worst dregs of me. It 
 was well that the carriage- wheels made a tremendous 
 rattle over the flinty Choseville pavement, for I can 
 assure the reader there was neither dead silence nor 
 calm discussion within the vehicle. Half in earnest, 
 half in seeming, I made it my business to storm 
 down Ginevra. She had set out rampant from the 
 Rue Crecy ; it was necessary to tame her before we 
 reached the Rue Fossette : to this end it was indis- 
 pensable to show up her sterling value and high 
 deserts ; and this must be done in language of 
 which the fidelity and homeliness might challenge 
 comparison with the compliments of a John Knox 
 
THE HOTEL CRECT. 319 
 
 to a Mary Stuart. This was the right discipline for 
 Ginevra ; it suited her. I am quite sure she went to 
 bed that night all the better and more settled in 
 mind and mood, and slept all the more sweetly for 
 having undergone a sound moral drubbing. 
 
 END OF VOL. II. 
 
London : 
 
 Printed by Stewart and Murray, 
 
 Old Bailey. 
 
y /^ $<&<^L^fl^^ 
 
V I L L E T T E. 
 
 By CUBKER BELL, 
 
 AUTHOE OF " JANE EYBE," " SHIRLEY," ETC. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. III. 
 
 LONDON: 
 SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILL. 
 
 SMITH, TAYLOE, AND CO., BOMBAY. 
 
 1853. 
 The Author of this work reserves the right of translating it. 
 
London : 
 
 Printed by Stewart and Muerat. 
 
 Old Bailey. 
 
CONTENTS OF VOL. III. 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 XXX.— The Watchguard 1 
 
 XXXI. — Monsieur's Fete 25 
 
 XXXH.— M. Paul 52 
 
 XXXIH.— The Dryad 73 
 
 XXXIV.— The First Letter .... 94 
 
 XXXV. — M. Paul keeps his Promise . .112 
 
 XXXVL— Malevola 129 
 
 XXXVII.— Fraternity 152 
 
 XXXVTII.— The Apple of Discord . . .176 
 
 XXXIX.— Sunshine 204 
 
 XL.— Cloud 234 
 
 XLI. — Old and New Acquaintance . . 281 
 
 XLH.— The Happy Pair 303 
 
 XLDZL— Faubourg Clotilde . . . .316 
 XLD7.— Finis 344 
 
 
VILLETTE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 THE WATCHGUARD. 
 
 M. Paul Emanuel owned an acute sensitiveness 
 to the annoyance of interruption, from whatsoever 
 cause, occurring during his lessons : to pass through 
 the classe under such circumstances was considered 
 by the teachers and pupils of the school, indivi- 
 dually and collectively, to be as much as a woman's 
 or girl's life was worth. 
 
 Madame Beck herself, if forced to the enterprise, 
 would " skurry " through, retrenching her skirts, 
 and carefully coasting the formidable estrade, like a 
 ship dreading breakers. As to Rosine, the portress 
 — on whom, every half-hour, devolved the fearful 
 
 TOL. III. B 
 
2 VILLETTE. 
 
 duty of fetching pupils out of the very heart of one 
 or other of the divisions, to take their music-lessons 
 in the oratory, the great or little salon, the salle a. 
 manger, or some other piano-station — she would, 
 upon her second or third attempt, frequently become 
 almost tongue-tied from excess of consternation — 
 a sentiment inspired by the unspeakable looks 
 levelled at her through a pair of dart-dealing 
 spectacles. 
 
 One morning I was sitting in the carre, at 
 work upon a piece of embroidery which one of the 
 pupils had commenced but delayed to finish, and 
 while my fingers wrought at the frame, my ears 
 regaled themselves with listening to the crescendos 
 and cadences of a voice haranguing in the neigh- 
 bouring classe, in tones that waxed momently more 
 unquiet, more ominously varied. There was a good 
 strong partition-wall between me and the gathering 
 storm, as well as a facile means of flight through 
 the glass-door to the court, in case it swept this 
 way ; so I am afraid I derived more amusement than 
 alarm from these thickening symptoms. Poor 
 Hosine was not so safe: four times that blessed 
 morning had she made the passage of peril; and 
 now, for the fifth time it became her dangerous 
 
THE WATCHGUARD. 3 
 
 duty to snatch, as it were, a brand from the burn- 
 ing — a pupil from under M. Paul's nose. 
 
 " Mon Dieu ! mon Dieu ! " cried she. " Que 
 vais-je devenir? Monsieur va me tuer, je suis 
 sure ; car il est d'une colere ! " 
 
 Nerved by the courage of desperation, she opened 
 the door. 
 
 " Mademoiselle La Malle au piano ! " was her 
 cry. Ere she could make good her retreat, or quite 
 close the door, this voice uttered itself: — 
 
 " Des ce moment ! — la classe est defendue. La 
 premiere qui ouvrira cette porte, ou passera par 
 cette division, sera pendue — fut-ce Madame Beck 
 elle ineme ! " 
 
 Ten minutes had not succeeded the promulgation 
 of this decree, when Rosine's French pantoufles 
 were again heard shuffling along the corridor. 
 
 " Mademoiselle," said she, " I would not for a 
 five franc piece go into that classe again just now : 
 Monsieur's lunettes are really terrible ; and here is 
 a commissionaire come with a message from the 
 Athenee. I have told Madame Beck I dare not 
 deliver it, and she says I am to charge you with 
 it." 
 
 " Me ? No, that is rather too bad ! It is not in 
 
4 VILLETTE. 
 
 my line of duty. Come, come, Rosine ! bear your 
 own burden. Be brave — charge once more ! " 
 
 " I, Mademoiselle ? — impossible ! Five times I 
 have crossed him this day. Madame must really 
 hire a gendarme for this service. Ouf ! Je n'en 
 puis plus ! " 
 
 " Bah ! you are only a coward. What is the 
 message ? " 
 
 " Precisely of the kirfd with which Monsieur least 
 likes to be pestered : an urgent summons to go directly 
 to the Athenee, as there is an official visitor — 
 inspector — I know not what — arrived, and Monsieur 
 must meet him : you know how he hates a must" 
 
 Yes, I knew well enough. The restive little man 
 detested spur or curb : against whatever was urgent 
 or obligatory, he was sure to revolt. However, I 
 accepted the responsibility — not, certainly, without 
 fear, but fear blent with other sentiments, curiosity 
 amongst them. I opened the door, I entered, I 
 closed it behind me as quickly and quietly as a 
 rather unsteady hand would permit ; for to be slow 
 or bustling, to rattle a latch, or leave a door gaping 
 wide, were aggravations of crime, often more disas- 
 trous in result than the main crime itself. There I 
 stood then, and there he sat ; his humour was visibly 
 
THE WATCHGUARD. 5 
 
 bad — almost at its worst ; he had been giving a 
 lesson in arithmetic — for he gave lessons on any and 
 every subject that struck his fancy — and arithmetic 
 being a dry subject, invariably disagreed with him : 
 not a pupil but trembled when he spoke of figures. 
 He sat, bent above his desk : to look up at the sound 
 of an entrance, at the occurrence of a direct breach 
 of his will and law, was an effort he could not for 
 the moment bring himself to make. It was quite 
 as well : I thus gained time to walk up the long 
 classe ; and it suited my idiosyncracy far better to 
 encounter the near burst of anger like his, than to 
 bear its menace at a distance. 
 
 At his estrade I paused, just in front; of course 
 I was not worthy of immediate attention : he pro- 
 ceeded with his lesson. Disdain would not do : he 
 must hear and he must answer my message. 
 
 Not being quite tall enough to lift my head over 
 his desk, elevated upon the estrade, and thus suffer- 
 ing eclipse in my present position, I ventured to 
 peep round, with the design, at first, of merely 
 getting a better view of his face, which had struck 
 me when I entered as bearing a close and pic- 
 turesque resemblance to that of a black and sallow 
 tiger. Twice did I enjoy this side-view with im- 
 
6 VILLETTE. 
 
 punity, advancing and receding unseen; the third 
 time my eye had scarce dawned beyond the ob- 
 scuration of the desk, when it was caught and 
 transfixed through its very pupil — transfixed by the 
 "lunettes." Rosine was right; these utensils had 
 in them a blank and immutable terror, beyond the 
 mobile wrath of the wearer's own unglazed eyes. 
 
 I now found the advantage of proximity : these 
 short-sighted "lunettes" were useless for the in- 
 spection of a criminal under Monsieur's nose ; 
 accordingly, he doffed them, and he and I stood 
 on more equal terms. 
 
 I am glad I was not really much afraid of him 
 — that, indeed, close in his presence, I felt no terror 
 at all ; for upon his demanding cord and gibbet to 
 execute the sentence recently pronounced, I was 
 able to furnish him with a needleful of embroidering 
 thread with such accommodating civility as could 
 not but allay some portion at least of his surplus 
 irritation. Of course I did not parade this courtesy 
 before public view: I merely handed the thread 
 round the angle of the desk, and attached it, ready 
 noosed, to the barred back of the Professor's 
 chair. 
 
 " Que me voulez-vous ? " said he, in a growl of 
 
THE WATCHGUARD. / 
 
 which the music was wholly confined to his chest 
 and throat, for he kept his teeth clenched, and 
 seemed registering to himself an inward vow, that 
 nothing earthly should wring from him a smile. 
 My answer commenced uncompromisingly : — 
 
 "Monsieur," I said, "je veux l'impossible, des 
 choses inouies ;" and thinking it best not to mince 
 matters, but to administer the " douche" with de- 
 cision, in a low but quick voice, I delivered the 
 Athenian message, floridly exaggerating its ur- 
 gency. 
 
 Of course, he would not hear a word of it. " He 
 would not go; he would not leave his present class, 
 let all the officials in Villette send for him. He 
 would not put himself an inch out of his way at 
 the bidding of king, cabinet, and chambers to- 
 gether." 
 
 I knew, however, that he must go ; that, talk as 
 he would, both his duty and interest commanded 
 an immediate and literal compliance with the sum- 
 mons : I stood, therefore, waiting in silence, as if 
 he had not yet spoken. He asked what more I 
 wanted. 
 
 " Only Monsieur's answer to deliver to the com- 
 missionaire." 
 
8 VILLETTE. 
 
 He waved an impatient negative. 
 
 I ventured to stretch my hand to the bonnet- 
 grec which lay in grim repose on the window-sill. 
 He followed this daring movement with his eye, 
 no doubt in mixed pity and amazement at its pre- 
 sumption. 
 
 " Ah ! " he muttered, " if it came to that — if 
 Miss Lucy meddled with his bonnet-grec — she 
 might just put it on herself, turn gargon for the 
 occasion, and benevolently go to the Athenee in his 
 stead." 
 
 With great respect, I laid the bonnet on the 
 desk, where its tassel seemed to give me an awful 
 nod. 
 
 "I'll write a note of apology — that will do?" 
 said he, still bent on evasion. 
 
 Knowing well it would not do, I gently pushed 
 the bonnet towards his hand. Thus impelled, it 
 slid down the polished slope of the varnished and 
 tmbaized desk, carried before it the light steel- 
 framed a lunettes," and, fearful to relate, they fell 
 to the estrade. A score of times ere now had I 
 seen them fall and receive no damage — this time, 
 as Lucy Snowe's hapless luck would have it, they 
 
THE WATCHGUARD. 9 
 
 so fell that each clear pebble became a shivered and 
 shapeless star. 
 
 ~Now, indeed, dismay seized me — dismay and 
 regret. I knew the value of those " lunettes :" 
 M. Paul's sight was peculiar, not easily fitted, and 
 these glasses suited him. I had heard him call 
 them his treasures : as I picked them up, cracked 
 and worthless, my hand trembled. Frightened 
 through all my nerves I was to see the mischief 
 I had done, but I think I was even more sorry 
 than afraid. For some seconds I dared not look 
 the bereaved Professor in the face ; he was the 
 first to speak. 
 
 " La !" said he : " me voila, veuf de mes lunettes ! 
 I think Mademoiselle Lucy will now confess that 
 the cord and gallows are amply earned; she 
 trembles in anticipation of her doom. Ah, trai- 
 tress ! traitress ! You are resolved to have me 
 quite blind and helpless in your hands !" 
 
 I lifted my eyes : his face, instead of being irate, 
 lowering, and furrowed, was overflowing with, the 
 smile, coloured with the bloom I had seen bright- 
 ening it that evening at the Hotel Crecy. He was 
 not angry — not even grieved. For the real injury 
 he showed himself full of clemency ; under the real 
 
10 VILLETTE. 
 
 provocation, patient as a saint. This event, which, 
 seemed so untoward — which I thought had ruined at 
 once my chance of successful persuasion — proved my 
 best help. Difficult of management so long as I had 
 done him no harm, he became graciously pliant as 
 soon as I stood in his presence, a conscious and 
 contrite offender. 
 
 Still gently railing at me as " une forte femme — 
 une Anglaise terrible — une petite casse-tout"— he 
 declared that he dared not but obey one who had 
 given such an instance of her dangerous prowess ; 
 it was absolutely like the " grand Empereur, 
 smashing the vase to inspire dismay." So, at last, 
 crowning himself with his bonnet-grec, and taking 
 his ruined "lunettes" from my hand with a clasp 
 of kind pardon and encouragement, he made his 
 bow, and went off to the Athenee in first-rate 
 humour and spirits. 
 
 After all this amiability, the reader will be sorry 
 for my sake to hear that I was quarrelling with M. 
 Paul again before night ; yet so it was, and I could 
 not help it. 
 
 It was his occasional custom— and a very laud- 
 
THE WATCHGUARD. 11 
 
 able, acceptable custom, too — to arrive of an even- 
 ing, always a. 1' hnproviste, unannounced, burst in 
 on tlie silent hour of study, establish a sudden des- 
 potism over us and our occupations, cause books 
 to be put away, work-bags to be brought out, and, 
 drawing forth a single thick volume, or a handful 
 of pamphlets, substitute for the besotted " lecture 
 pieuse," drawled by a sleepy pupil, some tragedy 
 made grand by grand reading, ardent by fiery 
 action — some drama, whereof, for my part, I rarely 
 studied the intrinsic merit ; for M. Emanuel made 
 it a vessel for an outpouring, and filled it with his 
 native verve and passion like a cup with a vital 
 brewage. Or else he would flash through our 
 conventual darkness a reflex of a brighter world, 
 show us a glimpse of the current literature of the 
 day, read us passages from some enchanting tale, 
 or the last witty feuilleton which had awakened 
 laughter in the saloons of Paris ; taking care always 
 to expunge, with the severest hand, whether from 
 tragedy, melo-drama, tale, or essay, whatever pas- 
 sage, phrase, or word, could be deemed unsuited 
 to an audience of "jeunes filles." I noticed more 
 than once, that where retrenchment without substi- 
 tute would have left unmeaning vacancy, or intro- 
 
12 VILLETTE. 
 
 duced weakness, he could, and did, improvise whole 
 paragraphs, no less vigorous than irreproachable : 
 the dialogue — the description — he engrafted was 
 often far better than that he pruned away. 
 
 Well, on the evening in question, we were sitting 
 silent as nuns in a " retreat," the pupils studying, 
 the teachers working. I remember my work; it 
 was a slight matter of fancy, and it rather interested 
 me ; it had a purpose ; I was not doing it merely 
 to kill time ; I meant it when finished as a gift ; 
 and the occasion of presentation being near, haste 
 was requisite, and my fingers were busy. 
 
 We heard the sharp bell-peal which we all 
 knew ; then the rapid step familiar to each ear : the 
 words " Voila Monsieur ! " had scarcely broken 
 simultaneously from every lip, when the two-leaved 
 door split (as split it always did for his admission 
 — such a slow word as " open " is inefficient to 
 describe his movements), and he stood in the midst 
 of us. 
 
 There were two study-tables, both long and 
 flanked with benches ; over the centre of each hung 
 a lamp ; beneath this lamp, on either side the table, 
 sat a teacher ; the girls were arranged to the right 
 hand and the left ; the eldest and most studious 
 
THE WATCHGUARD. 13 
 
 nearest the lamps or tropics; the idlers and little 
 ones towards the north and south poles. Mon- 
 sieur's habit was politely to hand a chair to some 
 teacher, generally Zelie St. Pierre, the senior 
 mistress ; then to take her vacated seat ; and 
 thus avail himself of the full beam of Cancer 
 or Capricorn, which, owing to his near sight, he 
 needed. 
 
 As usual, Zelie rose with alacrity, smiling to the 
 whole extent of her mouth, and the full display of 
 her upper and under rows of teeth — that strange 
 smile which passes from ear to ear, and is marked 
 only by a sharp thin curve, which fails to spread 
 over the countenance, and neither dimples the 
 cheek nor lights the eye. I suppose Monsieur did 
 not see her, or he had taken a whim that he would 
 not notice her, for he was as capricious as women 
 are said to be ; then his " lunettes" (he had got 
 another pair) served him as an excuse for all sorts 
 of little oversights and short-comings. Whatever 
 might be his reason, he passed by Zelie, came to 
 the other side of the table, and before I could start 
 up to clear the way, whispered, " Ne bougez pas," 
 and established himself between me and Miss Fan- 
 shawe, who always would be my neighbour, and 
 
] 4 VILLETTE. 
 
 have her elbow in my side, however often I declared 
 to her, — 
 
 " Ginevra, I wish you were at Jericho." 
 It was easy to say, " Ne bougez pas;" but how 
 could I help it ? I must make him room, and I 
 must request the pupils to recede that i~ might 
 recede. It was very well for Ginevra to be gummed 
 to me, " keeping herself warm," as she said, on the 
 winter evenings, and harassing my very heart with 
 her fidgetings and pokings, obliging me, indeed, 
 sometimes to put an artful pin in my girdle by way 
 of protection against her elbow ; but I suppose 
 M. Emanuel was not to be subjected to the same 
 kind of treatment, so I swept away my working 
 materials, to clear space for his book, and with- 
 drew myself, to make room for his person ; not, 
 however, leaving more than a yard of interval, 
 just what any reasonable man would have regarded 
 as a convenient, respectful allowance of bench. But 
 M. Emanuel never was reasonable ; flint and tinder 
 that he was ! he struck and took fire directly. 
 
 "Vous ne voulez pas de moi pour voisin," he 
 growled : " vous vous donnez des airs de caste ; vous 
 me traitez en paria ;" he scowled. " Soit ! je vais 
 arranger la chose ! " And he set to work. 
 
THE WATCHGUARD. 15 
 
 " Levez vous toutes, mesdemoiselles !" cried he. 
 
 The girls rose. He made them all file off to the 
 other table. He then placed me at one extremity 
 of the long bench, and having duly and carefully 
 brought me my work-basket, silk, scissors, all my 
 implements, he fixed himself quite at the other 
 end. 
 
 At this arrangement, highly absurd as it was, 
 not a soul in the room dared to laugh ; luckless 
 for the giggler would have been the giggle. As 
 for me, I took it with entire coolness. There I sat, 
 isolated and cut off from human intercourse ; I sat 
 and minded my work, and was quiet, and not at all 
 unhappy. 
 
 " Est ce assez de distance ?" he demanded. 
 
 " Monsieur en est l'arbitre," said I. 
 
 "Vous savez bien que non. C'est vous qui avez 
 cree ce vide immense : moi je n'y ai pas mis la 
 main." 
 
 And with this assertion he commenced the read- 
 ing. 
 
 For his misfortune he had chosen a French trans- 
 lation of what he called " un drame de Williams 
 Shackspire; le faux dieu," he further announced, 
 " de ces sots paiens, les Anglais." How far other- 
 
16 VILLETTE. 
 
 wise he would have characterized him had his tem- 
 per not been upset, I scarcely need intimate. 
 
 Of course, the translation being French, was very 
 inefficient ; nor did I make any particular effort to 
 conceal the contempt which some of its forlorn 
 lapses were calculated to excite. Not that it be- 
 hoved or beseemed me to say anything ; but one 
 can occasionally look the opinion it is forbidden to 
 embody in words. Monsieur's lunettes being on 
 the alert, he gleamed up every stray look ; I don't 
 think he lost one : the consequence was, his eyes 
 soon discarded a screen, that their blaze might 
 sparkle free, and he waxed hotter at the north pole 
 to which he had voluntarily exiled himself, than, 
 considering the general temperature of the room, it 
 would have been reasonable to become under the 
 vertical ray of Cancer itself. 
 
 The reading over, it appeared problematic whether 
 he would depart with his anger unexpressed, or 
 whether he would give it vent. Suppression was 
 not much in his habits ; but still, what had been 
 done to him definite enough to afford matter for 
 overt reproof? I had not uttered a sound, and 
 could not justly be deemed amenable to reprimand 
 or penalty for having permitted a slightly freer 
 
THE WATCHGUARD. 17 
 
 action than usual to the muscles about ray eyes and 
 mouth. 
 
 The supper, consisting of bread, and milk diluted 
 with tepid water, was^ "brought in. In respectful 
 consideration of the professor's presence, the rolls 
 and glasses were allowed to stand instead of being 
 immediately handed round. 
 
 " Take your supper, ladies," said he, seeming to 
 be occupied in making marginal notes to his " Wil- 
 liams Shackspire." They took it. I also accepted 
 a roll and glass, but being now more than ever in- 
 terested in my work, I kept my seat of punishment, 
 and wrought while I munched my bread and sipped 
 my beverage, the whole with easy sang fruid ; with a 
 certain snugness of composure, indeed, scarcely in 
 my habits, and pleasantly novel to my feelings. It 
 seemed as if the presence of a nature so restless, 
 chafing, thorny as that of M. Paul absorbed all 
 feverish and unsettling influences like a magnet, 
 and left me none but such as were placid and 
 harmonious. 
 
 He rose. " Will he go away without say- 
 ing another word?" Yes; he turned to the 
 door. 
 
 No : he re-turned on his steps ; but only, per- 
 VOL. III. c 
 
18 V1LLETTE. 
 
 Laps, to take his pencil-case, which had been left 
 on the table. 
 
 He took it — shut the pencil in and out, broke its 
 point against the wood, re-cut and pocketed it, 
 and walked promptly up to me. 
 
 The girls and teachers, gathered round the other 
 table, were talking pretty freely : they always 
 talked at meals ; and, from the constant habit of 
 speaking fast and loud at such times, did not now 
 subdue their voices much. 
 
 M. Paul came and stood behind me. He asked 
 at what I was working ; and I said I was making 
 a watchguard. 
 
 He asked, "For whom?" And I answered, 
 " For a gentleman — one of my friends." 
 
 M. Paul stooped down and proceeded — as 
 novel- writers say, and as was literally true in 
 his case — to " hiss" into my ear some poignant 
 words. 
 
 He said that, of all the women he knew, I was 
 the one who could make herself the most consum- 
 mately unpleasant : I was she with whom it was 
 least possible to live on friendly terms. I had a 
 " caractere intraitable" and perverse to a miracle. 
 How I managed it, or what possessed me, he, for 
 
THE WATCHGUARD. 19 
 
 his part, did not know ; but with whatever pacific 
 and amicable intentions a person accosted me — 
 crac ! I turned concord to discord, good-will to 
 enmity. He was sure, he — M. Paul — wished me 
 well enough ; he had never done me any harm 
 that he knew of; he might, at least, he supposed, 
 claim a right to be regarded as a neutral acquaint- 
 ance, guiltless of hostile sentiments : yet, how I 
 behaved to him ! With what pungent vivacities — 
 what an impetus of mutiny — what a ** fougue" of 
 injustice ! 
 
 Here I could not avoid opening my eyes some- 
 what wide, and even slipping in a slight interjec- 
 tional observation : 
 
 " Vivacities ? Impetus ? Fougue ? I did n't 
 know . . . ." 
 
 " Chut ! a l'instant ! There ! there I went — vive 
 comme la poudre ! " He was sorry — he was very 
 sorry : for my sake he grieved over the hapless 
 peculiarity. This " emportement," this " chaleur" 
 — generous, perhaps, but excessive — would yet, he 
 feared, do me a mischief. It was a pity : I was 
 not — he believed, in his soul — wholly without good 
 qualities ; and would I but hear reason, and be 
 more sedate, more sober, less " en l'air," less 
 
20 VILLETTE. 
 
 " coquette," less taken by show, less prone to set 
 an undue value on outside excellence — to make 
 much of the attentions of people remarkable chiefly 
 for so many feet of stature, " des couleurs de 
 poupee," " un nez plus ou moins bien fait," and 
 an enormous amount of fatuity — I might yet prove 
 an useful, perhaps an exemplary, character. But, 
 
 as it was And here, the little man's voice was 
 
 for a minute choked. 
 
 I would have looked up at him, or held out my 
 hand, or said a soothing word ; but I was afraid, if 
 I stirred, I should either laugh or cry ; so odd, in all 
 this, was the mixture of the touching and the absurd. 
 
 I thought he had nearly done : but no ; he sat 
 down that he might go on at his ease. 
 
 " While he, M. Paul, was on these painful topics, 
 he would dare my anger for the sake of my good, 
 and would venture to refer to a change he had 
 noticed in my dress. He was free to confess that 
 when he first knew me — or, rather, was in the 
 habit of catching a passing glimpse of me from 
 time to time — I satisfied him on this point : the 
 gravity, the austere simplicity, obvious in this par- 
 ticular, were such as to inspire the highest hopes 
 for my best interests. What fatal influence had 
 
THE WATCHGUARD. 
 
 21 
 
 impelled me lately to introduce flowers under the 
 brim of my bonnet, to wear ' des cols brodes,' 
 and even to appear on one occasion in a scarlet 
 
 gown he might indeed conjecture, but, for the 
 
 present, would not openly declare." 
 
 Again I interrupted, and this time not without 
 an accent at once indignant and horror-struck. 
 
 " Scarlet, Monsiur Paul ? It was not scarlet ! 
 It was pink, and pale pink, too ; and further sub- 
 dued by black lace." 
 
 " Pink or scarlet, yellow or crimson, pea-green 
 or sky-blue ; it was all one : these were all flaunt- 
 ing, giddy colours ; and as to the lace I talked of, 
 that was but a ' colifichet de plus.' " And he 
 sighed over my degeneracy. " He could not, he 
 was sorry to say, be so particular on this theme as 
 he could wish : not possessing the exact names of 
 these ' babioles,' he might run into small verbal 
 errors which would not fail to lay him open to 
 my sarcasm, and excite my unhappily sudden and 
 passionate disposition. He would merely say, in 
 general terms — and in these general terms he 
 knew he was correct — that my costume had of 
 late assumed ' des facons mondaines,' which it 
 wounded him to see." 
 
22 VILLETTE. 
 
 What " facons mondaines " he discovered in my 
 present winter merino and plain white collar, I own 
 it puzzled me to guess : and when I asked him, he 
 said it was all made with too much attention to 
 effect — and besides, " had I not a bow of ribbon at 
 my neck ? " 
 
 " And if you condemn a bow of ribbon for a lady, 
 monsieur, you would necessarily disapprove of a 
 thing like this for a gentleman ? " — holding up my 
 bright little chainlet of silk and gold. His sole 
 reply was a groan — I suppose over my levity. 
 
 After sitting some minutes in silence, and watch- 
 ing the progress of the chain, at which I now 
 wrought more assiduously than ever, he inquired : 
 
 " Whether what he had just said would have 
 the effect of making me entirely detest him ? " 
 
 I hardly remember what answer I made, or how 
 it came about ; I don't think I spoke at all, but I 
 know we managed to bid good-night on friendly 
 terms : and, even after M. Paul had reached the 
 door, he turned back just to explain, " that he 
 would not be understood to speak in entire con- 
 demnation of the scarlet dress " (" Pink ! pink ! " I 
 threw in) ; " that he had no intention to deny it 
 the merit of looking rather well " (the fact was, 
 
THK WATCHGUAKD. 23 
 
 M. Emanuel's taste in colours decidedly leaned to 
 the brilliant) ; "only he wished to counsel me, when- 
 ever I wore it, to do so in the same spirit as if its 
 material were ' bure,' and its hue ' gris de 
 poussiere.' " 
 
 " And the flowers under my bonnet, monsieur? " 
 I asked. " They are very little ones — ? " 
 
 " Keep them little, then," said he. " Permit 
 them not to become full-blown." 
 
 " And the bow, monsieur — the bit of ribbon ? " 
 
 " Va pour le ruban ! " was the propitious answer. 
 
 And so we settled it. 
 
 " Well done, Lucy Snowe ! " cried I to myself; 
 " you have come in for a pretty lecture — brought 
 on yourself a ' rude savon,' and all through your 
 wicked fondness for worldly vanities ! Who would 
 have thought it ? You deemed yourself a melan- 
 choly sober-sides enough ! Miss Fanshawe there 
 regards you as a second Diogenes. M. de Bas- 
 sompierre, the other day, politely turned the 
 conversation when it ran on the wild gifts of tne 
 actress Vashti, because, as he kindly said, ' Miss 
 Snowe looked uncomfortable.' Dr. John Bretton 
 
24 VILLETTE. 
 
 knows you only as ' quiet Lucy ' — ' a creature 
 inoffensive as a shadow ; ' he has said, and you 
 have heard him say it : ' Lucy's disadvantages spring 
 from over-gravity in tastes and manner — want of 
 colour in character and costume.' Such are your 
 own and your friends' impressions ; and behold ! 
 there starts up a little man, differing diametrically 
 from all these, roundly charging you with being too 
 airy and cheery — too volatile and versatile — too 
 flowery and coloury. This harsh little man — 
 this pitiless censor — gathers up all your poor 
 scattered sins of vanity, your luckless chiffon of 
 rose-colour, your small fringe of a wreath, your 
 small scrap of ribbon, your silly bit of lace, and 
 calls you to account for the lot, and for each item. 
 You are well habituated to be passed by as a 
 shadow in Life's sunshine : it is a new thing to 
 see one testily lifting his hand to screen his eyes, 
 because you tease him with an obtrusive ray. 
 
monsieur's fete. 25 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 MONSIEUR S FETE. 
 
 I "was up the next morning an hour before day- 
 break, and finished my guard, kneeling on the 
 dormitory floor beside the centre stand, for the 
 benefit of such expiring glimmer as the night-lamp 
 afforded in its last watch. 
 
 All my materials — my whole stock of beads and 
 silk — were used up before the chain assumed the 
 length and richness I wished; I had wrought it 
 double, as I knew, by the rule of contraries, that 
 to suit the particular taste whose gratification was 
 in view, an effective appearance was quite indis- 
 pensable. As a finish to the ornament, a little gold 
 clasp was needed ; fortunately I possessed it in the 
 fastening of my sole necklace ; I duly detached and 
 re-attached it, then coiled compactly the completed 
 guard, and enclosed it in a small box I had bought 
 
26 VILLETTJ2. 
 
 for its brilliancy, made of some tropic shell of the 
 colour called "nacarat," and decked with a little 
 coronal of sparkling blue stones. Within the lid 
 of the box, I carefully graved with my scissors' point 
 certain initials. 
 
 The reader will, perhaps, remember the descrip- 
 tion of Madame Beck's fete ; nor will he have 
 forgotten that at each anniversary, a handsome pre- 
 sent was subscribed for and offered by the school. 
 The observance of this day was a distinction ac- 
 corded to none but Madame, and, in a modified 
 form, to her kinsman and counsellor, M. Emanuel. 
 In the latter case it was an honour spontaneously 
 awarded, not plotted and contrived beforehand, and 
 offered an additional proof, amongst many others, of 
 the estimation in which — despite his partialities, pre- 
 judices, and irritabilities — the professor of literature 
 was held by his pupils. No article of value was 
 offered to him : he distinctly gave it to be un- 
 derstood, that he would accept neither plate nor 
 jewellery. Yet he liked a slight tribute ; the cost, 
 the money-value, did not touch him : a diamond 
 ring, a gold snuff-box, presented with pomp, would 
 
monsieur's fete. 27 
 
 have pleased him less than a flower, or a drawing, 
 offered simply and with sincere feelings. Such was 
 his nature. He was a man, not wise in his genera- 
 tion, yet could he claim a filial sympathy with " the 
 dayspring on high." 
 
 M. Paul's f£te fell on the first of March and a 
 Thursday. It proved a fine sunny day, and being 
 likewise the morning on which it was customary to 
 attend mass ; being also otherwise distinguished by 
 the half holiday which permitted the privilege of 
 walking out, shopping, or paying visits in the after- 
 noon : these combined considerations induced a 
 general smartness and freshness of dress. Clean 
 collars were in vogue ; the ordinary dingy woollen 
 classe-dress was exchanged for something lighter 
 and clearer. Mademoiselle Zelie St. Pierre, on this 
 particular Thursday, even assumed a "robe de 
 soie," deemed in economical Labassecour an article 
 of hazardous splendour and luxury ; nay, it was 
 remarked that she sent for a " coiffeur" to dress her 
 hair that morning ; there were pupils acute enough 
 to discover that she had bedewed her handkerchief 
 and her hands with a new and fashionable perfume. 
 Poor Zelie ! It was much her wont to declare 
 about this time, that she was tired to death of a life 
 
Z5 VILLETTE. 
 
 of seclusion and labour; that she longed to have 
 the means and leisure for relaxation ; to have some 
 one to work for her — a husband who would pay her 
 debts (she was wofully encumbered with debt), 
 supply her wardrobe, and leave her at liberty, as 
 she said, to "gouter un peu les plaisirs." It had long 
 been rumoured, that her eye was upon M. Emanuel. 
 Monsieur Emanuel's eye was certainly often upon 
 her. He would sit and watch her perseveringly for 
 minutes together. I have seen him give her a 
 quarter of an hour's gaze, while the class was 
 silently composing, and he sat throned on his 
 estrade, unoccupied. Conscious always of this basi- 
 lisk attention, she would writhe under it, half-flat- 
 tered, half-puzzled, and Monsieur would follow her 
 sensations, sometimes looking appallingly acute ; for 
 in some cases, he had the terrible unerring penetration 
 of instinct, and pierced in its hiding-place the last 
 lurking thought of the heart, and discerned under 
 florid veilings the bare, barren places of the spirit : 
 yes, and its perverted tendencies, and its hidden 
 false curves — all that men and women would not 
 have known — the twisted spine, the mal-formed 
 limb that was born with them, and far worse, the 
 stain or disfigurement they have perhaps brought 
 
monsieur's fete. 29 
 
 on themselves. No calamity so accursed but M. 
 Emanuel could pity and forgive, if it were acknow- 
 ledged candidly ; but where his questioning eyes 
 met dishonest denial — where his ruthless researches 
 found deceitful concealment — oh, then, he could 
 be cruel, and I thought wicked ! he could exult- 
 antly snatch the screen from poor shrinking wretches, 
 passionately hurry them to the summit of the 
 mount of exposure, and there show them all naked, 
 all false — poor living lies — the spawn of that horrid 
 Truth which cannot be looked on unveiled. He 
 thought he did justice ; for my part I doubt whether 
 man has a right to do such justice on man : more 
 than once in these his visitations, I have felt com- 
 pelled to give tears to his victims, and not spared 
 ire and keen reproach to himself. He deserved it ; 
 but it was difficult to shake him in his firm con- 
 viction that the work was righteous and needed. 
 
 Breakfast being over and mass attended, the 
 school-bell rung and the rooms filled : a very pretty 
 spectacle was presented in classe. Pupils and teach- 
 ers sat neatly arrayed, orderly, and expectant, each 
 bearing in her hand the bouquet of felicitation — 
 the prettiest spring-flowers all fresh, and filling the 
 air with their fragrance : I only had no bouquet. I 
 
30 VILLETTE. 
 
 like to see flowers growing, but when they are 
 gathered, they cease to please. I look on them as 
 things rootless and perishable ; their likeness to life 
 makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I 
 love ; I never wish to receive them from hands 
 dear to me. Mademoiselle St. Pierre marked my 
 empty hands — she could not believe I had been 
 so remiss ; with avidity her eye roved over and 
 round me : surely I must have some solitary sym- 
 bolic flower somewhere : some small knot of vio- 
 lets, something to win to myself praise for taste, 
 commendation for ingenuity. The unimaginative 
 " Anglaise " proved better than the Parisienne's 
 fears : she sat literally unprovided, as bare of 
 bloom or leaf as the winter tree. This ascertained, 
 Zelie smiled well pleased. 
 
 " How wisely you have acted to keep your money, 
 Miss Lucie," she said : " silly I have gone and 
 thrown away two francs on a bouquet of hot-house 
 flowers !" 
 
 And she showed with pride her splendid nosegay. 
 
 But hush ! a step : the step. It came prompt, as 
 usual, but with a promptitude, we felt disposed to 
 flatter ourselves, inspired by other feelings than 
 mere excitability of nerve, and vehemence of intent. 
 
monsieur's fete. 31 
 
 We thought our professor's " foot-fall" (to speak 
 romantically) had in it a friendly promise this morn- 
 ing; and so it had. 
 
 He entered in a mood which made him as good as 
 a new sunbeam to the already well-lit first-classe. 
 The morning light, playing amongst our plants and 
 laughing on our walls, caught an added lustre from 
 M. Paul's all-benignant salute. Like a true French- 
 man (though I don't know why I should say so, for 
 he was of strain neither French nor Labassecourien), 
 he had dressed for the " situation " and the occa- 
 sion. Not by the vague folds, sinister and con- 
 spirator-like, of his soot-dark paletot were the out- 
 lines of his person obscured ; on the contrary, his 
 figure (such as it was, I don't boast of it) was well 
 set off by a civilized coat and a silken vest quite 
 pretty to behold. The defiant and pagan bonnet- 
 grec had vanished : bare-headed he came upon us, 
 carrying a Christian hat in his gloved hand. The 
 little man looked well, very well ; there was a clear- 
 ness of amity in his blue eye, and a glow of good 
 feeling on his dark complexion, which passed per- 
 fectly in the place of beauty : one really did not 
 care to observe that his nose, though far from 
 small, was of no particular shape, his cheek thin, his 
 
32 VILLETTE. 
 
 brow marked and square, his mouth no rosebud : 
 one accepted him as he was, and felt his presence 
 the reverse of damping or insignificant. 
 
 He passed to his desk ; he placed on the same his 
 hat and gloves. " Bon jour, mes amies," said he, 
 in a tone that somehow made amends to some 
 amongst us for many a sharp snap and savage snarl : 
 not a jocund, good-fellow tone, still less an unctuous 
 priestly accent, but a voice he had belonging to 
 himself — a voice used when his heart passed the 
 word to his lips. That same heart did speak some- 
 times ; though an irritable, it was not an ossified 
 organ : in its core was a place, tender beyond a man's 
 tenderness ; a place that humbled him to little chil- 
 dren, that bound him to girls and women : to whom, 
 rebel as he would, he could not disown his affinity, 
 nor quite deny that, on the whole, he was better with 
 them than with his own sex. 
 
 (i We all wish Monsieur a good-day, and present 
 to him our congratulations on the anniversary of 
 his fete," said Mademoiselle Zelie, constituting her- 
 self spokeswoman of the assembly ; and advancing, 
 with no more twists of affectation than with her were 
 indispensable to the achievement of motion, she laid 
 her costly bouquet before him. He bowed over it. 
 
monsieur's fete. 33 
 
 The long train of offerings followed : all the 
 pupils, sweeping past with the gliding step foreign- 
 ers practise, left their tributes as they went by. 
 Each girl so dexterously adjusted her separate gift 
 that, when the last bouquet was laid on the desk, it 
 formed the apex to a blooming pyramid — a pyramid 
 blooming, spreading, and towering with such exu- 
 berance as, in the end, to eclipse the hero behind it. 
 This ceremony over, seats were resumed, and we sat 
 in dead silence, expectant of a speech. 
 
 I suppose five minutes might have elapsed, and 
 the hush remained unbroken ; ten — and there was 
 no sound. 
 
 Many present began, doubtless, to wonder for 
 what Monsieur waited : as well they might. Voice- 
 less and viewless, stirless and wordless, he kept his 
 station behind the pile of flowers. 
 
 At last there issued forth a voice, rather deep, as 
 if it spoke out of a hollow : — 
 
 " Est-celatout?" 
 
 Mademoiselle Zelie looked round. 
 
 "You have all presented your bouquets?" in- 
 quired she of the pupils. 
 
 Yes ; they had all given their nosegays from the 
 eldest to the youngest, from the tallest to the 
 
 VOL. III. D 
 
34 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 most diminutive. The senior mistress signified as 
 much. 
 
 " Est-ce la. tout?" was reiterated in an intonation 
 which, deep before, had now descended some notes 
 lower. 
 
 "Monsieur," said Mademoiselle St. Pierre, rising, 
 and this time speaking with her own sweet smile, 
 *' I have the honour to tell you that, with a single 
 exception, every person in classe has offered her 
 bouquet. For Meess Lucie, Monsieur will kindly 
 make allowance ; as a foreigner, she probably did 
 not know our customs, or did not appreciate their 
 significance. Meess Lucie has regarded this cere- 
 mony as too frivolous to be honoured by her 
 observance." 
 
 " Famous !" I muttered between my teeth ; "you 
 are no bad speaker, Zelie, when you begin." 
 
 The answer vouchsafed to Mademoiselle St. Pierre 
 from the estrade, was given in the gesticulation of a 
 Land from behind the pyramid. This manual action 
 seemed to deprecate words, to enjoin silence. 
 
 A form, ere long, followed the hand. Monsieur 
 emerged from his eclipse ; and producing himself 
 upon the front of his estrade, and gazing straight 
 and fixedly before him at a vast " mappe-monde" 
 
monsieur's fete. 35 
 
 covering the wall opposite, he demanded a third 
 time, and now in really tragic tones — 
 
 "Est-celatout?" 
 
 I might yet have made all right, by stepping for- 
 wards and slipping into his hand the ruddy little 
 shell-box I, at that moment, held tight in my own. 
 It was what I had fully purposed to do ; but, first, 
 the comic side of Monsieur's behaviour had tempted 
 me to delay, and now, Mademoiselle St. Pierre's 
 affected interference provoked contumacity. The 
 reader not having hitherto had any cause to ascribe 
 to Miss Snowe's character the most distant pretension 
 to perfection, will be scarcely surprised to learn that 
 she felt too perverse to defend herself from any 
 imputation the Parisienne might choose to insi- 
 nuate : and besides, M. Paul was so tragic, and took 
 my defection so seriously, he deserved to be vexed. 
 I kept, then, both my box and my countenance, and 
 sat insensate as any stone. 
 
 " It is well ! " dropped at length from the lips of 
 M. Paul ; and having uttered this phrase, the 
 shadow of some great paroxysm — the swell of wrath, 
 scorn, resolve — passed over his brow, rippled his lips, 
 and lined his cheeks. Gulping down all further com- 
 ment, he launched into his customary " discours." 
 
36 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 I can't at all remember what this " discours" 
 was ; I did not listen to it : the gulping-down pro- 
 cess, the abrupt dismissal of his mortification or 
 vexation, had given me a sensation which half- 
 counteracted the ludicrous effect of the reiterated 
 "Est-celatout?" 
 
 Towards the close of the speech there came a 
 pleasing diversion ; my attention was again amus- 
 ingly arrested. 
 
 Owing to some little accidental movement — I think 
 I dropped my thimble on the floor, and in stooping 
 to regain it, hit the crown of my head against the 
 sharp corner of my desk ; which casualties (exas- 
 perating to me, by rights, if to anybody) naturally 
 made a slight bustle — M. Paul became irritated, 
 and dismissing his forced equanimity, and casting to 
 the winds that dignity and self-control with which 
 he never cared long to encumber himself, he broke 
 forth into the strain best calculated to give him ease. 
 
 I don't know how, in the progress of his " dis- 
 cours," he had contrived to cross the channel, and 
 land on British ground ; but there I found him 
 when I began to listen. 
 
 Casting a quick, cynical glance round the room — 
 a glance which scathed, or was intended to scathe, 
 
monsieur's fete. 37 
 
 as it crossed me — he fell with fury upon "les 
 Anglaises." 
 
 Never have I heard English women handled as 
 M. Paul that morning handled them : he spared 
 nothing — neither their minds, morals, manners, nor 
 personal appearance. I specially remember his 
 abuse of their tall stature, their long necks, their 
 thin arms, their slovenly dress, their pedantic edu- 
 cation, their impious scepticism ( ! ), their insuf- 
 ferable pride, their pretentious virtue : over which 
 he ground his teeth malignantly, and looked as if, 
 had he dared, he would have said singular things. 
 Oh ! he was spiteful, acrid, savage ; and, as a 
 natural consequence, detestably ugly. 
 
 " Little wicked venomous man !" thought I ; " am 
 I going to harass myself with fears of displeasing 
 you, or hurting your feelings ? No, indeed ; you 
 shall be indifferent to me, as the shabbiest bouquet 
 in your pyramid." 
 
 I grieve to say I could not quite carry out this 
 resolution. For some time the abuse of England 
 and the English found and left me stolid : I bore it 
 some fifteen minutes stoically enough ; but this hiss- 
 ing cockatrice was determined to sting, and he said 
 such things at last — fastening not only upon our 
 
38 VILLETTE. 
 
 women, but upon our greatest names and best men ; 
 sullying the shield of Britannia, and dabbling the 
 union-jack in mud — that I was stung. With vicious 
 relish he brought up the most spicy current conti- 
 nental historical falsehoods — than which nothing 
 can be conceived more offensive. Zelie, and the 
 whole class, became one grin of vindictive delight ; 
 for it is curious to discover how these clowns of 
 L&bassecour secretly hate England. At last, I 
 struck a sharp stroke on my desk, opened my lips, 
 and let loose this cry : — 
 
 "Vive l'Angleterre, l'Histoire et les Heros! A 
 bas la France, la Fiction et les Faquins !" 
 
 The class was struck of a heap. I suppose they 
 thought me mad. The professor put up his hand- 
 kerchief, and fiendishly smiled into its folds. Little 
 monster of malice ! He now thought he had got 
 the victory, since he had made me angry. In a 
 second he became good-humoured. With great 
 blandness he resumed the subject of his flowers ; 
 talked poetically and symbolically of their sweetness, 
 perfume, purity, etcetera ; made Frenchified com- 
 parisons between the "jeunes filles" and the sweet 
 blossoms before him ; paid Mademoiselle St. Pierre 
 a very full-blown compliment on the superiority of 
 
monsieur's fete. 39 
 
 her bouquet; and ended by announcing that the first 
 really, fine, mild, and balmy morning in spring, he 
 intended to take the whole class out to breakfast 
 in the country. " Such of the class, at least," he 
 added, with emphasis, " as he could count amongst 
 the number of his friends." 
 
 " Done je n'y serai pas," declared I, involuntarily. 
 
 "Soit!" was his response, and, gathering his 
 flowers in his arms, he flashed out of classe ; while I, 
 consigning my work, scissors, thimble, and the 
 neglected little box, to my desk, swept up-stairs. I 
 don't know whether he felt hot and angry, but I am 
 free to confess that / did. 
 
 Yet with a strange evanescent anger, I had not 
 sat an hour on the edge of my bed, picturing and 
 repicturing his look, manner, words, ere I smiled at 
 the whole scene. A little pang of regret I under- 
 went that the box had not been offered. I had 
 meant to gratify him. Fate would not have it so. 
 
 In the coarse of the afternoon, remembering 
 that desks in classe were by no means inviolate 
 repositories, and thinking that it was as well to 
 secure the box, on account of the initials in the lid, 
 P. C. D. E., for Paul Carl (or Carlos) David 
 Emanuel — such was his full name— these foreigners 
 
40 VILLETTE. 
 
 must always have a string of baptismals — I de- 
 scended to the school-room. 
 
 It slept in holiday repose. The day-pupils were 
 all gone home, the boarders were out walking, the 
 teachers, except the surveillante of the week, were 
 in town, visiting or shopping ; the suite of divisions 
 was vacant ; so was the grande salle, with its huge 
 solemn globe hanging in the midst, its pair of many- 
 branched chandeliers, and its horizontal grand 
 piano closed, silent, enjoying its mid-week Sabbath. 
 I rather wondered to find the first classe door ajar; 
 this room being usually locked when empty, and 
 being then inaccessible to any save Madame Beck 
 and myself, who possessed a duplicate key. I 
 wondered still more, on approaching, to hear a 
 vague movement as of life — a step, a chair stirred, 
 a sound like the opening of a desk. 
 
 *' It is only Madame Beck doing inspection 
 duty," was the conclusion following a moment's 
 reflection. The partially-opened door gave oppor- 
 tunity for assurance on this point. I looked. 
 Behold ! not the inspecting garb of Madame Beck 
 — the shawl and the clean cap — but the coat, and 
 the close-shorn, dark head of a man. This person 
 occupied my chair ; his olive hand held my desk 
 
monsieur's fete. 41 
 
 open, his nose was lost to view amongst my papers. 
 His back was towards me, but there could not be 
 a moment's question about identity. Already was 
 the attire of ceremony discarded : the cherished 
 and ink-stained paletot was resumed; the perverse 
 bonnet-grec lay on the floor, as if just dropped from 
 the hand, culpably busy. 
 
 Now I knew, and had long known, that that hand 
 of M. Emanuel's was on intimate terms with my 
 desk ; that it raised and lowered the lid, ransacked 
 and arranged the contents, almost as familiarly as 
 my own. The fact was not dubious, nor did he 
 wish it to be so : he left signs of each visit palpable 
 and unmistakeable ; hitherto, however, I had never 
 caught him in the act : watch as I would, I could 
 not detect the hours and moments of his coming. 
 I saw the brownie's work, in exercises left over- 
 night full of faults, and found next morning care- 
 fully corrected: I profited by his capricious good- 
 will in loans full welcome and refreshing. Between 
 a sallow dictionary and worn-out grammar would 
 magically grow a fresh interesting new work, or a 
 classic, mellow and sweet in its ripe age. Out of 
 my work-basket would laughingly peep a romance, 
 under it would lurk the pamphlet, the magazine, 
 
42 VILLETTE. 
 
 whence last evening's reading had been extracted. 
 Impossible to doubt the source whence these trea- 
 sures flowed : had there been no other indication, 
 one condemning and traitor peculiarity common to 
 them all, settled the question — they smelt of cigars. 
 This was very shocking, of course : / thought so 
 at first, and used to open the window with some 
 bustle, to air my desk, and with fastidious finger 
 and thumb, to hold the peccant brochures forth to 
 the purifying breeze. I was cured of that formality 
 suddenly. Monsieur caught me at it one day, un- 
 derstood the inference, instantly relieved my hand 
 of its burden, and, in another moment, would have 
 thrust the same into the glowing stove. It chanced 
 to be a book, on the perusal of which I was bent ; 
 so for once I proved as decided and quicker than 
 himself, recaptured the spoil, and — having saved this 
 volume — never hazarded a second. With all this, I 
 had never yet been able to arrest in his visits the 
 freakish, friendly, cigar-loving phantom. 
 
 But now at last I had him : there he was — the 
 very brownie himself ; and there, curling from his 
 lips, was the pale blue breath of his Indian darling : 
 he was smoking into my desk: it might well betray 
 him. Provoked at this particular, and yet pleased 
 
monsieur's fete. 43 
 
 to surprise him — pleased, that is, with the mixed 
 feeling of the housewife who discovers at last her 
 strange elfin ally busy in the dairy at the untimely 
 churn — I softly stole forward, stood behind him, 
 bent with precaution over his shoulder. 
 
 My heart smote me to see that — after this 
 morning's hostility, after my seeming remissness, 
 after the puncture experienced by his feelings, and 
 the ruffling undergone by his temper — he, all- 
 willing to forget and forgive, had brought me a 
 couple of handsome volumes, of which the title 
 and authorship were guarantees for interest. Now, 
 as he sat bending above the desk, he was stirring 
 up its contents ; but with gentle and careful hand : 
 disarranging indeed, but not harming. My heart 
 smote me : as I bent over him, as he sat uncon- 
 scious, doing me what good he could, and I daresay 
 not feeling towards me unkindly, my morning's 
 anger quite melted: I did not dislike Professor 
 Emanuel. 
 
 I think he heard me breathe. He turned sud- 
 denly : his temperament was nervous, yet he never 
 started, and seldom changed colour; there was 
 something hardy about him. 
 
 " I thought you were gone into town with the 
 
44 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 other teachers," said he, taking a grim gripe of his 
 self-possession, which half escaped him — " It is 
 as well you are not. Do you think I care for 
 being caught ? Not I. I often visit your 
 desk." 
 
 " Monsieur, I know it." 
 
 " You find a brochure or a tome now and then ; 
 but you don't read them, because they have passed 
 under this ? " — touching his cigar. 
 
 "They have, and are no better for the process, 
 but I read them." 
 
 " Without pleasure ? " 
 
 " Monsieur must not be contradicted." 
 
 " Do you like them, or any of them ? — are they 
 acceptable ? " 
 
 " Monsieur has seen me reading them a hundred 
 times, and knows I have not so many recreations as 
 to undervalue those he provides." 
 
 " I mean well ; and, if you see that I mean well, 
 and derive some little amusement from my efforts, 
 why can we not be friends ? " 
 
 " A fatalist would say — because we cannot." 
 
 " This morning," he continued, " I awoke in a 
 bright mood, and came into classe happy; you 
 spoiled my day." 
 
monsieur's fete. 45 
 
 " No, Monsieur, only an hour or two of it, and 
 that unintentionally." 
 
 " Unintentionally ! No. It was ray fete-day ; 
 everybody wished me happiness hut you. The 
 little children of the third division gave each her 
 knot of violets, lisped each her congratulation : 
 you — nothing. Not a bud, leaf, whisper — not a 
 glance. Was this unintentional ? " 
 
 "I meant no harm." 
 
 "Then you really did not know our custom? 
 You were unprepared ? You would willingly have 
 laid out a few centimes on a flower to give me 
 pleasure, had you been aware that it was expected ? 
 Say so, and all is forgotten, and the pain soothed." 
 
 "I did know that it was expected: I was pre- 
 pared ; yet I laid out no centimes on flowers." 
 
 " It is well — you do right to be honest. I should 
 almost have hated you, had you flattered and lied. 
 Better declare at once — ' Paul Carl Emanuel — je te 
 deteste, mon garcon ! ' — than smile an interest, look 
 an affection, and be false and cold at heart. False 
 and cold, I don't think you are ; but you have 
 made a great mistake in life, that I believe : I think 
 your judgment is warped — that you are indifferent 
 where you ought to be grateful — and perhaps de- 
 
46 VILLETTE. 
 
 voted and infatuated, where you ought to be cool as 
 your name. Don't suppose that I wish you to have 
 a passion for me, Mademoiselle ; Dieu vous en 
 garde! What do you start for? Because I said 
 passion ? Well, I say it again. There is such a 
 word, and there is such a thing — though not within 
 these walls, thank Heaven ! You are no child that 
 one should not speak of what exists; but I only 
 uttered the word — the thing, I assure you, is alien 
 to my whole life and views. It died in the past — 
 in the present it lies buried — its grave is deep-dug, 
 well-heaped, and many winters old : in the future 
 there will be a resurrection, as I believe to my 
 soul's consolation ; but all will then be changed — 
 form and feeling : the mortal will have put on 
 immortality — it will rise, not for earth, but heaven. 
 All I say to you, Miss Lucy Snowe, is — that you 
 ought to treat Professor Paul Emanuel decently." 
 
 I could not, and did not, contradict such a senti- 
 ment. 
 
 " Tell me," he pursued, " when it is your fete-day, 
 and I will not grudge a few centimes for a small 
 offering." 
 
 " You will be like me, monsieur : this cost more 
 than a few centimes, and I did not grudge its price." 
 
monsieur's fete. 47 
 
 And taking from the open desk the little box, I 
 put it into his hand. 
 
 " It lay ready in my lap this morning," I con- 
 tinued ; " and if Monsieur had been rather more 
 patient, and Mademoiselle St. Pierre less interfer- 
 ing — perhaps I should say, too, if I had been calmer 
 and wiser — I should have given it then." 
 
 He looked at the box : I saw its clear warm tint 
 and bright azure circlet, pleased his eye. I told him 
 to open it. 
 
 " My initials !" said he, indicating the letters in 
 the lid. " Who told you I was called Carl David ?" 
 
 " A little bird, monsieur." 
 
 " Does it fly from me to you ? Then one can tie 
 a message under its wing when needful?" 
 
 He took out the chain — a trifle indeed as to 
 value, but glossy with silk and sparkling with beads. 
 He liked that too — admired it artlessly, like a child. 
 
 "Forme?" 
 
 " Yes, for you." 
 
 " This is the thing you were working at last 
 night?" 
 
 " The same." 
 
 "You finished it this morning?" 
 
 " I did." 
 
48 VILLETTE. 
 
 "You commenced it with the intention that it 
 should be mine?" 
 
 " Undoubtedly." 
 
 " And offered on my fete-day?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " This purpose continued as you wove it ?" 
 
 Again I assented. 
 
 " Then it is not necessary that I should cut out 
 any portion — saying, this part is not mine ; it was 
 plaited under the idea and for the adornment of 
 another ? " 
 
 " By no means. It is neither necessary, nor 
 would it be just." 
 
 " This object is all mine ?" 
 
 " That object is yours entirely." 
 Straightway Monsieur opened his paletot, arranged 
 the guard splendidly across his chest, displaying as 
 much and suppressing as little as he could : for he 
 had no notion of concealing what he admired and 
 thought decorative. As to the box, he pronounced 
 it a superb bonbonniere — he was fond of bon-bons, 
 by the way — and as he always liked to share with 
 others what pleased himself, he would give his 
 " dragees" as freely as he lent his books. Amongst 
 the kind brownie's gifts left in my desk, I forgot to 
 
monsieur's fete. 49 
 
 enumerate many a paper of chocolate comfits. His 
 tastes in these matters were southern, and what we 
 think infantine. His simple lunch consisted fre- 
 quently of a " brioche," which, as often as not, he 
 shared with some child of the third division. 
 
 " A present c'est un fait accompli," said he, re- 
 adjusting his paletot ; and we had no more words 
 on the subject. After looking over the two volumes 
 he had brought, and cutting away some pages with 
 his penknife (he generally pruned before lending 
 his books, especially if they were novels, and some- 
 times I was a little provoked at the severity of his 
 censorship, the retrenchments interrupting the nar- 
 rative), he rose, politely touched his bonnet-gree, 
 and bade me a civil good day. 
 
 " We are friends now," thought I, " till the next 
 time we quarrel." 
 
 We might have quarrelled again that very same 
 evening, but, wonderful to relate ! failed, for once, 
 to make the most of our opportunity. 
 
 Contrary to all expectation, M. Paul arrived at 
 the study-hour. Having seen so much of him in 
 the morning, we did not look for his presence at 
 night. No sooner were we seated at lessons, how- 
 ever, than he appeared. I own I was glad to see 
 
 VOL. III. E 
 
50 VILLETTE. 
 
 him, so glad that I could not help greeting his 
 arrival with a smile ; and when he made his way to 
 the same seat about which so serious a misunder- 
 standing had formerly arisen, I took good care not 
 to make too much room for him ; he watched with 
 a jealous, side-long look, to see whether I shrank 
 away, but I did not, though the bench was a little 
 crowded. I was losing the early impulse to recoil 
 from M. Paul. Habituated to the paletot and 
 bonnet-grec, the neighbourhood of these garments 
 seemed no longer uncomfortable or very formidable. 
 I did not now sit restrained, " asphyxiee " (as he used 
 to say) at his side ; I stirred when I wished to stir, 
 coughed when it was necessary, even yawned when 
 I was tired — did, in short, what I pleased, blindly 
 reliant upon his indulgence. Nor did my temerity, 
 this evening at least, meet the punishment it perhaps 
 merited ; he was both indulgent and good-natured ; 
 not a cross glance shot from his eyes, not a hasty 
 word left his lips. Till the very close of the even- 
 ing, he did not indeed address me at all, yet I felt, 
 somehow, that he was full of friendliness. Silence 
 is 'of different kinds, and breathes different mean- 
 ings ; no words could inspire a pleasanter content 
 than did M. Paul's wordless presence. When the 
 
monsieur's fete. 51 
 
 tray came in, and the bustle of supper commenced, 
 he just said, as he retired, that he wished me a 
 good night and sweet dreams ; and a good night 
 and sweet dreams I had. 
 
52 VILLETTE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 M. PAUL. 
 
 Yet the reader is advised not to be in any hurry 
 with his kindly conclusions, or to suppose, with an 
 over-hasty charity, that from that day M. Paul 
 became a changed character — easy to live with, 
 and no longer apt to flash danger and discomfort 
 round him. 
 
 No ; he was naturally a little man, of unreason- 
 able moods. When over-wrought, which he often 
 was, he became acutely irritable ; and, besides, his 
 veins were dark with a livid bella-donna tincture, 
 the essence of jealousy. I do not mean merely 
 the tender jealousy of the heart, but that sterner, 
 narrower sentiment whose seat is in the head. 
 
 I used to think, as 1 sat looking at M. Paul, 
 while he was knitting his brow or protruding his 
 lip over some exercise of mine, which had not as 
 
M. PAUL. 53 
 
 many faults as he wished (for he liked me to com- 
 mit faults : a knot of blunders was sweet to him. 
 as a cluster of nuts), that he had points of resem- 
 blance to Napoleon Bonaparte. I think so still. 
 
 In a shameless disregard of magnanimity, lie 
 resembled the great Emperor. M. Paul would 
 have quarrelled with twenty learned women, wooid. 
 have unblushingly carried on a system of petty 
 bickering and recrimination with a whole capital 
 of coteries, never troubling himself about loss or 
 lack of dignity. He would have exiled fifty Madame 
 de Staels, if they had annoyed, offended, out- 
 rivalled, or opposed him. 
 
 I well remember a hot episode of his with a 
 certain Madame Panache — a lady temporarily em- 
 ployed by Madame Beck to give lessons in history. 
 She was clever — that is, she knew a good deal; 
 and, besides, thoroughly possessed the art of mak- 
 ing the most of what she knew ; of words and. 
 confidence she held unlimited command. Her 
 personal appearance was far from destitute of 
 advantages ; I believe many people would have 
 pronounced her " a fine woman ;" and yet there 
 were points in her robust and ample attractions, 
 as well as in her bustling: and demonstrative 
 
54 VILLETTE. 
 
 presence, which, it appeared, the nice and capri- 
 cious tastes of M. Paul could not away with. 
 The sound of her voice, echoing through the carre, 
 would put him into a strange taking ; her long, 
 free step — almost stride — along the corridor, would 
 often make him snatch up his papers and decamp 
 on the instant. 
 
 With malicious intent he bethought himself, one 
 day, to intrude on her class ; as quick as lightning 
 he gathered her method of instruction ; it differed 
 from a pet plan of his own. With little ceremony, 
 and less courtesy, he pointed out what he termed 
 her errors. Whether he expected submission and 
 attention, I know not ; he met an acrid opposition, 
 accompanied by a round reprimand for his certainty 
 unjustifiable interference. 
 
 Instead of withdrawing with dignity, as he might 
 still have done, he threw down the gauntlet of de- 
 fiance. Madame Panache, bellicose as a Penthesilea, 
 picked it up in a minute. She snapped her fingers in 
 the intermeddler's face ; she rushed upon him with a 
 storm of words. M. Emanuel was eloquent ; but 
 Madame Panache was voluble. A system of fierce 
 antagonism ensued. Instead of laughing in his 
 sleeve at his fair foe, with all her sore amour 
 
M. PAUL. 55 
 
 propre and loud self-assertion, M. Paul detested 
 her with intense seriousness ; he honoured her with 
 his earnest fury ; he pursued her vindictively and 
 implacably, refusing to rest peaceably in his bed, 
 to derive due benefit from his meals, or even 
 serenely to relish his cigar, till she was fairly 
 rooted out of the establishment, The professor 
 conquered, but I cannot say that the laurels of 
 this victory shadowed gracefully his temples. Once 
 I ventured to hint as much. To my great sur- 
 prise he allowed that I might be right, but averred 
 that when brought into contact with either men 
 or women of the coarse, self-complacent quality, 
 whereof Madame Panache was a specimen, he 
 had no control over his own passions ; an unspeak- 
 able and active aversion impelled him to a war 
 of extermination. 
 
 Three months afterwards, hearing that his van- 
 quished foe had met with reverses, and was likely 
 to be really distressed for want of employment, 
 he forgot his hatred, and, alike active in good and 
 evil, he moved heaven and earth till he found her 
 a place. Upon her coming to make up former 
 differences, and thank him for his recent kindness, 
 the old voice — a little loud — the old manner — a 
 
56 VILLETTE. 
 
 little forward — so acted upon him that in ten 
 minutes he started up and bowed her, or rather 
 himself, out of the room, in a transport of nervous 
 irritation. 
 
 To pursue a somewhat audacious parallel, in a 
 love of power, in an eager grasp after supremacy, 
 M. Emanuel was like Bonaparte. He was a man 
 not always to be submitted to. Sometimes it was 
 needful to resist ; it was right to stand still, to 
 look up into his eyes and tell him that his require- 
 ments went beyond reason — that his absolutism 
 verged on tyranny. 
 
 The dawnings, the first developments of peculiar 
 talent appearing within his range, and under his 
 rule, curiously excited, even disturbed him. He 
 watched its struggle into life with a scowl; he held 
 back his hand — perhaps said, " Come on if you have 
 strength," but would not aid the birth. 
 
 When the pang and peril of the first conflict were 
 over, when the breath of life was drawn, when he 
 saw the lungs expand and contract, when he felt the 
 heart beat and discovered life in the eye, he did not 
 yet offer to foster. 
 
 " Prove yourself true ere I cherish you," was his 
 ordinance ; and how difficult he made that proof! 
 
M. PAUL. 57 
 
 What thorns and briars, what flints, he strewed in 
 the path of feet not inured to rough travel! He 
 watched tearlessly — ordeals that he exacted should 
 he passed through — fearlessly. He followed foot- 
 prints that, as they approached the bourne, were 
 sometimes marked in blood — followed them grimly, 
 holding the austerest police-watch over the pain- 
 pressed pilgrim. And when at last he allowed a 
 rest, before slumber might close the eyelids, he 
 opened those same lids wide, with pitiless finger and 
 thumb, and gazed deep through the pupil and the 
 irids into the brain, into the heart, to search if 
 Vanity, or Pride, or Falsehood, in any of its subtlest 
 forms, was discoverable in the furthest recess of 
 existence. If, at last, he let the neophyte sleep, it 
 was but a moment ; he woke him suddenly up to 
 apply new tests ; he sent him on irksome errands 
 when he was staggering with weariness; he tried 
 the temper, the sense, and the health ; and it was 
 only when every severest test had been applied and 
 endured, when the most corrosive aquafortis had 
 been used, and failed to tarnish the ore, that he 
 admitted it genuine and, still in clouded silence, 
 stamped it with his deep brand of approval. 
 I speak not ignorant of these evils. 
 
58 VILLETTE. 
 
 Till the date at which the last chapter closes, 
 M. Paul had not been my professor — he had not 
 given me lessons, but about that time, accidentally 
 hearing me one day acknowledge an ignorance 
 of some branch of education (I think it was arith- 
 metic) which would have disgraced a charity-school- 
 boy, as he very truly remarked, he took me in hand, 
 examined me first, found me, I need not say, abun- 
 dantly deficient, gave me some books and appointed 
 me some tasks. 
 
 He did this at first with, pleasure, indeed with 
 unconcealed exultation, condescending to say that he 
 believed I was "bonne et pas trop faible" (i. e. well 
 enough disposed, and not wholly destitute of parts) 
 but, owing he supposed to adverse circumstances, ' 
 '* as yet in a state of wretchedly imperfect mental 
 development." 
 
 The beginning of all efforts has indeed with me 
 been marked by a preternatural imbecility. I never 
 could, even in forming a common acquaintance, 
 assert or prove a claim to average quickness. A 
 depressing and difficult passage has prefaced every 
 new page I have turned in life. 
 
 So long as this passage lasted, M. Paul was very 
 kind, very good, very forbearing ; he saw the sharp 
 
M. PAUL. 59 
 
 pain inflicted, and felt the weighty humiliation im- 
 posed by my own sense of incapacity; and words 
 can hardly do justice to his tenderness and helpful- 
 ness. His own eyes would moisten, when tears of 
 shame and effort clouded mine ; burdened as he was 
 with work, he would steal half his brief space of 
 recreation to give to me. 
 
 But, strange grief! when that heavy and over- 
 cast dawn began at last to yield to day ; when my 
 faculties began to struggle themselves free, and my 
 time of energy and fulfilment came ; when I volun- 
 tarily doubled, trebled, quadrupled the tasks he set, 
 to please him as I thought, his kindness became 
 sternness; the light changed in his eyes from a 
 beam to a spark ; he fretted, he opposed, he curbed 
 me imperiously ; the more I did, the harder I 
 worked, the less he seemed content. Sarcasms of 
 which the severity amazed and puzzled me, harassed 
 my ears ; then flowed out the bitterest inuendoes 
 against the " pride of intellect." I was vaguely 
 threatened with, I know not what doom, if I ever 
 trespassed the limits proper to my sex, and con- 
 ceived a contraband appetite for unfeminine know- 
 ledge. Alas ! I had no such appetite. What I 
 loved, it joyed me by any effort to content ; but the 
 
60 VILLETTE. 
 
 noble hunger for science in the abstract — the godlike 
 thirst after discovery — these feelings were known to 
 me but by briefest flashes. 
 
 Yet, when M. Paul sneered at me, I wanted to 
 possess them more fully; his injustice stirred in me 
 ambitious wishes — it imparted a strong stimulus — 
 it gave wings to aspiration. 
 
 In the beginning, before I had penetrated to 
 motives, that uncomprehended sneer of his made 
 my heart ache, but by-and-by it only warmed the 
 blood in my veins, and sent added action to my 
 pulses. Whatever my powers — feminine or the con- 
 trary — God had given them, and I felt resolute to 
 be ashamed of no faculty of His bestowal. 
 
 The combat was very sharp for a time. I seemed 
 to have lost M. Paul's affection ; he treated me 
 strangely. In his most unjust moments he would 
 insinuate that I had deceived him when I appeared, 
 what he called " faible" — that is, incompetent ; he 
 said I had feigned a false incapacity. Again, he 
 would turn suddenly round and accuse me of the 
 most far-fetched imitations and impossible plagiar- 
 isms, asserting that I had extracted the pith 
 out of books I had not so much as heard of — 
 and over the perusal of which I should infallibly 
 
M. PAUL. 61 
 
 have fallen down in a sleep as deep as that of 
 Eutychus. 
 
 Once, upon his preferring such an accusation, 
 I turned upon him — I rose against him. Gathering 
 an armful of his books out of my desk, I filled my 
 apron and poured them in a heap upon his estrade, 
 at his feet. 
 
 " Take them away, M. Paul," I said, " and teach 
 me no more. I never asked to be made learned, 
 and you compel me to feel very profoundly that 
 learning is not happiness." 
 
 And returning to my desk, I laid my head on my 
 arms, nor would I speak to him for two days after- 
 wards. He pained and chagrined me. His 
 affection had been very sweet and dear — a pleasure 
 new and incomparable : now that this seemed with- 
 drawn, I cared not for his lessons. 
 
 The books, however, were not taken away ; they 
 were all restored with careful hand to their places, 
 and he came as usual to teach me. He made 
 his peace somehow — too readily, perhaps ; I ought 
 to have stood out longer, but when he looked kind 
 and good, and held out his hand with amity, memory 
 refused to reproduce with due force his oppressive 
 moments. And then, reconcilement is always sweet ! 
 
62 VILLETTE. 
 
 On a certain morning a message carae from my 
 godmother, inviting me to attend some notable 
 lecture to be delivered in the same public rooms 
 before described. Dr. John had brought the message 
 himself, and delivered it verbally to Rosine, who had 
 not scrupled to follow the steps of M. Emanuel, then 
 passing to the first classe, and, in his presence, stand 
 " carrement" before my desk, hand in apron-pocket, 
 and rehearse the same, saucily and aloud, concluding 
 with the words — 
 
 " Qu'il est vraiment beau, mademoiselle, ce jeune 
 docteur ! Quels yeux — quel regard ! Tenez ! J'en 
 ai le cceur tout emu ! " 
 
 When she was gone, my professor demanded of 
 me why I suffered " cette fille effrontee, cette 
 creature sans pudeur," to address me in such terms. 
 
 I had no pacifying answer to give. The terms 
 were precisely such as Rosine — a young lady in 
 whose skull the organs of reverence and reserve were 
 not largely developed — was in the constant habit of 
 using. Besides, what she said about the young 
 doctor was true enough. Graham was handsome ; 
 he had fine eyes and a thrilling glance. An observa- 
 tion to that effect actually formed itself into sound on 
 my lips. 
 
M. PAUL. 63 
 
 " Elle ne dit que la verite," I said. 
 
 " Ah ! vous trouvez ? " 
 
 " Mais, sans doute." 
 
 The lesson to which we had that day to submit 
 was such as to make us very glad when it termi- 
 nated. At its close, the released pupils rushed out, 
 half-trembling-, half-exultant. I, too, was going. 
 A mandate to remain arrested me. I muttered 
 that I wanted some fresh air sadly — the stove was 
 in a glow, the classe overheated, An inexorable 
 voice merely recommended silence ; and this sala- 
 mander — for whom no room ever seemed too hot 
 — sitting down between my desk and the stove — 
 a situation in which he ought to have felt broiled, 
 but did not — proceeded to confront me with — a 
 Greek quotation ! 
 
 In M. Emanuel's soul rankled a chronic suspicion 
 that I knew both Greek and Latin. As monkies 
 are said to have the power of speech if they would 
 but use it, and are reported to conceal this faculty 
 in fear of its being turned to their detriment, so to 
 me was ascribed a fund of knowledge which I was 
 supposed criminally and craftily to conceal. The 
 privileges of a " classical education," it was insinu- 
 ated, had been mine ; on flowers of Hymettus I 
 
64 VILLETTE. 
 
 had revelled ; a golden store, hived in memory, 
 now silently sustained my efforts, and privily nur- 
 tured my wits. 
 
 A hundred expedients did M. Paul employ to 
 surprise my secret — to wheedle, to threaten, to 
 startle it out of me. Sometimes he placed Greek 
 and Latin books in my way, and then watched me, 
 as Joan of Arc's jailors tempted her with the 
 warrior's accoutrements, and lay in wait for the 
 issue. Again he quoted I know not what authors 
 and passages, and while rolling out their sweet 
 and sounding lines (the classic tones fell very 
 musically from his lips — for he had a good voice — 
 remarkable for compass, modulation, and matchless 
 expression), he would fix on me a vigilant, piercing, 
 and often malicious eye. It was evident he some- 
 times expected great demonstrations; they never 
 occurred, however; not comprehending, of course 
 I could neither be charmed nor annoyed. 
 
 Baffled — almost angry — he still clung to his fixed 
 idea; my susceptibilities were pronounced marble 
 — my face a mask. It appeared as if he could not 
 be brought to accept the homely truth, and take 
 me for what I was: men, and women too, must 
 have delusion of some sort ; if not made ready to 
 
M. PAUL. DJ 
 
 their hand, they will invent exaggeration for them- 
 selves. 
 
 At moments I did wish that his suspicions had 
 been better founded. There were times when I 
 would have given my right hand to possess the 
 treasures he ascribed to me. He deserved con- 
 dign punishment for his testy crotchets. I could 
 have gloried in bringing home to him his worst 
 apprehensions astoundingly realized. I could have 
 exulted to burst on his vision, confront and con- 
 found his "lunettes," one blaze of acquirements. 
 Oh ! why did nobody undertake to make me clever 
 while I was young enough to learn, that I might, 
 by one grand, sudden, inhuman revelation — one 
 cold, cruel, overwhelming triumph — have for ever 
 crushed the mocking spirit out of Paul Carl David 
 Emanuel ! 
 
 Alas ! no such feat was in my power. To-day, 
 as usual, his quotations fell ineffectual : he soon 
 shifted his ground. 
 
 "Women of intellect" was his next theme : here 
 he was at home. A " woman of intellect," it 
 appeared, was a sort of " lusus naturse," a luckless 
 accident, a thing for which there was neither place 
 nor use in creation, wanted neither as wife nor 
 
 VOL. III. p 
 
66 VILLETTE. 
 
 worker. Beauty anticipated her in the first office- 
 He believed in his soul that lovely, placid, and 
 passive feminine mediocrity was the only pillow on 
 which manly thought and sense could find rest for 
 its aching temples ; and as to work, male mind 
 alone could work to any good practical result — 
 hein ? 
 
 This "hein?" was a note of interrogation in- 
 tended to draw from me contradiction or objection. 
 However, I only said — 
 
 " Cela ne me regarde pas: je ne m' en soucie 
 pas;" and presently added — "May I go, monsieur? 
 They have rung the bell for the second " dejeuner" 
 (i. e., luncheon). 
 
 " What of that? You are not hungry ? " 
 " Indeed I was," I said ; " I had had nothing 
 since breakfast, at seven, and should have nothing 
 till dinner, at five, if I missed this bell." 
 
 "Well, he was in the same plight, but I might 
 share with him." 
 
 And he broke in two the " brioche," intended for 
 his own refreshment, and gave me half. Truly his 
 "bark was worse than his bite ; but the really formid- 
 able attack was yet to come. While eating his 
 cake, I could not forbear expressing my secret 
 
M. PAUL. 67 
 
 wish that I really knew all of which he accused 
 me. 
 
 "Did I sincerely feel myself to be an ignoramus?" 
 he asked, in a softened tone. 
 
 If I had replied meekly by an unqualified affirm- 
 ative, I believe he would have stretched out his 
 hand, and we should have been friends on the spot, 
 but I answered : 
 
 " Not exactly. I am ignorant, monsieur, in the 
 knowledge you ascribe to me, but I sometimes, not 
 always, feel a knowledge of my own." 
 
 " What did I mean ? " he inquired, sharply. 
 
 Unable to answer this question in a breath, I 
 evaded it by change of subject. He had now fin- 
 ished his half of the brioche : feeling sure that on 
 so trilling a fragment he could not have satisfied 
 his appetite, as indeed I had not appeased mine, 
 and inhaling the fragrance of baked apples afar 
 from the refectory, I ventured to inquire whether he 
 did not also perceive that agreeable odour. He 
 confessed that he did. I said if he would let me out 
 by the garden-door, and permit me just to run across 
 the court, I would fetch him a plateful ; and added 
 that I believed they were excellent, as Goton had a 
 very good method of baking, or rather stewing fruit, 
 
68 VILLETTE. 
 
 putting in a little spice, sugar, and a glass or two of 
 vin blanc — might I go? 
 
 " Petite gourmande ! " said lie, smiling. " I have 
 not forgotten how pleased you were with the pate 
 a la creme I once gave you, and you know very well, 
 at this moment, that to fetch the apples for me 
 will be the same as getting them for yourself. Go, 
 then, but come back quickly." 
 
 And at last he liberated me on parole. My own 
 plan was to go and return with speed and good 
 faith, to put the plate in at the door, and then to 
 vanish incontinent, leaving all consequences for 
 future settlement. 
 
 That intolerably keen instinct of his seemed to 
 have anticipated my scheme; he met me at the 
 threshold, hurried me into the room, and fixed me 
 in a minute in my former seat. Taking the plate of 
 fruit from my hand, he divided the portion intended 
 only for himself, and ordered me to eat my share. 
 I complied with no good grace, and vexed, I sup- 
 pose, by my reluctance, he opened a masked and 
 dangerous battery. All he had yet said, I could 
 count as mere sound and fury, signifying nothing ; 
 not so of the present attack. 
 
 It consisted in an unreasonable proposition with 
 
M. PAUL. 69 
 
 which he had before afflicted me : namely, that on 
 the next public examination-day I should engage — 
 foreigner as I was — to take my place on the first 
 form of first-class pupils, and with them improvise 
 a composition in French, on any subject any spec- 
 tator might dictate, without benefit of grammar or 
 lexicon. 
 
 I knew what the result of such an experiment 
 would be. I, to whom nature had denied the im- 
 promptu faculty ; who, in public, was by nature a 
 cypher ; whose time of mental activity, even when 
 alone, was not under the meridian sun ; who needed 
 the fresh silence of morning, or the recluse peace 
 of evening, to win from the Creative Impulse one 
 evidence of his presence, one proof of his force ; I, 
 with whom that Impulse was the most intractable, 
 the most capricious, the most maddening of mas- 
 ters (him before me always excepted) — a deity, 
 which sometimes, under circumstances apparently 
 propitious, would not speak when questioned, would 
 not hear when appealed to, would not, when sought, 
 be found; but would stand, all cold, all indurated, 
 all granite, a dark Baal with carven lips and blank 
 eye-balls, and breast like the stone face of a tomb ; 
 and again, suddenly, at some turn, some sound, 
 
70 VILLETTB. 
 
 some long-trembling sob of the wind, at some rush- 
 ing past of an unseen stream of electricity, the 
 irrational demon would wake unsolicited, would stir 
 strangely alive, would rush from its pedestal like a 
 perturbed Dagon, calling to its votary for a sacri- 
 fice, whatever the hour — to its victim for some 
 blood or some breath, whatever the circumstance or 
 scene — rousing its priest, treacherously promising 
 vaticination, perhaps filling its temple with a strange 
 hum of oracles, but sure to give half the significance 
 to fateful winds, and grudging to the desperate 
 listener even a miserable remnant — yielding it 
 sordidly, as though each word had been a drop of 
 the deathless ichor of its own dark veins. And 
 this tyrant I was to compel into bondage, and make 
 it improvise a theme, on a school estrade, between a 
 Mathilde and a Coralie, under the eye of a Madame 
 Beck, for the pleasure and to the inspiration of a 
 bourgeois of Labassecour ! 
 
 Upon this argument M. Paul and I did battle 
 more than once — strong battle, with confused noise 
 of demand and rejection, exaction and repulse. 
 
 On this particular day I was soundly rated. 
 "The obstinacy of my whole sex" it seems, was 
 concentrated in me; I had an " orgueil de diable." 
 
M. PAUL. 71 
 
 I feared to fail, forsooth ! What did it matter 
 whether I failed or not ? Who was I that I should 
 not fail like my betters ? It would do me good to 
 fail. He wanted to see me worsted (I knew he did), 
 and one minute he paused to take breath. 
 
 " Would I speak now and be tractable ? " 
 
 " Never would I be tractable in this matter. 
 Law itself should not compel me. I would pay a 
 fine, or undergo an imprisonment, rather than 
 write for a show and to order, perched up on a 
 platform." 
 
 " Could softer motives influence me ? Would I 
 yield for friendship's sake?" 
 
 u Not a whit, not a hair-breadth. No form of 
 friendship under the sun had a right to exact such 
 a concession. No true friendship would harass me 
 thus." 
 
 He supposed then (with a sneer — M. Paul 
 could sneer supremely, curling his lip, opening his 
 nostrils, contracting his eyelids) — he supposed there 
 was but one form of appeal to which I would listen, 
 and of that form it was not for him to make use. 
 
 " Under certain persuasions, from certain quarters, 
 je vous vois d'ici," said he, " eagerly subscribing to 
 the sacrifice, passionately arming for the effort." 
 
72 VILLETTE. 
 
 " Making a simpleton, a warning, and an example 
 of myself, before a hundred and fifty of the' papas' 
 and ' mamans' of Villette." 
 
 And here, losing patience, I broke out afresh with 
 a cry that I wanted to be liberated, to get out to the 
 air — I was almost in a fever. 
 
 "Chut!" said the inexorable, "this was a mere 
 pretext to run away : he was not hot, with the stove 
 close at his back ; how could I suffer, thoroughly 
 screened by his person ?" 
 
 " I did not understand his constitution. I knew 
 nothing of the natural history of salamanders. For 
 my own part, I was a phlegmatic islander, and sit- 
 ting in an oven did not agree with me ; at least, 
 might I step to the well, and get a glass of water — 
 the sweet apples had made me thirsty ?" 
 
 " If that was all, he would do my errand." 
 
 He went to fetch the water. Of course, with a 
 door only on the latch behind me, I lost not my 
 opportunity. Ere his return, his half-worried prey 
 had escaped. 
 
THE DRYAD. 73 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 THE DRYAD. 
 
 The spring was advancing, and the weather had 
 turned suddenly warm. This change of temperature 
 brought with it for me, as probably for many others, 
 temporary decrease of strength. Slight exertion at 
 this time left me overcome with fatigue — sleepless 
 nights entailed languid days. 
 
 One Sunday afternoon, having walked the distance 
 of half a league to the Protestant church, I came 
 back weary and exhausted ; and taking refuge in my 
 solitary sanctuary, the first classe, I was glad to sit 
 down, and to make of my desk a pillow for my arms 
 and head. 
 
 Awhile I listened to the lullaby of bees humming 
 in the berceau, and watched, through the glass door, 
 and the tender, lightly-strewn spring foliage, Ma- 
 dame Beck and a gay party of friends, whom she 
 
74 VILLETTE. 
 
 had entertained that day at dinner after morning- 
 mass, walking in the centre-alley under orchard 
 boughs dressed at this season in blossom, and wear- 
 ing a colouring as pure and warm as mountain- 
 snow at sun-rise. 
 
 My principal attraction towards this group of 
 guests la} r , I remember, in one figure — that of a 
 handsome young girl whom I had seen before as a 
 visitor at Madame Beck's, and of whom I had been 
 vaguely told that she was a " filleule," or god- 
 daughter, of M. Emanuel's, and that between her 
 mother, or aunt, or some other female relation of 
 hers, and the professor — had existed of old a special 
 friendship. M. Paul was not of the holiday band to- 
 day, but I had seen this young girl with him ere 
 now, and as far as distant observation could enable 
 me to judge, she seemed to enjoy with him the frank 
 ease of a ward with an indulgent guardian. I had 
 seen her run up to him, put her arm through his 
 and hang upon him. Once, when she did so, a curious 
 sensation had struck through me — a disagreeable 
 anticipatory sensation — one of the family of presen- 
 timents, I suppose — but I refused to analyze or 
 dwell upon it. While watching this girl, Made- 
 moiselle Sauveur by name, and following the gleam 
 
THE DRYAD. 75 
 
 of her bright silk robe (she was always richly 
 dressed, for she was said to be wealthy) through 
 the flowers and the glancing leaves of tender eme- 
 rald, my eyes became dazzled — they closed ; my 
 lassitude, the warmth of the day, the hum of bees 
 and birds, all lulled me, and at last I slept. 
 
 Two hours stole over me. Ere I woke, the sun 
 had declined out of sight behind the towering 
 houses, the garden and the room were gray, bees 
 had gone homeward, and the flowers were closing ; 
 the party of guests, too, had vanished ; each alley 
 was void. 
 
 On waking, I felt much at ease — not chill, as I 
 ought to have been after sitting so still for at least 
 two hours ; my cheek and arms were not benumbed 
 by pressure against the hard desk. No wonder. 
 Instead of the bare wood on which I had laid them, 
 I found a thick shawl, carefully folded, substituted 
 for support, and another shawl (both taken from the 
 corridor where such things hung) wrapped warmly 
 round me. 
 
 Who had done this? Who was my friend? 
 Which of the teachers ? Which of the pupils ? 
 None, except St. Pierre, was inimical to me ; but 
 which of them had the art, the thought, the habit, of 
 
76 VILLETTE. 
 
 benefiting thus tenderly? Which of them had a 
 step so quiet, a hand so gentle, but I should have 
 heard or felt her, if she had approached or touched 
 me in a day-sleep ? 
 
 As to Ginevra Fanshawe, that bright young 
 creature was not gentle at all, and would certainly 
 have pulled me out of my chair, if she had meddled 
 in the matter. I said at last : " It is Madame 
 Beck's doing ; she has come in, seen me asleep, and 
 thought I might take cold. She considers me a use- 
 ful machine, answering well the purpose for which 
 it was hired ; so would not have me needlessly in- 
 jured. And now," methought, " I '11 take a walk ; 
 the evening is fresh, and not very chill." 
 
 So I opened the glass door and stepped into the 
 berceau. 
 
 I went to my own alley : had it been dark, or 
 even dusk, I should hardly have ventured there, for 
 I had not yet forgotten the curious illusion of vision 
 (if illusion it were) experienced in that place some 
 months ago. But a ray of the setting sun burnished 
 still the gray crown of Jean Baptiste ; nor had all 
 the birds of the garden yet vanished into their nests 
 amongst the tufted shrubs and thick wall-ivy. I 
 paced up and down, thinking almost the same 
 
THE DRYAD. 77 
 
 thoughts I had pondered that night when I buried 
 ray glass jar — how 1 should make some advance in 
 life, take another step towards an independent posi- 
 tion ; for this train of reflection, though not lately- 
 pursued, had never by me been wholly abandoned ; 
 and whenever a certain eye was averted from me, 
 and a certain countenance grew dark with unkind- 
 ness and injustice, into that track of speculation did 
 I at once strike ; so that, little by little, I had laid 
 half a plan. 
 
 " Living costs little," said I to myself, " in this 
 economical town of Villette, where people are more 
 sensible than I understand they are in dear old 
 England — infinitely less worried about appearance, 
 and less emulous of display — where nobody is in 
 the least ashamed to be quite as homely and saving 
 as he finds convenient. House-rent, in a prudently 
 chosen situation, need not be high. When I shall 
 have saved one thousand francs, I will take a tene- 
 ment with one large room, and two or three smaller 
 ones, furnish the first with a few benches and desks, 
 a black tableau, an estrade for myself; upon it a 
 chair and table, with a sponge and some white 
 chalks ; begin with taking day-pupils, and so work 
 my way upwards. Madame Beck's commencement 
 
78 V1LLETTE. 
 
 was — as I have often heard her say — from no higher 
 starting-point, and where is she now ? All these 
 premises and this garden are hers, bought with her 
 money ; she has a competency already secured for 
 old age, and a flourishing establishment under 
 her direction, which will furnish a career for her 
 children. 
 
 Courage, Lucy Snowe! With self-denial and 
 economy now, and steady exertion by-and-by, an 
 object in life need not fail you. Venture not to 
 complain that such an object is too selfish, too 
 limited, and lacks interest ; be content to labour for 
 independence until you have proved, by winning 
 that prize, your right to look higher. But after- 
 wards, is there nothing more for me in life — no true 
 home — nothing to be dearer to me than myself, 
 and by its paramount preciousness, to draw from me 
 better things than I care to culture for myself only ? 
 Nothing, at whose feet I can willingly lay down the 
 whole burden of human egotism, and gloriously 
 take up the nobler charge of labouring and living 
 for others?" I suppose, Lucy Snowe, the orb of 
 your life is not to be so rounded ; for you the cres- 
 cent-phase must suffice. Very good. I see a huge 
 mass of my fellow-creatures in no better circum- 
 
THE DRYAD. 79 
 
 stances. I see that a great many men, and more 
 women, hold their span of life on conditions of denial 
 and privation. I find no reason why I should be 
 of the few favoured. I believe in some blending of 
 hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I 
 believe that this life is not all; neither the begin- 
 ning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I 
 trust while I weep. 
 
 So this subject is done with. It is right to look 
 our life - accounts bravely in the face now and 
 then, and settle them honestly. And he is a poor 
 self-swindler who lies to himself while he reckons 
 the items, and sets down under the head — happiness 
 that which is misery. Call anguish — anguish, and 
 despair — despair ; write both down in strong charac- 
 ters with a resolute pen : you will the better pay 
 your debt to Doom. Falsify; insert "privilege" 
 where you should have written "pain;" and see 
 if your mighty creditor will allow the fraud to pass, 
 or accept the coin with which you would cheat him. 
 Offer to the strongest — if the darkest angel of 
 God's host — water, when he has asked blood — 
 will he take it ? Not a whole pale sea for one red 
 drop. I settled another account. 
 
 Pausing before Methusaleh — the giant and patri- 
 
80 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 arch of the garden — and leaning my brow against 
 his knotty trunk, my foot rested on the stone seal- 
 ing the small sepulchre at his root ; and I recalled 
 the passage of feeling therein buried. I recalled Dr. 
 John ; my warm affection for him ; my faith in his 
 excellence ; my delight in his grace. What was 
 become of that curious one-sided friendship which 
 was half marble and half life ; only on one hand 
 truth, and on the other perhaps a jest ? 
 
 Was this feeling dead? I do not know, but it 
 was buried. Sometimes I thought the tomb un- 
 quiet, and dreamed strangely of disturbed earth, and 
 of hair, still golden and living, obtruded through 
 coffin-chinks. 
 
 Had I been too hasty? I used to ask myself; 
 and this question would occur with a cruel sharp- 
 ness after some brief chance interview with Dr. 
 John. He had still such kind looks, such a warm 
 hand ; his voice still kept so pleasant a tone for my 
 name; I never liked "Lucy" so well as when he 
 uttered it. But I learned in time that this benignity, 
 this cordiality, this music, belonged in no shape to 
 me : it was a part of himself; it was the honey of 
 his temper ; it was the balm of his mellow mood ; 
 he imparted it, as the ripe fruit rewards with sweet- 
 
THE DRYAD. 81 
 
 ness the rifling bee ; he diffused it about him, as 
 sweet plants shed their perfume. Does the necta- 
 rine love either the bee or bird it feeds ? Is the 
 sweetbriar enamoured of the air ? 
 
 " Good night, Dr. John ; you are good, you are 
 beautiful ; but you are not mine. Good night, and 
 God bless you ! " 
 
 Thus I closed my musings. " Good night" left 
 my lips in sound ; I heard the two words spoken, 
 and then I heard an echo — quite close. 
 
 " Good night, mademoiselle ; or, rather, good 
 evening — the sun is scarce set ; I hope you slept 
 well ?" 
 
 I started, but was only discomposed a moment ; 
 I knew the voice and speaker. 
 
 " Slept, monsieur ! When? where?" 
 
 " You may well inquire when — where. It seems 
 you turn day into night, and choose a desk for a 
 pillow ; rather hard lodging ?" 
 
 " It was softened for me, monsieur, while I. slept. 
 That unseen, gift-bringing thing which haunts my 
 desk, remembered me. No matter how I fell 
 asleep ; I awoke pillowed and covered." 
 
 " Did the shawls keep you warm ?" 
 
 " Very warm. Do you ask thanks for them ? " 
 
 VOL. III. G 
 
82 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 " ~No. You looked pale in your slumbers ; are 
 you home-sick ? " 
 
 " To be home-sick, one must have a home ; 
 which I have not." 
 
 " Then you have more need of a careful friend. 
 I scarcely know any one, Miss Lucy, who needs a 
 friend more absolutely than you ; your very faults 
 imperatively require it. You want so much check- 
 ing, regulating, and keeping down." 
 
 This idea of " keeping down" never left M. 
 Paul's head ; the most habitual subjugation would, 
 in my case, have failed to relieve him of it. No 
 matter ; what did it signify ? I listened to him, 
 and did not trouble myself to be too submissive ; 
 his occupation would have been gone, had I left 
 him nothing to " keep down." 
 
 " You need watching, and watching over," he 
 pursued ; " and it is well for you that I see this, 
 and do my best to discharge both duties. I watch 
 you and others pretty closely, pretty constantly, 
 nearer and oftener than you or they think. Do 
 you see that window with a light in it?" 
 
 He pointed to a lattice in one of the college 
 boarding-houses. 
 
 " That," said he, " is a room I have hired, nomi- 
 
THE DRYAD. 83 
 
 nally for a study — virtually for a post of observa- 
 tion. There I sit and read for hours together : it 
 is my way — my taste. My book is this garden ; its 
 contents are human nature — female human nature. 
 I know you all by heart. Ah ! I know you well 
 ■ — St. Pierre the Parisienne — cette maitresse-femme, 
 my cousin Beck herself." 
 
 " It is not right, monsieur." 
 
 " Comment ; it is not right ? By whose creed ? 
 Does some dogma of Calvin or Luther condemn 
 it ? What is that to me ? I am no Protestant. 
 My rich father (for, though I have known poverty, 
 and once starved for a year in a garret in Rome — 
 starved wretchedly, often on a meal a day, and 
 sometimes not that — yet I was born to wealth) — 
 my rich father was a good Catholic ; and he gave 
 me a priest and a Jesuit for a tutor. I retain his 
 lessons ; and to what discoveries, grand Dieu ! have 
 they not aided me!" 
 
 " Discoveries made by stealth seem to me dis- 
 honourable discoveries." 
 
 " Puritaine ! I doubt it not. Yet see how my 
 Jesuit's system works. You know the St. Pierre ? " 
 • " Partially." 
 
 He laughed. "You say right — 'partially;' 
 
84 VILLETTE. 
 
 whereas, I know her thoroughly ; there is the 
 difference. She played before me the amiable ; 
 offered me patte de velours ; caressed, flattered, 
 fawned on me. Now, I am accessible to a woman's 
 flattery — accessible against my reason. Though 
 never pretty, she was — when I first knew her — 
 young, or knew how to look young. Like all 
 her countrywomen, she had the art of dressing — she 
 had a certain, cool, easy, social assurance, which 
 spared me the pain of embarrassment " 
 
 " Monsieur, that must have been unnecessary. 
 I never saw you embarrassed in my life." 
 
 " Mademoiselle, you know little of me ; I can 
 be embarrassed as a petite pensionnaire ; there is a 
 fund of modesty and diffidence in my nature " 
 
 " Monsieur, I never saw it." 
 
 " Mademoiselle, it is there. You ought to have 
 seen it." 
 
 " Monsieur, I have observed you in public — on 
 platforms, in tribunes, before titles and crowned 
 heads — and you were as easy as you are in the 
 third division." 
 
 " Mademoiselle, neither titles nor crowned heads 
 excite my modesty ; and publicity is very much 
 my element. I like it well, and breathe in it 
 
THE DRYAD. 85 
 
 quite freely ; but — but — in short, here is the 
 sentiment brought into action, at this very mo- 
 ment ; however, I disdain to be worsted by it . 
 If, mademoiselle, I were a marrying man (which 
 I am not ; and you may spare yourself the trouble 
 of any sneer you may be contemplating at the 
 thought), and found it necessary to ask a lady 
 whether she could look upon me in the light of 
 a future husband, then would it be proved that I 
 am as I say — modest." 
 
 I quite believed him now ; and, in believing, I 
 honoured him with a sincerity of esteem which 
 made my heart ache. 
 
 " As to the St. Pierre," he went on, recovering 
 himself, for his voice had altered a little, " she 
 once intended to be Madame Emanuel ; and I 
 don 't know whither I might have been led, but 
 for yonder little lattice with the light. Ah, 
 magic lattice ! what miracles of discovery hast 
 thou wrought ! Yes," he pursued, " I have seen 
 her rancours, her vanities, her levities — not only 
 here, but elsewhere : I have witnessed what 
 bucklers me against all her arts : I am safe from 
 poor Zelie." 
 
 " And my pupils," he presently recommenced, 
 
86 VILLETTE. 
 
 "those blondes jeunes filles — so mild and meek — 
 I have seen the most reserved — romp like boys, the 
 demurest — snatch grapes from the walls, shake pears 
 from the trees. When the English teacher came, 
 I saw her, marked her early preference for this 
 alley, noted her taste for seclusion, watched her 
 well, long before she and I came to speaking terms ; 
 do you recollect my once coming silently and offer- 
 ing you a little knot of white violets when we 
 were strangers?" 
 
 " I recollect it. I dried the violets, kept them, 
 and have them still." 
 
 " It pleased me when you took them peacefully 
 and promptly, without prudery — that sentiment 
 which I ever dread to excite, and which, when it 
 is revealed in eye or gesture, I vindictively detest. 
 To return. Not only did I watch you, but often — 
 especially at eventide — another guardian angel was 
 noiselessly hovering near : night after night my 
 cousin Beck has stolen down yonder steps, and 
 glidingly pursued your movements when you did 
 not see her." 
 
 " But, Monsieur, you could not from the distance 
 of that window see what passed in this garden at 
 night?" 
 
THE DRYA.D. 87 
 
 " By moonlight I possibly might with a glass — I 
 use a glass — but the garden itself is open to me. 
 In the shed, at the bottom, there is a door leading 
 into a court, which communicates with the college ; 
 of that door I possess the key, and thus come and 
 go at pleasure. This afternoon I came through 
 it, and found you asleep in class ; again this even- 
 ing, I have availed myself of the same entrance." 
 
 I could not help saying, " If you were a wicked, 
 designing man, how terrible would all this be ! " 
 
 His attention seemed incapable of being arrested 
 by this view of the subject : he lit his cigar, and 
 while he puffed it, leaning against a tree, and look- 
 ing at me in a cool, amused way he had when his 
 humour was tranquil, I thought proper to go on 
 sermonizing him : he often lectured me by the 
 hour together — I did not see why I should not 
 speak my mind for once. So I told him my im- 
 pressions concerning his Jesuit-system. 
 
 " The knowledge it brings you is bought too 
 dear, monsieur ; this coming and going by stealth 
 degrades your own dignity." 
 
 " My dignity ! " he cried, laughing ; " when 
 did you ever see me trouble my head about my 
 dignity? It is you, Miss Lucy, who are 'digne.' 
 
£8 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 How often, in your high insular presence, have I 
 taken a pleasure in trampling upon, what you are 
 pleased to call, my dignity ; tearing it, scattering it 
 to the winds, in those mad transports you witness 
 with such hauteur, and which I know you think 
 very like the ravings of a third-rate London actor." 
 
 " Monsieur, I tell you every glance you cast 
 from that lattice is a wrong done to the best part 
 of your own nature. To study the human heart 
 thus, is to banquet secretly and sacreligiously 
 on Eve's apples. I wish you were a Protes- 
 tant." 
 
 Indifferent to the wish, he smoked on. After a 
 space of smiling yet thoughtful silence, he said, 
 rather suddenly — 
 
 " I have seen other things." 
 
 " What other things ? " 
 
 Taking the weed from his lips, he threw the 
 remnant amongst the shrubs, where, for a moment, 
 it lay glowing in the gloom. 
 
 " Look at it," said he : " is not that spark like an 
 eye watching you and me." 
 
 He took a turn down the walk ; presently re- 
 turning, he went on : 
 
 " I have seen, Miss Lucy, things to me unac- 
 
THE DRYAD. 89 
 
 countable, that have made me watch all night for a 
 solution, and I have not yet found it." 
 
 The tone was peculiar ; my veins thrilled ; he saw 
 me shiver. 
 
 " Are you afraid ? Whether is it of my words or 
 that red jealous eye just winking itself out ? " 
 
 " I am cold ; the night grows dark and late, 
 and the air is changed ; it is time to go in." 
 
 " It is little past eight, but you shall go in soon. 
 Answer me only this question." 
 
 Yet he paused ere he put it. The garden was 
 truly growing dark ; dusk had come on with 
 clouds, and drops of rain began to patter through 
 the trees. I hoped he would feel this, but, for the 
 moment, he seemed too much absorbed to be sen- 
 sible of the change. 
 
 " Mademoiselle, do you Protestants believe in 
 the supernatural?" 
 
 " There is a difference of theory and belief on 
 this point amongst Protestants, as amongst other 
 sects," I answered. " Why, monsieur, do you 
 ask such a question ? " 
 
 " Why do you shrink and speak so faintly ? Are 
 you superstitious ? " 
 
 " I am constitutionally nervous. I dislike the 
 
90 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 discussion of such subjects. I dislike it the more 
 because " 
 
 "You believe?" 
 
 " No : but it has happened to me to experience 
 impressions " 
 
 " Since you came here ? " 
 
 " Yes : not many months ago." 
 
 " Here? — in this house?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Bon ! I am glad of it. I knew it somehow 
 before you told me. I was conscious of rapport 
 between you and myself. You are patient, and I 
 am choleric ; you are quiet and pale, and I am 
 tanned and fiery ; you are a strict Protestant, and I 
 am a sort of lay Jesuit : but we are alike — there is 
 affinity. Do you see it, mademoiselle, when you 
 look in the glass? Do you observe that your 
 forehead is shaped like mine — that your eyes are 
 cut like mine ? Do you hear that you have some of 
 my tones of voice ? Do you know that you have many 
 of my looks ? I perceive all this, and believe that 
 you were born under my star. Yes, you were 
 born under my star ! Tremble ! for where that is 
 the case with mortals, the threads of their destinies 
 are difficult to disentangle ; knottings and catchings 
 
THE DRYAD. 91 
 
 occur — sudden breaks leave damage in the web. 
 But these ' impressions,' as you say, with English 
 caution. I, too, have had my ' impressions.' " 
 
 " Monsieur, tell me them." 
 
 " I desire no better, and intend no less. You 
 know the legend of this house and garden ? " 
 
 " I know it. Yes. They say that hundreds of 
 years ago a nun was buried here alive at the foot 
 of this very tree, beneath the ground which now 
 bears us." 
 
 " And that in former days a nun's ghost used to 
 come and go here." 
 
 " Monsieur, what if it comes and goes here still ? " 
 
 " Something comes and goes here : there is a 
 shape frequenting this house by night, different to 
 any forms that show themselves by day. I have 
 indisputably seen a something, more than once ; and 
 to me its conventual weeds were a strange sight, 
 saying more than they can do to any other living 
 being. A nun ! " 
 
 " Monsieur, I, too, have seen it." 
 
 " I anticipated that. Whether this nun be flesh 
 and blood, or something that remains when blood is 
 dried and flesh wasted, her business is as much with 
 you as with me, probably. Well, I mean to make 
 
92 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 it out : it has baffled me so far, but I mean to follow 
 
 up the mystery. I mean " 
 
 Instead of telling what he meant, he raised his 
 head suddenly ; I made the same movement in the 
 same instant ; we both looked to one point — the 
 high tree shadowing the great berceau, and resting 
 some of its boughs on the roof of the first classe. 
 There had been a strange and inexplicable sound 
 from that quarter, as if the arms of that tree had 
 swayed of their own motion, and its weight of foliage 
 had rushed and crushed against the massive trunk. 
 Yes ; there scarce stirred a breeze, and that heavy 
 tree was convulsed, whilst the feathery shrubs stood 
 still. For some minutes amongst the wood and 
 leafage a rending and heaving went on. Dark 
 as it was, it seemed to me that something more 
 solid than either night-shadow, or branch-shadow, 
 blackened out of the boles. At last the struggle 
 ceased. What birth succeded this travail? What 
 Dryad was born of these throes? We watched 
 fixedly. A sudden bell rang in the house — the 
 prayer-bell. Instantly into our alley there came, 
 out of the bureau, an apparition, all black and white. 
 With a sort of angry rush — close, close past our 
 faces — swept swiftly the very Nun herself! Never 
 
THE DRYAD. 93 
 
 had I seen her so clearly. She looked tall of 
 stature, and fierce of gesture. As she went, the 
 wind rose sobbing ; the rain poured wild and cold ; 
 the whole night seemed to feel her. 
 
94 VILLETTE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 THE FIRST LETTER. 
 
 Where, it becomes time to inquire, was Paulina 
 Mary ? How fared my intercourse with the sump- 
 tuous Hotel Crecy ? That intercourse had, for an 
 interval, been suspended by absence ; M. and Miss 
 de Bassompierre had been travelling, dividing some 
 weeks between the provinces and the capital of 
 France. Chance apprised me of their return very 
 shortly after it took place. 
 
 I was walking one mild afternoon on a quiet 
 boulevard, wandering slowly on, enjoying the be- 
 nign April sun, and some thoughts not unpleasing, 
 when I saw before me a group of riders, stopping as 
 if they had just encountered, and exchanging greet- 
 ings in the midst of the broad, smooth, linden-bor- 
 dered path ; on one side a middle-aged gentleman 
 and young lady, on the other — a young and hand- 
 
THE FIRST LETTER. 95 
 
 some man. Very Fgraceful was the lady's mien, 
 choice her appointments, delicate and stately her 
 whole aspect. Still, as I looked, I felt they were 
 known to me, and, drawing a little nearer, I fully 
 recognized them all ; the Count Home de Bassom- 
 pierre, his daughter, and Dr. Graham Bretton. 
 
 How animated was Graham's face ! How true, 
 how warm, yet how retiring the joy it expressed ! 
 This was the state of things, this the combination of 
 circumstances, at once to attract and enchain, to 
 subdue and excite Dr. John. The pearl he admired 
 was in itself of great price and truest purity, but he 
 was not the man who, in appreciating the gem, 
 could forget its setting. Had he seen Paulina with 
 the same youth, beauty, and grace, but on foot, 
 alone, unguarded, and in simple attire, a dependent 
 worker, a demi-grisette, he would have thought her 
 a pretty little creature, and would have loved with 
 his eye her movements and her mien, but it required 
 other than this to conquer him as he was now van- 
 quished, to bring him safe under dominion as now, 
 without loss, and even with gain to his manly honour 
 — one saw that he was reduced ; there was about 
 Dr. John all the man of the world ; to satisfy him- 
 self did not suffice; society must approve — the 
 
96 VILLETTE. 
 
 world must admire what he did, or he counted his 
 measures false and futile. In his victrix he re- 
 quired all that was here visible — the imprint of high 
 cultivation, the consecration of a careful and au- 
 thoritative protection, the adjuncts that Fashion 
 decrees, Wealth purchases, and Taste adjusts ; for 
 these conditions his spirit stipulated ere it surren- 
 dered : they were here to the utmost fulfilled ; and 
 now, proud, impassioned, yet fearing, he did homage 
 to Paulina as his sovereign. As for her, the smile 
 of feeling, rather than of conscious power, slept soft 
 in her eyes. 
 
 They parted. He passed me at speed, hardly 
 feeling the earth he skimmed, and seeing nothing 
 on either hand. He looked very handsome ; mettle 
 and purpose were roused in him fully. 
 
 " Papa, there is Lucy !" cried a musical, friendly 
 voice, " Lucy, dear Lucy — do come here !" 
 
 I hastened to her. She threw back her veil, and 
 stooped from her saddle to kiss me. 
 
 " I was coming to see you to-morrow," said she ; 
 " but now, to-morrow you will come and see me." 
 
 She named the hour, and I promised compliance. 
 
 The morrow's evening found me with her — she 
 and I shut into her own room. I had not seen her 
 
THE FIRST LETTER. 97 
 
 since that occasion when her claims were brought 
 into comparison with those of Ginevra Fanshawe, 
 and had so signally prevailed ; she had much to tell 
 me of her travels in the interval. A most animated, 
 rapid speaker was she in such tete-a-tite, a most 
 lively describer; yet with her artless diction and 
 clear, soft voice, she never seemed to speak too fast 
 or say too much. My own attention I think would 
 not soon have flagged, but by-and-by, she herself 
 seemed to need some change of subject ; she hast- 
 ened to wind up her narrative briefly. Yet why she 
 terminated with so concise an abridgment did not 
 immediately appear; silence followed — a restless 
 silence, not without symptoms of abstraction. Then, 
 turning to me, in a diffident, half-appealing voice, — 
 
 " Lucy—" 
 
 " Well, I am at your side." 
 
 " Is my cousin Ginevra still at Madame Beck's?" 
 
 " Your cousin is still there ; you must be longing 
 to see her." 
 
 " No— not much." 
 
 " You want to invite her to spend another even- 
 ing? 
 
 " No. ... I suppose she still talks about being 
 married ?" 
 
 vol. in. H 
 
98 VILLETTE. 
 
 " Not to any one you care for." 
 "But of course she still thinks of Dr. Bretton? 
 She cannot have changed her mind on that point, 
 because it was so fixed two months ago?" 
 
 " Why, you know, it does not matter. You saw 
 the terms on which they stood." 
 
 tf There was a little misunderstanding that even- 
 ing, certainly ; does she seem unhappy?" 
 
 " Not she. To change the subject. Have you 
 heard or seen nothing of, or from Graham during 
 your absence?" 
 
 '■' Papa had letters from him once or twice, about 
 business I think. He undertook the management 
 of some affair which required attention^ while we 
 were away. Dr. Bretton seems to respect papa, 
 and to have pleasure in obliging him." 
 
 " Yes : you met him yesterday on the boulevard ; 
 you would be able to judge from his aspect that his 
 friends need not be painfully anxious about]his 
 health?" 
 
 " Papa seems to have thought with you. I could 
 not help smiling. He is not particularly observant, 
 you know, because he is often thinking of other 
 things than what pass before his eyes ; but he said, 
 as Dr. Bretton rode away, ' Really it does a man 
 
THE FIRST LETTER. bliJ 
 
 good to see the spirit and energy of that boy.' He 
 called Dr. Bretton a boy ; I believe he almost thinks 
 him so, just as he thinks me a little girl ; he was not 
 speaking to me, but dropped that remark to himself. 
 Lucy " 
 
 Again fell the appealing accent, and at the same 
 instant she left her chair, and came and sat on the 
 stool at my feet. 
 
 I liked her. It is not a declaration I have often 
 made concerning my acquaintance, in the course of 
 this book ; the reader will bear with it for once. 
 Intimate intercourse, close inspection, disclosed in 
 Paulina only what was delicate, intelligent, and 
 sincere ; therefore my regard for her lay deep. 
 An admiration more -superficial might have 
 been more demonstrative ; mine, however, was 
 quiet. 
 
 "What have you to ask of Lucy?" said I; "be 
 brave, and speak out." 
 
 But there was no courage in her eye ; as it met 
 mine, it fell ; and there was no coolness on her 
 cheek — not a transient surface-blush, but a gather- 
 ing inward excitement raised its tint and its tem- 
 perature. 
 
 " Lucy, I do wish to know your thoughts of Dr. 
 
100 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 Bretton. Do, do give me your real opinion of his 
 character — his disposition." 
 
 " His character stands high, and deservedly high." 
 
 " And his disposition ? Tell me about his dispo- 
 sition," she urged ; " you know him well." 
 
 " I know him pretty well." 
 
 " You know his home-side. You have seen him 
 with his mother ; speak of him as a son." 
 
 " He is a fine-hearted son ; his mother's comfort 
 and hope, her pride and pleasure." 
 
 She held my hand between hers, and at each 
 favourable word gave it a little caressing stroke. 
 
 " In what other way is he good, dear Lucy V 
 
 " Dr. Bretton is benevolent — humanely disposed 
 towards all his race. Dr. Bretton would have be- 
 nignity for the lowest savage, or the worst criminal." 
 
 " I heard some gentlemen, some of papa's friends, 
 who were talking about him, say the same. They 
 say many of the poor patients at the hospitals, who 
 tremble before some pitiless and selfish surgeons, 
 welcome him." 
 
 " They are right ; I have witnessed as much. He 
 once took me over a hospital; I saw how he was 
 received : your father's friends are right." 
 
 The softest gratitude animated her eye as she lifted 
 
THE FIRST LETTER. 101 
 
 it a moment. She had yet more to say, but seemed 
 hesitating about time and place. Dusk was be- 
 ginning to reign; her parlour fire already glowed 
 with twilight ruddiness ; but I thought she wished 
 the room dimmer, the hour later. 
 
 "How quiet and secluded we feel here!" Ire- 
 marked, to reassure her. 
 
 " Do we ? Yes ; it is a still evening, and I shall 
 not be called down to tea ; papa is dining out." 
 
 Still holding my hand, she played with the fingers 
 unconsciously, dressed them, now in her own rings, 
 and now circled them with a twine of her beautiful 
 hair ; she patted the palm against her hot cheek, 
 and at last, having cleared a voice that was naturally 
 liquid as a lark's, she said : — 
 
 " You must think it rather strange that I should 
 talk so much about Dr. Bretton, ask so many ques- 
 tions, take such an interest, but — " 
 
 " Not at all strange ; perfectly natural ; you like 
 him." 
 
 " And if I did," said she, with slight quickness, " is 
 that a reason why I should talk ? I suppose you 
 think me weak, like my cousin Ginevra?" 
 
 " If I thought you one whit like Madame 
 Ginevra, I would not sit here waiting for your com- 
 
102 VILLETTE. 
 
 munications. I would get up, walk at my ease 
 about the room, and anticipate all you had to say 
 by a round lecture. Go on." 
 
 " I mean to go on," retorted she ; " what else do 
 you suppose I mean to do?" And she looked and 
 spoke — the little Polly of Bretton — petulant, sen- 
 sitive. " If," said she emphatically, " if I liked Dr. 
 John till I was fit to die for liking him, that alone 
 could not license me to be otherwise than dumb — 
 dumb as the grave — dumb as you, Lucy Snowe — you 
 know it— and you know you would despise me if I 
 failed in self-control, and whined about some ricketty 
 liking that was all on my side." 
 
 " It is true I little respect women or girls who are 
 loquacious either in boasting the triumphs, or be- 
 moaning the mortifications, of feeling. But as to 
 you, Paulina, speak, for I earnestly wish to hear you. 
 Tell me all it will give you pleasure or relief to tell; 
 I ask no more." 
 
 " Do you care for me, Lucy?" 
 
 '• Yes, I do, Paulina." 
 
 " And I love you. I had an odd content in being 
 with you even when I was a little, troublesome, dis- 
 obedient girl ; it was charming to me then to lavish 
 on you my naughtiness and whims. Now you are 
 
THE FIRST LETTER. 103 
 
 acceptable to me, and I like to talk with and trust 
 you. So listen, Lucy." 
 
 And she settled herself, resting against my arm — 
 resting gently, not with honest Mistress Fanshawe's 
 fatiguing and selfish weight. 
 
 " A few^minutes since you asked whether we had 
 not heard from Graham during our absence, and I 
 saidj there were two letters for papa on business ; 
 this was true, but I did not tell you all." 
 
 "You evaded?" 
 
 " I shuffled and equivocated, you know. How- 
 ever, I am going to speak the truth now ; it is get- 
 ting darker ; one can talk at one's ease. Papa 
 often lets me] open the letter-bag and give him out 
 the contents. One morning, about three weeks ago, 
 you don't know how surprised I was to find, amongst 
 a dozen letters for M. de Bassompierre, a note 
 addressed to Miss de Bassompierre. I spied it at 
 once, amidst all the rest ; the handwriting was not 
 strange ; it attracted me directly. I was going to 
 say, ' Papa, here is another letter from Dr. Bretton ;' 
 but the ' Miss ' struck me mute. I actually never 
 received a letter from a gentleman before. Ought 
 I to have shown it to papa, and let him open it and 
 read it first? I could not for my life, Lucy. I know 
 
104 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 so well papa's ideas about me : he forgets rny age ; 
 lie thinks I am a mere school-girl ; he is not aware 
 that other people see I am grown up as tall as I 
 shall be; so, with a curious mixture of feelings, some 
 of them self-reproachful, and some so fluttering and 
 strong, I cannot describe them, I gave papa his 
 twelve letters — his herd of possessions — and kept 
 back my one, my ewe-lamb. It lay in my lap 
 during breakfast, looking up at me with an inex- 
 plicable meaning, making me feel myself a thing 
 double-existent — a child to that dear papa, but no 
 more a child to myself. After breakfast I carried 
 my letter up-stairs, and having secured, myself by 
 turning the key in the door, I began to study the 
 outside of my treasure: it was some minutes before 
 I could get over the direction and penetrate the seal; 
 one does not take a strong place of this kind by 
 instant storm — one sits down awhile before it, as 
 beleaguers say. Graham's hand is like himself, 
 Lucy, and so is his seal — all clear, firm, and 
 rounded — no slovenly splash of wax — a full, solid, 
 steady drop — a distinct impress : no pointed turns 
 harshly pricking the optic nerve, but a clean, 
 mellow, pleasant manuscript, that soothes you 
 as you read. It is like his face — just like 
 
THE FIRST LETTER. 105 
 
 the chiselling of his features : do you know his 
 autograph?" 
 
 " I have seen it : go on." 
 
 " The seal was too beautiful to be broken, so I 
 cut it round with my scissors. On the point of 
 reading the letter at last, I once more drew back 
 voluntarily ; it was too soon yet to drink that 
 draught — the sparkle in the cup was so beautiful — I 
 would watch it yet a minute. Then I remembered 
 all at once that I had not said my prayers that 
 morning. Having heard papa go down to break- 
 fast a little earlier than usual, I had been afraid of 
 keeping him waiting, and had hastened to join him 
 as soon as dressed, thinking no harm to put off 
 prayers till afterwards. Some people would say I 
 ought to have served God first and then man ; but 
 I don't think Heaven could be jealous of anything 
 I might do for papa. I believe I am superstitious. 
 A voice seemed now to say that another feeling than 
 filial affection was in question — to urge me to pray 
 before I dared to read what I so longed to read — to 
 deny myself yet a moment, and remember first a 
 great duty. I have had these impulses ever since I 
 can remember. I put the letter down and said my 
 prayers, adding, at the end, a strong entreaty that 
 
106 VILLETTE. 
 
 whatever happened, I might not be tempted or led 
 to cause papa any sorrow, and might never, in 
 caring for others, neglect him. The very thought 
 of such a possibility so pierced my heart that it 
 made me cry. But still, Lucy, I felt that in time 
 papa would have to be taught the truth, managed, 
 and induced to hear reason. 
 
 i " I read the letter. Lucy, life is said to be all 
 disappointment. / was not disappointed. Ere I 
 read, and while I read, my heart did more than 
 throb — it trembled fast — every quiver seemed like 
 the pant of an animal athirst, laid down at a well 
 and drinking ; and the well proved quite full, 
 gloriously clear ; it rose up munificently of its own 
 impulse ; I saw the sun through its gush, and not a 
 mote, Lucy, no moss, no insect, no atom in the 
 thrice-refined golden gurgle. 
 
 " Life," she went on, " is said to be full of pain 
 to some. I have read biographies where the way- 
 farer seemed to journey on from suffering to suffer- 
 ing ; where Hope flew before him fast, never 
 alighting so near, or lingering so long, as to give 
 his hand a chance of one realizing grasp. I have 
 read of those who sowed in tears, and whose har- 
 vest, so far from being reaped in joy, perished by 
 
THE FIRST LETTER. 
 
 107 
 
 untimely blight, or was borne off by sudden whirl- 
 wind ; and, alas ! some of these met the winter with 
 empty garners, and died of utter want in the darkest 
 and coldest of the year." 
 
 " Was it their fault, Paulina, that they of whom 
 you speak thus died?" 
 
 " Not always their fault. Some of them were 
 good, endeavouring people. I am not endeavour- 
 ing, nor actively good, yet God has caused me to 
 grow in sun, due moisture, and safe protection, 
 sheltered, fostered, taught, by my dear father ; and 
 now — now — another comes. Graham loves me." 
 
 For some minutes we both paused on this climax. 
 
 " Does your father know ? " I inquired, in a low 
 voice. 
 
 " Graham spoke with deep respect of papa, but 
 implied that he dared not approach that quarter as 
 yet ; he must first prove his worth : he added that he 
 must have some light respecting myself and my own 
 feelings ere he ventured to risk a step in the matter 
 elsewhere." 
 
 " How did you reply?" 
 
 " I replied briefly, but I did not repulse him. 
 Yet I almost trembled for fear of making the 
 answer too cordial : Graham's tastes are so 
 
108 VILLETTE. 
 
 fastidious. I wrote it three times — chastening and 
 subduing the phrases at every rescript ; at last, 
 having confected it till it seemed to me to resemble 
 a morsel of ice flavoured with ever so slight a zest 
 of fruit or sugar, I ventured to seal and despatch it." 
 
 " Excellent, Paulina ! Your instinct is fine ; 
 you understand Dr. Bretton." 
 
 " But how must I manage about papa ? There 
 I am still in pain." 
 
 " Do not manage at all. Wait now. Only 
 maintain no further correspondence till your father 
 knows all, and gives his sanction." 
 
 " Will he ever give it?" 
 
 " Time will show. Wait." 
 
 " Dr. Bretton wrote one other letter, deeply 
 grateful for my calm, brief note ; but I anticipated 
 your advice, by saying, that while my sentiments 
 continued the same, I could not without my father's 
 knowledge write again." 
 
 " You acted as you ought to have done ; so Dr. 
 Bretton will feel : it will increase his pride in you, 
 his love for you, if either be capable of increase. 
 Paulina, that gentle hoar-frost of yours, surround- 
 ing so much pure, fine flame, is a priceless 
 privilege of nature." 
 
THE FIRST LETTER. 109 
 
 " You see I feel Graham's disposition," said 
 she. " I feel that no delicacy can be too exquisite 
 for his treatment." 
 
 " It is perfectly proved that you comprehend 
 him, and then — whatever Dr. Bretton's disposition, 
 were he one who expected to be more nearly met — 
 you would still act truthfully, openly, tenderly, with 
 your father." 
 
 " Lucy, I trust I shall thus act always. Oh, 
 it will be pain to wake papa from his dream, and 
 tell him I am no more a little girl ! " 
 
 " Be in no hurry to do so, Paulina. Leave 
 the revelation to Time and your kind Fate. I 
 also have noticed the gentleness of her cares for 
 you : doubt not she will benignantly order the cir- 
 cumstances, and fitly appoint the hour. Yes ; I 
 have thought over your life just as you have your- 
 self thought it over ; I have made comparisons 
 like those to which you adverted. We know 
 not the future, but the past has been propi- 
 tious. 
 
 " As a child I feared for you ; nothing that has 
 life was ever more susceptible than your nature in 
 infancy : under harshness, or neglect, neither your 
 outward nor your inward self would have ripened to 
 
110 VILLETTE. 
 
 what they now are. Much pain, much fear, much 
 struggle would have troubled the very lines of 
 your features, broken their regularity, would have 
 harassed your nerves into the fever of habitual 
 irritation : you would have lost in health and 
 cheerfulness, in grace and sweetness. Providence 
 has protected and cultured you, not only for your 
 own sake, but I believe for Graham's. His star, 
 too, was fortunate : to develope fully the best of 
 his nature, a companion like you was needed ; there 
 you are, ready. You must be united. I knew it 
 the first day I saw you together at La Terrasse. 
 In all that mutually concerns you and Graham 
 there seems to me promise, plan, harmony. I do 
 not think the sunny youth of either will prove the 
 forerunner of stormy age. I think it is deemed 
 good that you two should live in peace and be happy 
 — not as angels, but as few are happy amongst 
 mortals. Some lives are thus blessed : it is God's 
 will : it is the attesting trace and lingering evidence 
 of Eden. Other lives run from the first another 
 course. Other travellers encounter weather fitful 
 and gusty, wild and variable— breast adverse winds, 
 are belated and overtaken by the early closing 
 winter night. Neither can this happen without the 
 
THE FIRST LETTER. Ill 
 
 sanction of God ; and I know that, amidst His 
 boundless works, is somewhere stored the secret of 
 this last fate's justice : I know that His treasures 
 contain the proof as the promise of its mercy." 
 
112 VILLETTE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 M. PAUL KEEPS HIS PROMISE. 
 
 On the first of May, we had all — i. e. the twenty 
 boarders and the four teachers — notice to rise at 
 five o'clock of the morning, to be dressed and ready 
 by six, to put ourselves under the command of M. 
 le Professeur Emanuel, who was to head our march 
 forth from Villette, for it was on this day he pro- 
 posed to fulfil his promise of taking us to breakfast 
 in the country. I, indeed, as the reader may per- 
 haps remember, had not had the honour of an 
 invitation when this excursion was first projected — 
 rather the contrary ; but on my now making allu- 
 sion to this fact, and wishing to know how it was to 
 be, my ear received a pull, of which I did not 
 venture to challenge the repetition by raising further 
 difficulties. 
 
 " Je vous conseille de vous faire prier," said M. 
 
M. PAUL KEEPS HIS PROMISE. 113 
 
 Emanuel, imperially menacing the other ear. One 
 Napoleonic compliment, however, was enough, so I 
 made up my mind to be of the party. 
 
 The morning broke calm as summer, with singing 
 of birds in the garden, and a light dew-mist that 
 promised heat. We all said it would be warm, and 
 we all felt pleasure in folding away heavy garments, 
 and in assuming the attire suiting a sunny season. 
 The clean fresh print dress, and the light straw 
 bonnet, each made and trimmed as the French 
 workwoman alone can make and trim, so as to 
 unite the utterly unpretending with the perfectly 
 becoming, was the rule of costume. Nobody 
 flaunted in faded silk ; nobody wore a second-hand 
 best article. 
 
 At six the bell rang merrily, and we poured down 
 the staircase, through the carre, along the corridor, 
 into the vestibule. There stood our Professor, 
 wearing, not his savage-looking paletot and severe 
 bonnet-grec, but a young-looking belted- blouse and 
 cheerful straw hat. He had for us all the kindest 
 good-morrow, and most of us for him had a thanks- 
 giving smile. We were marshalled in order and 
 soon started. 
 
 The streets were yet quiet, and the boulevards 
 
 VOL. III. i 
 
114 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 were fresh and peaceful as fields. I believe we were 
 very happy as we walked along. This chief of ours 
 had the secret of giving a certain impetus to hap- 
 piness when he would ; just as, in an opposite mood, 
 he could give a thrill to fear. 
 
 He did not lead nor follow us, but walked along 
 the line, giving a word to every one, talking much 
 to his favourites, and not wholly neglecting even 
 those he disliked. It was rather my wish, for a 
 reason I had, to keep slightly aloof from notice, and 
 being paired with Ginevra Fanshawe, bearing on 
 my arm the dear pressure of that angel's not un- 
 substantial limb — (she continued in excellent case, 
 and I can assure the reader it was no trifling 
 business to bear the burden of her loveliness ; many 
 a time in the course of that warm day I wished to 
 goodness there had been less of the charming com- 
 modity) — however, having her, as I said, I tried to 
 make her useful by interposing her always between 
 myself and M. Paul, shifting my place, according 
 as I heard him coming up to the right hand or the 
 left. My private motive for this manoeuvre might 
 be traced to the circumstance of the new print dress 
 I wore, being pink in colour — a fact which, under 
 our present convoy, made me feel something as I 
 
M. PAUL KEEPS HIS PROMISE. 115 
 
 have felt, when, clad in a shawl with a red border 
 necessitated to traverse a meadow where pastured a 
 bull. 
 
 For awhile, the shifting system, together with 
 some modifications in the arrangement of a black 
 silk scarf, answered my purpose; but, by-and-bye, 
 he found out, that whether he came to this side or 
 to that, Miss Fanshawe was still his neighbour. 
 The course of acquaintance between Ginevra and 
 him had never run so smooth that his temper did 
 not undergo a certain crisping process whenever he 
 heard her English accent : nothing in their disposi- 
 tions fitted ; they jarred if they came in contact ; 
 he held her empty and affected ; she deemed him 
 bearish, meddling, repellent. 
 
 At last, when he had changed his place for about 
 the sixth time, finding still the same untoward 
 result to the experiment — he thrust his head for- 
 ward, settled his eyes on mine, and demanded with 
 impatience — 
 
 " Qu' est ce que c' est ? Vous me jouez des 
 tours?" 
 
 The words were hardly out of his mouth, how- 
 ever, ere, with his customary quickness, he seized 
 the root of this proceeding : in vain I shook out 
 
116 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 the long fringe, and spread forth the broad end of 
 my scarf. " A — h — h ! c' est la robe rose ! " broke 
 from his lips, affecting me very much like the 
 sudden and irate low of some lord of the meadow. 
 
 "It is only cotton," I alleged, hurriedly ; "and 
 cheaper, and washes better than any other colour." 
 
 *' Et Mademoiselle Lucie est coquette comme dix 
 Parisiennes," he answered. " A-t-on jamais vu 
 une Anglaise pareille. Regardez plutot son cha- 
 peau, et ses gants, et ses brodequins ! " These articles 
 of dress were just like what my companions wore; 
 certainly not one whit smarter — perhaps rather 
 plainer than most — but monsieur had now got hold 
 of his text, and I began to chafe under the expected 
 sermon. It went off, however, as mildly as the 
 menace of a storm sometimes passes on a summer 
 day. I got but one flash of sheet lightning in the 
 shape of a single bantering smile from his eyes ; 
 and then he said : — 
 
 " Courage ! — a vrai dire je ne suis pas fache, 
 peutetre meme suis je content qu'on s'est fait si 
 belle pour ma petite fete." 
 
 "Mais ma robe n' est pas belle, monsieur — elle 
 n' est que propre." 
 
 " J'aime la proprete," said he. In short, he was 
 
M. PAUL KEEPS HI!} PROMISE. 117 
 
 not to be dissatisfied ; the sun of good humour was 
 to triumph on this auspicious morning ; it consumed 
 scudding clouds ere they sullied its disk. 
 
 And now we were in the country, amongst what 
 they called " les bois et les petits sentiers." These 
 woods and lanes a month later, would offer but a 
 dusty and doubtful seclusion: now, however, in 
 their May greenness and morning repose, they 
 looked very pleasant. 
 
 We reached a certain well planted round, in the 
 taste of Labassecour, with an orderly circle of lime- 
 trees : here a halt was called ; on the green swell of 
 ground surrounding this well, we were ordered to 
 be seated, monsieur taking his place in our midst, 
 and suffering us to gather in a knot round him. 
 Those who liked him more than they feared, came 
 close, and these were chiefly little ones ; those who 
 feared more than they liked, kept somewhat aloof; 
 those in whom much affection had given, even to 
 what remained of fear, a pleasurable zest, observed 
 the greatest distance. 
 
 He began to tell us a story. Well could he nar 
 rate : in such a diction as children love, and learned 
 men emulate ; a diction simple in its strength, and 
 strong in its simplicity. There were beautiful 
 
118 VILLETTE. 
 
 touches in that little tale ; sweet glimpses of feeling 
 and hues of description that, while I listened, sunk 
 into my mind, and since have never faded. He 
 tinted a twilight scene — I hold it in memory still — 
 such a picture I have never looked on from artists' 
 pencil. 
 
 I have said that, for myself, I had no impromptu 
 faculty; and perhaps that very deficiency made 
 me marvel the more at one who possessed it in per- 
 fection. M. Emanuel was not a man to write 
 books ; but I have heard him lavish, with careless, 
 unconscious prodigality, such mental wealth as books 
 seldom boast ; his mind was indeed my library, and 
 whenever it was opened to me, I entered bliss. In- 
 tellectually imperfect as I was, I could read little ; 
 there were few bound and printed volumes that did 
 not weary me — whose perusal did not fag and blind 
 — but his tomes of thought were collyrium to the 
 spirit's eyes ; over their contents, inward sight grew 
 clear and strong. I used to think what a delight 
 it would be for one who loved him better than he 
 loved himself, to gather and store up those handfuls 
 of gold-dust, so recklesslv flung to heaven's reckless 
 winds. 
 
 His story done, he approached the little knol 
 
M. PAUL KEEPS HIS PROMISE. 119 
 
 where I and Ginevra sat apart. In his usual mode 
 of demanding an opinion (he had not reticence to 
 wait till it was voluntarily offered) he asked : — 
 
 " Were you interested ?" 
 
 According to my wonted undemonstrative fashion, 
 I simply answered — 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Was it good?" 
 
 " Very good." 
 
 " Yet I could not write that down," said he. 
 
 " Why not, monsieur ?" 
 
 " I hate the mechanical labour ; I hate to stoop 
 and sit still. I could dictate it, though, with plea- 
 sure to an amanuensis who suited me. Would 
 Mademoiselle Lucy write for me if I asked her ?" 
 
 " Monsieur would be too quick ; he would urge 
 me, and be angry, if my pen did not keep pace with 
 his lips." 
 
 " Try some day ; let us see the monster I can 
 make of myself under the circumstances. But just 
 now, there is no question of dictation ; I mean to 
 make you useful in another office. Do you see 
 yonder farm-house ? " 
 
 " Surrounded with trees? Yes." 
 
 " There we are to breakfast ; and while the good 
 
120 VILLETTE. 
 
 fermiere makes the cafe au lait in a caldron, you 
 and five others, whom I shall select, will spread 
 with butter half a hundred rolls." 
 
 Having formed his troop into line once more, he 
 marched us straight on the farm, which, on seeing 
 our force, surrendered without capitulation. 
 
 Clean knives and plates, and fresh butter being 
 provided, half a dozen of us, chosen by our pro- 
 fessor, set to work under his directions, to prepare 
 for breakfast a huge basket of rolls, with which the 
 baker had been ordered to provision the farm, in 
 anticipation of our coming, Coffee and chocolate 
 were already made hot ; cream and new-laid eggs 
 were added to the treat, and M. Emanuel, always 
 generous, would have given a large order for 
 "jambon" and "confitures" in addition, but that 
 some of us, who presumed perhaps upon our in- 
 fluence, insisted that it would be a most reckless 
 waste of victual. He railed at us for our pains, 
 terming us " des menageres avares ;" but we let him 
 talk, and managed the economy of the repast our 
 own way. 
 
 With what a pleasant countenance he stood on 
 the farm-kitchen hearth looking on ! He was a 
 man whom it made happy to see others happy ; he 
 
M. PAUL KEEPS HIS PROMISE. 121 
 
 liked to have movement, animation, abundance and 
 enjoyment round him. We asked where he would 
 sit. He told us, we knew well he was our slave, 
 and we his tyrants, and that he dared not so much 
 as choose a chair without our leave ; so we set him 
 the farmer's great chair at the head of the long 
 table, and put him into it. 
 
 Well might we like him, with all his passions and 
 hurricanes, when he could be so benignant and docile 
 at times, as he was just now. Indeed, at the worst, it 
 was only his nerves that were irritable, not his temper 
 that was radically bad ; soothe, comprehend, com- 
 fort him, and he was a lamb ; he would not harm a 
 fly. Only to the very stupid, perverse, or un- 
 sympathizing, was he in the slightest degree dan- 
 gerous. 
 
 Mindful always of his religion, he made the 
 youngest of the party say a little prayer before we 
 begun breakfast, crossing himself as devoutly as a 
 woman. I had never seen him pray before, 'or 
 make that pious sign ; he did it so simply, with 
 such child-like faith, I could not help smiling 
 pleasurably as I watched ; his eyes met my smile ; 
 he just stretched out his kind hand, saying, 
 
 " Donnez moi la main ! I see we worship the 
 
122 VILLETTE. 
 
 same God, in the same spirit, though by different 
 rites." 
 
 Most of M. Emanuel's brother professors were 
 emancipated free-thinkers, infidels, atheists ; and 
 many of them men whose lives would not bear 
 scrutiny : he was more like a knight of old, re- 
 ligious in his way, and of spotless fame. Innocent 
 childhood, beautiful youth were safe at his side. 
 He had vivid passions, keen feelings, but his pure 
 honour and his artless piety were the strong charm 
 that kept the lions couchant. 
 
 That breakfast was a merry meal, and the merri- 
 ment was not mere vacant clatter : M. Paul origi- 
 nated, led, controlled and heightened it; his social, 
 lively temper played unfettered and unclouded ; 
 surrounded only by women and children there was 
 nothing to cross and thwart him ; he had his own 
 way, and a pleasant way it was. 
 
 The meal over, the party were free to run and 
 play in the meadows ; a few stayed to help the 
 farmer's wife to put away her earthenware. M. Paul 
 called me from among these to come out and sit 
 near him under a tree — whence he could view the 
 troop gambolling over a wide pasture — and read to 
 him whilst he took his cigar. He sat on a rustic 
 
M. PAUL KEEPS HIS PROMISE. 123 
 
 bench, and I at the tree-root. While I read (a 
 pocket-classic — a Corneille — I did not like it, but 
 he did, finding therein beauties I never could be 
 brought to perceive), he listened with a sweetness of 
 calm the more impressive from the impetuosity of 
 his general nature ; the deepest happiness filled his 
 blue eye and smoothed his broad forehead. I, too 
 was happy, happy with the bright day, happier with 
 his presence, happiest with his kindness. 
 
 He asked, by-and-by, if I would not rather run 
 to my companions than sit there? I said, no; I 
 felt content to be where he was. He asked whe- 
 ther, if I were his sister, I should always be con- 
 tent to stay with a brother such as he. I said, I 
 believed I should ; and I felt it. Again, he inquired 
 whether, if he were to leave Villette, and go far 
 away, I should be sorry ; and I dropped Corneille, 
 and made no reply. 
 
 " Petite soeur," said he ; " how long could you 
 remember me if we were separated ?" 
 
 " That, monsieur, I can never tell, because I do 
 not know how long it will be before I shall cease 
 to remember everything earthly." 
 
 " If I were to go beyond seas for two — three — 
 five years, should you welcome me on my return?" 
 
124 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 " Monsieur, how could I live in the interval ?" 
 
 " Pourtant j'ai ete pour vous bien dur, bien 
 exigeant." 
 
 I hid rny face with the book, for it was covered 
 with tears. I asked him why he talked so ; and 
 he said he would talk so no more, and cheered me 
 again with the kindest encouragement. Still, the 
 gentleness with which he treated me during the 
 rest of the day, went somehow to my heart. It 
 •was too tender. It was mournful. I would rather 
 he had been abrupt, whimsical, and irate as was 
 his wont. 
 
 When hot noon arrived — for the day turned out 
 as we had anticipated; glowing as June — our 
 shepherd collected his sheep from the pasture, and 
 proceeded to lead us all softly home. But we had 
 a whole league to walk — thus far from Villette was 
 the farm where we had breakfasted ; the children, 
 especially, were tired with their play ; the spirits 
 of most flagged at the prospect of this mid-day 
 walk over chaussees flinty, glaring and dusty. 
 This state of things had been foreseen and pro- 
 vided for. Just beyond the boundary of the farm 
 we met two spacious vehicles coming to fetch us — 
 such conveyances as are hired out purposely for the 
 
M. PAUL KEEPS HIS PROMISE. 125 
 
 accommodation of school-parties ; here, with good 
 management, room was found for all, and in another 
 hour M. Paul made safe consignment of his charge 
 at the Rue Fossette. It had been a pleasant day : it 
 would have been perfect, but for the breathing 
 of melancholy which had dimmed its sunshine a 
 moment. 
 
 That tarnish was renewed the same even- 
 ing. 
 
 Just about sunset, I saw M. Emanuel come out 
 of the front-door, accompanied by Madame Beck. 
 They paced the centre- alley for nearly an hour, 
 talking earnestly : he — looking grave, yet restless ; 
 she — wearing an amazed, expostulatory, dissuasive 
 air. 
 
 I wondered what was under discussion ; and 
 when Madame Beck re-entered the house as it 
 darkened, leaving her kinsman Paul yet lingering 
 in the garden, I said to myself— 
 
 " He called me ' petite sceur' this morning. If 
 he were really my brother, how I should like to 
 go to him just now, and ask what it is that 
 presses on his mind. See how he leans against 
 that tree, with his arms crossed and his brow 
 bent. He wants consolation, I know : Madame 
 
126 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 does not console ; she only remonstrates. What 
 now ?" 
 
 Starting from quiescence to action, M. Paul 
 came striding erect and quick down the garden. 
 The carre doors were yet open : I thought he 
 was probably going to water the orange-trees in 
 the tubs, after his occasional custom ; on reach- 
 ing the court, however, he took an abrupt turn 
 and made for the berceau and the first classe 
 glass-door. There, in that first classe I was, thence 
 I had been watching him ; but there I could not 
 find courage to await his approach. He had 
 turned so suddenly, he strode so fast, he looked 
 so strange ; the coward within me grew pale, 
 shrunk and — not waiting to listen to reason, and 
 hearing the shrubs crush and the gravel crunch to 
 his advance — she was gone on the wings of panic. 
 
 Nor did I pause till I had taken sanctuary in the 
 oratory, now empty. Listening there with beating 
 pulses, and an unaccountable, undefined apprehen- 
 sion, I heard him pass through all the schoolrooms, 
 clashing the doors impatiently as he went ; I heard 
 him invade the refectory which the " lecture pieuse " 
 was now holding under hallowed constraint ; I 
 heard him pronounce these words — 
 
M. PAUL KEEPS HIS PKOMISE. 127 
 
 " Ou est Mademoiselle Lucie ? " 
 
 And just as, summoning my courage, I was pre- 
 paring to go down and do what, after all, I most 
 wished to do in the world — viz., meet him — the wiry 
 voice of St. Pierre replied glibly and falsely, " Elle 
 est au lit." And he passed, with the stamp of vexa- 
 tion, into the corridor. There Madame Beck met, 
 captured, chid, convoyed to the street-door, and 
 finally dismissed him. 
 
 As that street-door closed, a sudden amazement 
 at my own perverse proceeding struck like a blow 
 upon me. I felt from the first it was me he wanted 
 — me he was seeking — and had not I wanted him 
 too? What, then, had carried me away? What 
 had rapt me beyond his reach ? He had something 
 to tell : he was going to tell me that something : 
 my ear strained its nerve to hear it, and I had made 
 the confidence impossible. Yearning to listen and 
 console, while I thought audience and solace beyond 
 hope's reach — no sooner did opportunity suddenly 
 and fully arrive, than I evaded it, as I would have 
 evaded the levelled shaft of mortality. 
 
 Well, my insane inconsistency had its reward. 
 Instead of the comfort, the certain satisfaction, I 
 might have won — could I but have put choking 
 
128 VILLETTE. 
 
 panic down, and stood firm two minutes — here was 
 dead blank, dark doubt, and drear suspense. 
 
 I took my wages to my pillow, and passed the 
 night counting them. 
 
MALEVOLA. 129 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 MALEVOLA. 
 
 Madame Beck called me on Thursday afternoon, 
 and asked whether I had any occupation to hinder 
 me from going into town and executing some little 
 commissions for her at the shops. 
 
 Being disengaged, and placing myself at her ser- 
 vice, I was presently furnished with a list of the 
 wools, silks, embroidering thread, etcetera, wanted 
 in the pupils' work, and having equipped myself in 
 a manner suiting the threatening aspect of a cloudy 
 and sultry day, I was just drawing the spring-bolt 
 of the street-door, in act to issue forth, when 
 Madame's voice again summoned me to the salle a. 
 manger. 
 
 " Pardon, Meess Lucie ! " cried she, in the seeming 
 haste of an impromptu thought, " I have just recol- 
 
 VOL. III. k 
 
ISO VILLETTE. 
 
 lected one more errand for you, if your good nature 
 will not deem itself overburdened 1 " 
 
 Of course I " confounded myself " in asseverations 
 to the contrary ; and Madame, running into the 
 little salon, brought thence a pretty basket, filled 
 with fine hothouse fruit, rosy, perfect, and tempting, 
 reposing amongst the dark green, wax-like leaves, 
 and pale yellow stars of, I know not what, exotic 
 plant. 
 
 " There," she said, " it is not heavy, and will 
 not shame your neat toilette, as if it were a house- 
 hold, servant-like detail. Do me the favour to 
 leave this little basket at the house of Madame 
 Walravens, with my felicitations on her fete. She 
 lives down in the old town, Numero 3, Rue des 
 Mages. I fear you will find the walk rather long, 
 but you have the whole afternoon before you, and 
 do not hurry ; if you are not back in time for 
 dinner, I will order a portion to be saved, or 
 Goton, with whom you are a favourite, will have 
 pleasure in tossing up some trifle, for your especial 
 benefit. You shall not be forgotten, ma bonne 
 meess. And oh ! please ! " (calling me back once 
 more) "be sure to insist on seeing Madame Wal- 
 ravens herself, and giving the basket into her own 
 
MALEVOLA. 131 
 
 hands, in order that there may be no mistake, for 
 she is rather a punctilious personage. Adieu ! 
 Au re voir ! " 
 
 And at last I got away. The shop-commissions 
 took some time to execute, that choosing and 
 matching of silks and wools being always a tedious 
 business, but at last I got through my list. The 
 patterns for the slippers, the bell-ropes, the cabas 
 were selected — the slides and tassels for the purses 
 chosen — the whole " tripotage," in short, was off 
 my mind ; nothing but the fruit and the felicita- 
 tions remained to be attended to. 
 
 I rather liked the prospect of a long walk, deep 
 into the old and grim Basse-Ville ; and I liked it 
 no worse because the evening sky, over the city, 
 was settling into a mass of black -blue metal, 
 heated at tlfe rim, and inflaming slowly to a heavy 
 red. 
 
 I fear a high wind, because storm demands that 
 exertion of strength and use of action I always 
 yield with pain ; but the sullen down-fall, the thick 
 snow-descent, or dark rush of rain, asks only resig- 
 nation — the quiet abandonment of garments and 
 person to be drenched. In return, it sweeps a great 
 capital clean before you ; it makes you a quiet path 
 
132 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 through broad, grand streets ; it petrifies a living 
 city, as if by eastern enchantment ; it transforms a 
 Villette into a Tadmor. Let, then, the rains fall, and 
 the floods descend — only I must first get rid of this 
 basket of fruit. 
 
 An unknown clock from an unknown tower (Jean 
 Baptiste's voice was now too distant to be audible) 
 was tolling the third quarter past five, when I reached 
 that street and house whereof Madame Beck had 
 given me the address. It was no street at all ; it 
 seemed rather to be part of a square ; it was quiet, 
 grass grew between the broad gray flags, the houses 
 were large and looked very old — behind them rose 
 the appearance of trees, indicating gardens at the 
 back. Antiquity brooded above this region, business 
 was banished thence. Rich men had once possessed 
 this quarter, and once grandeur had made her seat 
 here. That church whose dark, half-ruinous turrets 
 overlooked the square, was the venerable and for- 
 merly opulent shrine of the Magi. But wealth and 
 greatness had long since stretched their gilded 
 pinions and fled hence, leaving these their ancient 
 nests, perhaps to house Penury for a time, or per- 
 haps'to stand cold and empty, mouldering unten- 
 anted in the course of winters. 
 
MALEVOLA. 133 
 
 As I crossed this deserted "place," on whose 
 pavement drops almost as large as a five-franc piece 
 were now slowly darkening, I saw, in its whole ex- 
 panse, no symptom or evidence of life, except what 
 was given in the figure of an infirm old priest, who 
 went past, bending and propped on a staff — the type 
 of eld and decay. 
 
 He had issued from the very house to which I 
 was directed; and when I paused before the door 
 just closed after him, and rang the bell, he turned 
 to look at me. Nor did he soon avert his gaze ; 
 perhaps he thought me, with my basket of summer 
 fruit, and my lack of the dignity age confers, an in- 
 congruous figure in such a scene. I know, had a 
 young ruddy-faced bonne opened the door to admit 
 me, I should have thought such a one little in har- 
 mony with her dwelling ; but when I found myself 
 confronted by a very old woman, wearing a very 
 antique peasant costume, a cap alike hideous and 
 costly, with long flaps of native lace, a petticoat and 
 jacket of cloth, and sabots more like little boats 
 than shoes, it seemed all right, and soothingly in 
 character. 
 
 The expression of her face was not quite so sooth- 
 ing as the cut of her costume ; anything more can- 
 
134 VILLETTE. 
 
 tankerous I have seldom seen ; she would scarcely 
 reply to my inquiry after Madame Walravens; I 
 believe she would have snatched the basket of fruit 
 from my hand, had not the old priest, hobbling up, 
 checked her, and himself lent an ear to the message 
 with which I was charged. 
 
 His apparent deafness rendered it a little difficult 
 to make him fully understand that I must see Ma- 
 dame Walravens, and consign the frnit into her own 
 hands. At last, however, he comprehended the fact 
 that [such were my orders, and that duty enjoined 
 their literal fulfilment. Addressing the aged bonne, 
 not in French, but in the aboriginal tongue of La- 
 bassecour, he persuaded her, at last, to let me cross 
 the inhospitable threshold, and himself escorting 
 me up-stairs, I was ushered into a sort of salon, and 
 there left. 
 
 The room was large, and had a fine old ceiling, 
 and almost church-like windows of coloured glass ; 
 but it was desolate, and in the shadow of the coming 
 storm, looked strangely lowering. Within — opened a 
 smaller room ; there, however, the blind of the single 
 casement was closed ; through the deep gloom few 
 details of furniture were apparent. These few I 
 amused myself by puzzling to make out ; and, in 
 
MALEVOLA. 135 
 
 particular, I was attracted by the outline of a pic- 
 ture on the wall. 
 
 By-and-bye the picture seemed to give way : to 
 my bewilderment, it shook, it sunk, it rolled back 
 into nothing ; its vanishing left an opening arched, 
 leading into an arched passage, with a mystic wind- 
 ing stair ; both passage and stair were of cold stone, 
 uncarpeted and unpainted. Down this donjon stair 
 descended a tap, tap, like a stick ; soon, there fell on 
 the steps a shadow, and last of all, I was aware of a 
 substance. 
 
 Yet, was it actual substance, this appearance ap- 
 proaching me ? this obstruction, partially darkening 
 the arch? 
 
 It drew near, and I saw it well. I began to com- 
 prehend where I was. Well might this old square 
 be named quarter of the Magii — well might the 
 three towers, overlooking it, own for godfathers three 
 mystic sages of a dead and dark art. Hoar enchant- 
 ment here prevailed ; a spell had opened for me 
 elf-land — that cell-like room, that vanishing picture, 
 that arch and passage, and stair of stone, were all 
 parts of a fairy tale. Distincter even than these 
 scenic details stood the chief figure — Cunegonde, the 
 sorceress ! Malevola, the evil fairv. How was she ? 
 
1"6 VILLETTE. 
 
 She might be three feet high, but she had no 
 shape ; her skinny hands rested upon each other, 
 and pressed the gold knob of a wand-like ivory staff. 
 Her face was large, set, not upon her shoulders, but 
 before her breast ; she seemed to have no neck ; I 
 should have said there were a hundred years in her 
 features, and more perhaps in her eyes — her malign, 
 unfriendly eyes, with thick gray brows above, and 
 livid lids all round. How severely they viewed me, 
 with a sort of dull displeasure ! 
 
 This being wore a gown of brocade, dyed bright 
 blue, full-tinted as the gentianella flower, and co- 
 vered with satin foliage in a large pattern ; over the 
 gown a costly shawl, gorgeously bordered, and so 
 large for her, that its many-coloured fringe swept 
 the floor. But her chief points were her jewels : 
 she had long, clear ear-rings, blazing with a lustre 
 which could not be borrowed or false ; she had rings 
 on her skeleton hands, with thick gold hoops, and 
 stones — purple, green, and blood-red. Hunchbacked, 
 dwarfish, and doting, she was adorned like a bar- 
 barian queen. 
 
 " Que me voulez-vous ? " said she hoarsely, with 
 the voice rather of male than of female old age ; 
 and, indeed, a silver beard bristled her chin. 
 
MALEVOLA. 137 
 
 I delivered my basket and my message. 
 
 " Is that all ?" she demanded. 
 
 " It is all," said I. 
 
 " Truly, it was well worth while," she answered. 
 " Return to Madame Beck, and tell her I can buy 
 fruit when I want it, et quant a ses felicitations, je 
 m'en moque ! " And this courteous dame turned 
 her back. 
 
 Just as she turned, a peal of thunder broke, and 
 a flash of lightning blazed broad over salon and 
 boudoir. The tale of magic seemed to proceed with 
 due accompaniment of the elements. The wanderer, 
 decoyed into the enchanted castle, heard rising, out- 
 side, the spell-wakened tempest. 
 
 What, in all this, was I to think of Madame 
 Beck 1 She owned strange acquaintance ; she 
 offered messages and gifts at an unique shrine, and 
 inauspicious seemed the bearing of the uncouth thing- 
 she worshipped. There went that sullen Sidonia, 
 tottering and trembling like palsy incarnate, tapping 
 her ivory staff on the mosaic parquet, and muttering 
 venomously as she vanished. 
 
 Down washed the rain, deep lowered the welkin; 
 the clouds,ruddy a while ago, had now, through all 
 their blackness, turned deadly pale, as if in terror. 
 
138 VILLETTE. 
 
 Notwithstanding my late boast about not fearing a 
 shower, I hardly liked to go out under this water- 
 spout. Then the gleams of lightning were very 
 fierce, the thunder crashed very near ; this storm 
 had gathered immediately above Villette ; it seemed 
 to have burst at the zenith ; it rushed down prone ; 
 the forked, slant bolts pierced athwart vertical tor- 
 rents ; red zig-zags interlaced a descent blanched as 
 white metal : and all broke from a sky heavily black 
 in its swollen abundance. 
 
 Leaving Madame Walravens' inhospitable salon, 
 I betook myself to her cold staircase; there 
 was a seat on the landing — there I waited. Some- 
 body came gliding along the gallery just above ; it 
 was the old priest. 
 
 " Indeed Mademoiselle shall not sit there," said 
 he. "It would displeasure our benefactor if he 
 knew a stranger was so treated in this house." 
 
 And he begged me so earnestly to return to the 
 salon, that, without discourtesy, I could not but 
 comply. The smaller room was better furnished 
 and more habitable than the larger ; thither he intro- 
 duced me. Partially withdrawing the blind, he 
 disclosed what seemed more like an oratory than a 
 boudoir, a very solemn little chamber, looking as if 
 
MALEVOLA. 
 
 139 
 
 t were a place rather dedicated to relics and remem- 
 brance, than designed for present use and comfort. 
 
 The good father sat down, as if to keep me com- 
 pany ; but instead of conversing, he took out a book, 
 fastened on the page his eyes, and employed his lips 
 in whispering — what sounded like a prayer or litany. 
 A yellow electric light from the sky gilded his bald 
 head ; his figure remained in shade — deep and 
 purple ; he sat still as sculpture ; he seemed to 
 forget me for his prayers ; he only looked up when 
 a fiercer bolt, or a harsher, closer rattle told of 
 nearing danger ; even then, it was not in fear, but in 
 seeming awe, he raised his eyes. I too was awe- 
 struck ; being, however under no pressure of slavish 
 terror, my thoughts and observations were free. 
 
 To speak truth, I was beginning to fancy that the 
 old priest resembled that Pere Silas, before whom I 
 had kneeled in the church of the Beguinage. The 
 idea was vague, for I had seen my confessor only in 
 dusk and in profile, yet still I seemed to trace a 
 likeness : I thought also I recognized the voice. 
 While I watched him, he betrayed, by one lifted 
 look, that he felt my scrutiny ; I turned to note the 
 room ; that too had its half mystic interest. 
 
 Beside a cross of curiously carved old ivory, yel- 
 
140 VILLETTE. 
 
 low with time, and sloped above a dark-red prie- 
 dieu, furnished duly with rich missal and ebon 
 rosary — hung the picture whose dim outline had 
 drawn my eyes before — the picture which moved, 
 fell away with the wall and let in phantoms. Im- 
 perfectly seen, I had taken it for a Madonna ; 
 revealed by clearer light, it proved to be a woman's 
 portrait in a nun's dress. The face, though not 
 beautiful, was pleasing ; pale, young, and shaded 
 with the dejection of grief or ill health. I say 
 again it was not beautiful ; it was not even intellec- 
 tual ; its very amiability was the amiability of a 
 weak frame, inactive passions, acquiescent habits ; 
 yet I looked long at that picture, and could not 
 choose but look. 
 
 The old priest, who at first had seemed to me so 
 deaf and infirm, must yet have retained his faculties 
 in tolerable preservation ; absorbed in his book as 
 he appeared, without once lifting his head, or, as 
 far as I knew, turning his eyes, he perceived the 
 point towards which my attention was drawn, and, 
 in a slow, distinct voice, dropped concerning it, these 
 four observations. 
 
 " She was much beloved. 
 
 " She gave herself to God. 
 
MALEVOLA. 14 1 
 
 " She died young. 
 
 " She is still remembered, still wept." 
 
 " By that aged lady, Madame Walravens ? " I 
 inquired, fancying that I had discovered in the 
 incurable grief of bereavement, a key to that same 
 aged lady's desperate ill-humour. 
 
 The father shook his head with half a smile. 
 
 " No, no ;" said he, " a grand-dame's affection 
 for her children's children may be great, and her 
 sorrow for their loss, lively ; but it is only the 
 affianced lover, to whom Fate, Faith, and Death, 
 have trebly denied the bliss of union, who mourns 
 what he has lost, as Justine Marie is still mourned." 
 
 I thought the father rather wished to be ques- 
 tioned, and therefore I inquired who had lost and 
 who still mourned " Justine Marie." I got, in 
 reply, quite a little romantic narrative, told not un- 
 impressively, with the acompaniment of the now 
 subsiding storm. I am bound to say it might have 
 been made much more truly impressive, if there had 
 been less French, Rousseau-like sentimentalizing and 
 wire-drawing ; and rather more healthful careless- 
 ness of effect. But the worthy father was obviously 
 a Frenchman born and bred (I became more and 
 more persuaded of his resemblance to my confessor) 
 
142 VILLETTE. 
 
 — he was a true son of Rome ; when he did lift his 
 eyes, he looked at me out of their corners, with more 
 and sharper subtlety than, one would have thought, 
 could survive the wear and tear of seventy years. 
 Yet, I believe, he was a good old man. 
 
 The hero of his tale was some former pupil of 
 his, whom he now called his benefactor, and who, 
 it appears, had loved this pale Justine Marie, the 
 daughter of rich parents, at a time when his own 
 worldly prospects were such as to justify his aspiring 
 to a well-dowered hand. The pupil's father — once 
 a rich banker — had failed, died, and left behind 
 him only debts and destitution. The son was then 
 forbidden to think of Marie, especially that old 
 witch of a grand-dame I had seen, Madame Walra- 
 vens, opposed the match with all the violence of a 
 temper which deformity made sometimes demoniac. 
 The mild Marie had neither the treachery to be 
 false, nor the force to be quite staunch to her lover ; 
 she gave up her first suitor, but, refusing to accept 
 a second with a heavier purse, withdrew to a convent, 
 and there died in her noviciate. 
 
 Lasting anguish, it seems, had taken possession 
 of the faithful heart which worshipped her, and 
 the truth of that love and grief had been shown 
 
MA.LEVOLA. 143 
 
 in a manner which touched even me, as I lis- 
 tened. 
 
 Some years after Justine Marie's death, ruin had 
 come on her house too ; her father, by nominal 
 calling a jeweller, but who also dealt a good deal 
 on the Bourse, had been concerned in some finan- 
 cial transactions which entailed exposure and 
 ruinous fines. He died of grief for the loss, and 
 shame for the infamy. His old hunchbacked 
 mother and his bereaved wife were left pennyless, 
 and might have died too, of want ; but their lost 
 daughter's once-despised, yet most true-hearted 
 suitor, hearing of the condition of these ladies, came 
 with singular devotedness to the rescue. He took 
 on their insolent pride the revenge of the purest 
 charity— housing, caring for, befriending them, so 
 as no son could have done it more tenderly and 
 efficiently. The mother — on the whole a good 
 woman — died blessing him ; the strange, godless, 
 loveless, misanthrope grandmother lived still, en- 
 tirely supported by this self-sacrificing man. She, 
 who had been the bane of his life, blighting his 
 hope, and awarding him, for love and domestic 
 happiness, long mourning and cheerless solitude, 
 he treated with the respect a good son might offer 
 
144 VILLETTE. 
 
 a kind mother. He had brought her to this house, 
 " and," continued the priest, while genuine tears 
 rose to his eyes, " here, too, he shelters me, his old 
 tutor, and Agnes, a superannuated servant of his 
 father's family. To our sustenance, and to other 
 charities, I know he devotes three parts of his 
 income, keeping only the fourth to provide himself 
 with bread and the most modest accommodations. 
 By this arrangement he has rendered it impossible 
 to himself ever to marry : he has given himself to 
 God and to his angel-bride as much as if he were 
 a priest, like me." 
 
 The father had wiped away his tears before he 
 uttered these last words, and in pronouncing them, 
 he for one instant raised his eyes to mine. I caught 
 that glance, despite its veiled character; the mo- 
 mentary gleam shot a meaning which struck me. 
 
 These Romanists are strange beings. Such a one 
 among them — whom you know no more than the 
 last Inca of Peru, or the first Emperor of China — 
 knows you and all your concerns; and has his 
 reasons for saying to you so and so, when you sim- 
 ply thought the communication sprang impromptu 
 from the instant's impulse : his plan in bringing it 
 about that you shall come on such a day, to such a 
 
MALEVOLA. 145 
 
 place, under such and such circumstances, when 
 the whole arrangement seems to your crude appre- 
 hension the ordinance of chance, or the sequel of 
 exigency. Madame Beck's suddenly recollected 
 message and present, my artless embassy to the 
 Place of the Magi, the old priest, accidentally 
 descending the steps and crossing the square, his 
 interposition on my behalf with the bonne who 
 would have sent me away, his reappearance on the 
 staircase, my introduction to this room, the portrait, 
 the narrative so affably volunteered — all these little 
 incidents, taken as they fell out, seemed each inde- 
 pendent of its successor ; a handful of loose beads ; 
 but threaded through by that quick-shot and crafty 
 glance of a Jesuit-eye, they dropped pendant in a 
 long string, like that rosary on the prie-dieu. 
 Where lay the link of junction, where the little 
 clasp of this monastic necklace ? I saw or felt 
 union, but could not yet find the spot, or detect the 
 means of connection. 
 
 Perhaps the musing-fit into which I had by this 
 time fallen, appeared somewhat suspicious in its 
 abstraction ; he gently interrupted : 
 
 " Mademoiselle," said he, H I trust you have not 
 far to go through these inundated streets ? " 
 
 vol. in. L 
 
M6 VILLETTE. 
 
 " More than half a league." 
 
 "You live ?" 
 
 " In the Rue Fossette." 
 
 " Not " (with animation), " not at the pensionnat 
 of Madame Beck?" 
 
 " The same." 
 
 " Done" (clapping his hands), " done, vous devez 
 connaitre mon noble eleve, mon Paul ? " 
 
 " Monsieur Paul Emanuel, Professor of Litera- 
 ture?" 
 
 " He, and none other." 
 
 A brief silence fell. The spring of junction 
 seemed suddenly to have become palpable ; I felt 
 it yield to pressure. 
 
 " Was it of M. Paul you have been speaking?" 
 I presently inquired. " Was he your pupil and the 
 benefactor of Madame Walravens ? " 
 
 " Yes, and of Agnes, the old servant ; and more- 
 over" (with a certain emphasis), " he was and is the 
 lover, true, constant and eternal, of that saint in 
 Heaven — Justine Marie." 
 
 "And who, father, are you?''' I continued; and 
 though I accentuated the question, its utterance was 
 well-nigh superfluous ; I was ere this quite prepared 
 for the answer which actually came. 
 
MALEVOLA. 147 
 
 " I, daughter, am Pere Silas ; that unworthy son 
 of Holy Church whom you once honoured with a 
 noble and touching confidence, showing me the core 
 of a heart, and the inner shrine of a mind whereof, 
 in solemn truth, I coveted the direction, in behalf 
 of the only true faith. Nor have I for a day lost 
 sight of you, nor for an hour failed to take in you 
 a rooted interest. Passed under the discipline of 
 Rome, moulded by her high training, inoculated 
 with her salutary doctrines, inspired by the zeal 
 she alone gives — I realize what then might be 
 your spiritual rank, your practical value; and I 
 envy Heresy her prey." 
 
 This struck me as a special state of things — I 
 half- realized myself in that condition also; passed 
 under discipline, moulded, trained, inoculated, and 
 so on. " Not so," thought I, but I restrained 
 deprecation and sat quietly enough. 
 
 " I suppose M. Paul does not live here ? " I re- 
 sumed, pursuing a theme which I thought more to 
 the purpose than any wild renegade dreams. 
 
 " No ; he only comes occasionally to worship his 
 beloved saint, to make his confession to me, and to 
 pay his respects to her he calls his mother. His 
 own lodging consists but of two rooms ; he has no 
 
148 VILLETTE. 
 
 servant, and yet he will not suffer Madame Wal- 
 ravens to dispose of those splendid jewels with 
 which you see her adorned, and in which she takes 
 a puerile pride as the ornaments of her youth, and 
 the last relics of her son, the jeweller's wealth. 
 
 " How often," murmured I to myself, "has this 
 man, this M. Emanuel, seemed to me to lack mag- 
 nanimity in trifles, yet how great he is in great 
 things ! " 
 
 I own I did not reckon amongst the proofs of his 
 greatness, either the act of confession, or the saint- 
 worship. 
 
 " How long is it since that lady died ? " I in- 
 quired, looking at Justine Marie. 
 
 " Twenty years. She was somewhat older than 
 M. Emanuel ; he was then very young, for he is not 
 now much beyond forty." 
 " Does he yet weep her ? " 
 
 " His heart will weep her always : the essence of 
 Emanuel's nature is — constancy." 
 
 This was said with marked emphasis. 
 
 And now the sun broke out pallid and waterish ; 
 
 the rain yet fell, but there was no more tempest ; 
 
 that hot firmament had cloven and poured out its 
 
 lightnings. A longer delay would scarce leave day- 
 
MALEVOLA. 149 
 
 ight for my return, so I rose, thanked the father 
 for his hospitality and his tale, was benignantly 
 answered by a " pax vobiscum," which I made 
 kindly welcome, because it seemed uttered with a 
 true benevolence ; but I liked less the mystic phrase 
 accompanying it : 
 
 " Daughter, you shall be what you shall be ! " 
 an oracle that made me shrug my shoulders as 
 soon as I had got outside the door. Few of us know 
 what we are to come to certainly, but for all that 
 had happened yet, I had good hopes of living and 
 dying a sober-minded protestant: there wasahollow- 
 ness within, and a flourish around " Holy Church" 
 which tempted me but moderately. I went on my 
 way pondering many things. Whatever Romanism 
 may be, there are good Romanists : this man, 
 Emanuel, seemed of the best ; touched with super- 
 stition, influenced by priestcraft, yet wondrous for 
 fond faith, for pious devotion, for sacrifice of self, for 
 charity unbounded. It remained to see how Rome, 
 by her agents, handled such qualities; whether she 
 cherished them for their own sake and for God's, 
 or put them out to usury and made booty of the 
 interest. 
 
 By the time I reached home, it was sundown. 
 
150 VILLETTE. 
 
 Goton had kindly saved me a portion of dinner, 
 ■which indeed I needed. She called me into the 
 little cabinet to partake of it, and there Madame 
 Beck soon made her appearance, bringing me a 
 glass of wine. 
 
 " Well," began she, chuckling, " and what sort of 
 a reception did Madame Walravens give you ? 
 Elle est drole, n'est ce pas? " 
 
 I told her what had passed, delivering verbatim 
 the courteous message with which I had been 
 charged. 
 
 " Oh la singuliere petite bossue ! " laughed she : 
 " Et figurez-vous qu'elle me deteste, parcequ'elle 
 me croit amoureuse de mon cousin Paul ; ce petit 
 devot qui n'ose pas bouger, a. moins que son confes- 
 seur ne lui donne la permission ! Au rcste " (she 
 went on), " if he wanted to marry ever so much — 
 soit moi, soit une autre — he could not do it ; he has 
 too large a family already on his hands; Mere 
 Walravens, Pere Silas, Dame Agnes, and a whole 
 troop of nameless paupers. There never was a man 
 like him for laying on himself burdens greater than 
 he can bear, voluntarily incurring needless responsi- 
 bilities. Besides, he harbours a romantic idea about 
 some pale-faced Marie Justine — personuage assez 
 
MALEVOLA. 151 
 
 niaise a ce que je pense" (such was Madame's irre- 
 verent remark), " who has been an angel in Heaven, 
 or elsewhere, this score of years, and to whom he 
 means to go, free from all earthly ties, pure comme 
 un lis, a ce qu'il dit. Oh, you would laugh could 
 you but know half M. Emanuel's crotchets and 
 eccentricities ! But I hinder you from taking re- 
 freshment, ma bonne meess, which you must need ; 
 eat your supper, drink your wine, oubliez les anges, 
 les bossues, et surtout, les Professeurs — et bon 
 
 soir 
 
 I" 
 
152 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 FRATERNITY. 
 
 " Oubliez les Professeurs." So said Madame Beck. 
 Madame Beck was a wise woman, but she should 
 not have uttered those words. To do so was a mis- 
 take. That night she should have left me calm — 
 not excited, indifferent, not interested, isolated in my 
 own estimation and that of others — not connected, 
 even in idea, with this second person whom I was 
 to forget. 
 
 Forget him ? Ah ! they took a sage plan to 
 make me forget him — the wiseheads ! They showed 
 me how good he was ; they made of my dear little 
 man a stainless little hero. And then they had 
 prated about his manner of loving. What means 
 had I, before this day, of being certain whether he 
 could love at all or not ? 
 
 I had known him jealous, suspicious ; I had seen 
 
FRATERNITY. 153 
 
 about him certain tendernesses, fitfulnesses — a soft- 
 ness which came like a warm air, and a ruth which 
 passed like early dew, dried in the heat of his irri- 
 tabilities : this was all I had seen. And they, Pere 
 Silas and Modeste Maria Beck (that these two 
 wrought in concert I could not doubt) opened up 
 the adytum of his heart — shewed me one grand 
 love, the child of this southern nature's youth, born 
 so strong and perfect, that it had laughed at Death 
 himself, despised his mean rape of matter, clung to 
 immortal spirit, and, in victory and faith, had 
 watched beside a tomb twenty years. 
 
 This had been done — not idly: this was not a 
 mere hollow indulgence of sentiment ; he had proven 
 his fidelity by the consecration of his best energies 
 to an unselfish purpose, and attested it by limitless 
 personal sacrifices: for those once dear to her he 
 prized — he had laid down vengeance, and taken up 
 a cross. 
 
 Now, as for Justine Marie, I knew what she was 
 as well as if I had seen her. I knew she was well 
 enough ; there were girls like her in Madame 
 Beck's school — phlegmatics — pale, slow, inert, but 
 kind-natured, neutral of evil, undistinguished for 
 good. 
 
154 VILLETTE. 
 
 If she wore angels' wings, I knew whose poet- 
 fancy conferred them. If her forehead shone lumi- 
 nous with the reflex of a halo, I knew in the fire of 
 whose irids that circlet of holy flame had generation. 
 
 Was I, then, to he frightened by Justine Marie 1 
 Was the picture of a pale dead nun to rise, an eter- 
 nal barrier 1 And what of the charities which ab- 
 sorbed his worldly goods ? What of his heart, sworn 
 to virginity ? 
 
 Madame Beck — Pere Silas — you should not have 
 suggested these questions. They were at once the 
 deepest puzzle, the strongest obstruction, and the 
 keenest stimulus, I had ever felt. For a week of 
 nights and days I fell asleep — I dreamt, and I woke 
 upon these two questions. In the whole world there 
 was no answer to them, except where one dark little 
 man stood, sat, walked, lectured, under the head- 
 piece of a bandit bonnet-grec, and within the girth 
 of a sorry paletot, much be-inked, and no little 
 adust. 
 
 After that visit to the Rue des Mages, I did want 
 to see him again. I felt as if — knowing what I now 
 knew — his countenance would offer a page more 
 lucid, more interesting than ever ; I felt a longing 
 to trace in it the imprint of that primitive devoted- 
 
FRATERNITY. 155 
 
 ness, the signs of that half-knightly, half-saintly 
 chivalry which the priest's narrative imputed to his 
 nature. He had become my Christian hero : under 
 that character I wanted to view him. 
 
 Nor was opportunity slow to favour: my new 
 impressions underwent her test the next day. Yes : 
 I was granted an interview with my " Christian 
 hero" — an interview not very heroic, or sentimental, 
 or biblical, but lively enough in its way. 
 
 About three o'clock of the afternoon, the peace of 
 the first classe — safely established, as it seemed, 
 under the serene sway of Madame Beck, who, in 
 propria persona, was giving one of her orderly and 
 useful lessons — this peace, I say, suffered a sudden 
 fracture by the wild inburst of a paletot. 
 
 Nobody at the moment was quieter than myself. 
 Eased of responsibility by Madame Beck's presence, 
 soothed by her uniform tones, pleased and edified 
 with her clear exposition of the subject in hand (for 
 she taught well), I sat bent over my desk, drawing — 
 that is, copying an elaborate line engraving, tediously 
 working up my copy to the finish of the original, 
 for that was my practical notion of art ; and, strange 
 to say, I took extreme pleasure in the labour, and 
 could even produce curiously finical Chinese fac- 
 
156 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 similes of steel or mezzotint plates — things about as 
 valuable as so many achievements in worsted-work, 
 but I thought pretty well of them in those days. 
 
 What was the matter? My drawing, my pencils, 
 my precious copy, gathered into one crushed-up 
 handful, perished from before my sight ; I myself 
 appeared to be shaken or emptied out of my chair, 
 as a solitary and withered nutmeg might be emptied 
 out of a spice-box by an excited cook. That chair, 
 and my desk, seized by the wild paletot, one under 
 each sleeve, were borne afar ; in a second, I followed 
 the furniture ; in two minutes they and I were fixed 
 in the centre of the grand salle — a vast adjoining 
 room, seldem used save for dancing and choral 
 singing-lessons — fixed with an emphasis which 
 seemed to prohibit the remotest hope of our ever 
 being permitted to stir thence again. 
 
 Having partially collected my scared wits, I found 
 myself in the presence of two men — gentlemen, I 
 suppose I should say — one dark, the other light — 
 one having a stiff, half-military air, and wearing a 
 braided surtout ; the other partaking, in garb and 
 bearing, more of the careless aspect of the student 
 or artist class : both flourishing in full magnificence 
 of moustaches, whiskers, and imperial. M. Ema- 
 
FBATERNITY. 157 
 
 nuel stood a little apart from these ; his countenance 
 and eyes expressed strong choler ; he held forth his 
 hand with his tribune gesture. 
 
 " Mademoiselle," said he, " your business is to 
 prove to these gentlemen that I am no liar. You 
 will answer, to the best of your ability, such ques- 
 tions as they shall put. You will also write on 
 such theme as they shall select. In their eyes, it 
 appears I hold the position of an unprincipled im- 
 postor. I write essays ; and, with deliberate forgery, 
 sign to them my pupils' names, and boast of them 
 as their work. You will disprove this charge." 
 
 Grand Ciel ! Here was the show-trial, so long 
 evaded, come on me like a thunder-clap. These 
 two fine, braided, moustachioed, sneering perso- 
 nages, were none other than dandy professors of the 
 college — Messieurs Boissec and Rochemorte — a 
 pair of cold-blooded fops and pedants, sceptics, and 
 scoffers. It seems that M. Paul had been rashly 
 exhibiting something I had written — something he 
 had never once praised, or even mentioned, in my 
 hearing, and which I deemed forgotten. The essay 
 was not remarkable at all ; it only seemed remark- 
 able, compared with the average productions of 
 foreign school-girls ; in an English establishment it 
 
158 V1LLETTE. 
 
 would have passed scarce noticed. Messrs. Boissec 
 and Rochemorte had thought proper to question its 
 genuineness, and insinuate a cheat ; I was now to 
 bear my testimony to the truth, and to be put to 
 the torture of their examination. 
 
 A memorable scene ensued. 
 
 They began with classics. A dead blank. They 
 went on to French history. I hardly knew Merovee 
 from Pharamond. They tried me in various 'ologies, 
 and still only got a shake of the head, and an un- 
 changing " Je n'en sais rien." 
 
 After an expressive pause, they proceeded to 
 matters of general information, broaching one or 
 two subjects which I knew pretty well, and on 
 which I had often reflected. M. Emanuel, who 
 had hitherto stood looking on, dark as the winter- 
 solstice, brightened up somewhat; he thought I 
 should now show myself at least no fool. 
 
 He learned his error. Though answers to the 
 questions surged up fast, my mind filling like a 
 rising well, ideas were there, but not words. I 
 either could not, or would not" speak — I am not sure 
 which : partly, I think my nerves had got wrong, 
 and partly my humour was crossed. 
 
 I heard one of my examiners — he of the braided 
 
FRATERNITY. 159 
 
 surtout — whisper to his co-professor : " Est-elle 
 done idiote?" 
 
 " Yes," I thought, " an idiot she is, and always 
 will be, for such as you." 
 
 But I suffered — suffered cruelly; I saw the 
 damps gather on M. Paul's brow, and his eye spoke 
 a passionate yet sad reproach. He would not be- 
 lieve in my total lack of popular cleverness ; he 
 thought I couldhe prompt if I would. 
 
 At last, to relieve him, the professors, and my- 
 self, I stammered out : 
 
 " Gentlemen, you had better let me go ; you will 
 get no good of me ; as you say, I am an idiot." 
 
 I wish I could have spoken with calm and dignity, 
 or I wish my sense had sufficed to make me hold 
 my tongue; that traitor tongue tripped, faltered. 
 Beholding the judges cast on M. Emanuel a hard 
 look of triumph, and hearing the distressed tremor 
 of my own voice, out I burst in a fit of choking 
 tears. The emotion was far more of anger than 
 grief; had I been a man and strong, I could have 
 challenged that pair on the spot — but it was emo- 
 tion, and I would rather have been scourged, than 
 betrayed it. 
 
 The incapables ! Could they not see at once the 
 
160 VILLETTE. 
 
 crude hand of a novice in that composition they 
 called a forgery ? The subject was classical. When 
 M. Paul dictated the trait on which the essay was 
 to turn, I heard it for the first time; the mat- 
 ter was new to me, and I had no material for its 
 treatment. But I got books, read up the facts, 
 laboriously constructed a skeleton out of the dry 
 bones of the real, and then clothed them, and tried 
 to breathe into them life, and in this last aim I had 
 pleasure. With me it was a difficult and anxious 
 time till my facts were found, selected, and properly 
 jointed ; nor could I rest from research and effort 
 till I was satisfied of correct anatomy ; the strength 
 of my inward repugnance to the idea of flaw or 
 falsity sometimes enabled me to shun egregious 
 blunders ; but the knowledge was not there in my 
 head, ready and mellow ; it had not been sown in 
 Spring, grown in Summer, harvested in Autumn, 
 and garnered through Winter; whatever I wanted 
 I must go out and gather fresh ; glean of wild 
 herbs my lap full, and shred them green into the 
 pot Messieurs Boissec and Rochemorte did not 
 perceive this. They mistook my work for the work 
 of a ripe scholar. 
 
 They would not yet let me go : I must sit down 
 
FRATERNITY. 161 
 
 and write before them. As I clipped my pen in the 
 ink with a shaking hand, and surveyed the white 
 paper with eyes half-blinded and overflowing, one 
 of my judges began mincingly to apologize for the 
 pain he caused. 
 
 " Nous agissons dans l'interet de la verite. Nous 
 ne voulons pas vous blesser," said he. 
 
 Scorn gave me nerve. I only answered, — 
 
 " Dictate, Monsieur." 
 
 Rochemorte named this theme : " Human Jus- 
 tice." 
 
 Human Justice ! What was I to make of it ? 
 Blank, cold abstraction, unsuggestive to me of one 
 inspiring idea ; and there stood M. Emanuel, sad as 
 Saul, and stern as Joab, and there triumphed his 
 accusers. 
 
 At these two I looked. I was gathering my 
 courage to tell them that I would neither write nor 
 speak another word for their satisfaction, that their 
 theme did not suit, nor their presence inspire me, 
 and that, notwithstanding, whoever threw the sha- 
 dow of a doubt on M. Emanuel's honour, outraged 
 that truth of which they had announced themselves 
 the champions : I meant to utter all this, I say, when, 
 suddenly, a light darted on memory. 
 
 VOL. III. M 
 
162 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 Those two faces looking out of the forest of long 
 hair, moustache, and whisker — those two cold yet 
 bold, trustless yet presumptuous visages — were the 
 same faces, the very same that, projected in full 
 gas-light from behind the pillars of a portico, had 
 half frightened me to death on the night of my 
 desolate arrival in Villette. These, I felt morally 
 certain, were the very heroes who had driven a 
 friendless foreigner beyond her reckoning and her 
 strength, chased her breathless over a whole quarter 
 of the town. 
 
 " Pious mentors !" thought I. " Pure guides for 
 youth ! If ' Human Justice' were what she ought 
 to be, you two would scarce hold your present post, 
 or enjoy your present credit." 
 
 An idea once seized, I fell to work. " Human 
 Justice" rushed before me in novel guise, a red, 
 random beldame with arms akimbo. I saw her in 
 her house, the den of confusion : servants called to 
 her for orders or help which she did not give ; 
 beggars stood at her door waiting and starving 
 unnoticed ; a swarm of children, sick and quarrel- 
 some, crawled round her feet and yelled in her ears 
 appeals for notice, sympathy, cure, redress. The 
 honest woman cared for none of these things. She 
 
FRATERNITY. 163 
 
 had a warm seat of her own by the fire, she had her 
 own solace in a short black pipe, and a bottle of 
 Mrs. Sweeny's soothing syrup ; she smoked and she 
 sipped and she enjoyed her paradise, and whenever 
 a cry of the suffering souls about her pierced her 
 ears too keenly — my jolly dame seized the poker 
 or the hearth-brush : if the offender was weak, 
 wronged, and sickly, she effectually settled him ; if 
 he was strong, lively, and violent, she only men- 
 aced, then plunged her hand in her deep pouch, 
 and flung a liberal shower of sugar-plums. 
 
 Such was the sketch of " Human Justice," 
 scratched hurriedly on paper, and placed at the 
 service of Messrs. Boissec and Rochemorte. M. 
 Emanuel read it over my shoulder. Waiting no 
 comment, I curtsied to the trio, and withdrew. 
 
 After school that day, M. Paul and I again met. 
 Of course the meeting did not at first run smooth ; 
 there was a crow to pluck with him : that forced 
 examination could not be immediately digested. A 
 crabbed dialogue terminated in my being called, 
 " une petite moqueuse et sans-cceur," and in Mon- 
 sieur's temporary departure. 
 
 Not wishing him to go quite away, only desiring 
 he should feel that such a transport as he had that 
 
164 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 day given way to, could not be indulged with perfect 
 impunity, I was not sorry to see him, soon after, 
 gardening in the berceau. He approached the 
 glass door ; I drew near also. We spoke of some 
 flowers growing round it. By-and-by Monsieur 
 laid down his spade; by-and-by he recommenced 
 conversation, passed to other subjects, and at last 
 touched a point of interest. 
 
 Conscious that his proceeding of that day was 
 specially open to a charge of extravagance, M. Paul 
 half apologized ; he half regretted too the fitfulness 
 of his moods at all times, yet he hinted that some 
 allowance ought to be made for him. " But," said he, 
 " I can hardly expect it at your hands, Miss Lucy ; 
 you know neither me, nor my position, nor my 
 history." 
 
 His history. I took up the word at once ; I pur- 
 sued the idea. 
 
 " No, monsieur," I rejoined. " Of course, as you 
 say, I know neither your history, nor your position, 
 nor your sacrifices, nor any of your sorrows, or trials, 
 or affections, or fidelities. Oh, no ! I know nothing 
 about you ; you are for me altogether a stranger." 
 
 "Hein?" he murmured, arching his brows in 
 surprise. 
 
FKATERNITY. 165 
 
 " You know, monsieur, I only see you in classe — 
 stern, dogmatic, hasty, imperious. I only hear of 
 you in town as active and wilful, quick to originate, 
 hasty to lead, but slow to persuade, and hard to 
 bend. A man like you, without ties, can have no 
 attachments; without dependents, no duties. All we, 
 with whom you come in contact, are machines, 
 which you thrust here and here, inconsiderate of 
 their feelings. You seek your recreations in public, 
 by the light of the evening chandelier : this school 
 and yonder college are your workshops, where you 
 fabricate the ware called pupils. I don't so much 
 as know where you live ; it is natural to take it for 
 granted that you have no home, and need none." 
 
 "I am judged," said he. "Your opinion of me 
 is just what I thought it was. For you — I am 
 neither a man nor a Christian. You see me void of 
 aifection and religion, unattached by friend or 
 family, unpiloted by principle or faith. It is well, 
 mademoiselle, such is our reward in this life." 
 
 " You are a philosopher, monsieur ; a cynic phi- 
 losopher " (and I looked at his paletot, of which he 
 straightway brushed the dim sleeve with his hand), 
 " despising the foibles of humanity — above its luxu- 
 ries — independent of its comforts." 
 
166 VILLETTE. 
 
 " Et vous, mademoiselle ; vous etes proprette et 
 douillette, et affreusement insensible, par-dessus le 
 marche." 
 
 " But, in short, monsieur, now I think of it, you 
 must live somewhere? Do tell me where ; and what 
 establishment of servants do you keep 1 " 
 
 With a fearful projection of the under lip, imply- 
 ing an impetus of scorn the most decided, he broke 
 out — 
 
 " Je vis dans un trou ! I inhabit a den, miss— a 
 cavern, where you would not put your dainty nose. 
 Once, with base shame of speaking the whole truth, 
 I talked about my 'study' in that college: know 
 now that this ' study ' is my whole abode ; my 
 chamber is there and my drawing-room. As for 
 my - establishment of servants' " (mimicking my 
 voice) " they number ten : les voila ! " 
 
 And he grimly spread, close under my eyes, his 
 ten fingers. 
 
 " I black my boots," pursued he, savagely. " I 
 brush my paletot." 
 
 " No, monsieur, it is too plain ; you never do 
 that," was my parenthesis. 
 
 " Je fais mon lit et mon menage ; I seek my 
 dinner in a restaurant; ray supper takes care of 
 
FRATERNITY. 167 
 
 itself; I pass days laborious and loveless ; nights 
 long and lonely ; I am ferocious, and bearded, and 
 monkish; and nothing now living in this world 
 loves me, except some old hearts worn like my own, 
 and some few beings, impoverished, suffering, poor 
 in purse and in spirit, whom the kingdoms of this 
 world own not, but to whom a will and testament 
 not to be disputed, has bequeathed the kingdom of 
 heaven." 
 
 " Ah, monsieur ; but I know ! " 
 
 " What do you know ? many things, I verily 
 believe ; yet not me, Lucy ! " 
 
 " I know that you have a pleasant old house in a 
 pleasant old square of the Basse-Ville — why don't 
 you go and live there ?" 
 
 " Hein V muttered he again. 
 
 " I liked it much, monsieur ; with the steps as- 
 cending to the door, the gray flags in front, the 
 nodding trees behind — real trees, not shrubs — 
 trees dark, high, and of old growth. And the bou- 
 doir-oratoire — you should make that room your 
 study ; it is so quiet and solemn." 
 
 He eyed me closely; he half-smiled, half- 
 coloured. " Where did you pick up all that ? Who 
 told you?" he asked. 
 
168 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 " Nobody told me. Did I dream it, monsieur, 
 do you think?" 
 
 " Can I enter into your visions ? Can I guess a 
 woman's waking thoughts, much less her sleeping 
 fantasies?" 
 
 " If I dreamt it, I saw in my dream human beings 
 as well as a house. I saw a priest, old, bent, and 
 gray, and a domestic — old, too, and picturesque ; and 
 a lady, splendid but strange ; her head would scarce 
 reach to my elbow — her magnificence might ransom 
 a duke. She wore a gown bright as lapis-lazuli — 
 a shawl worth a thousand francs : she was decked 
 with ornaments so brilliant, I never saw any with 
 such a beautiful sparkle ; but her figure looked as 
 if it had been broken in two and bent double ; she 
 seemed also to have outlived the common years of 
 humanity, and to have attained those which are only 
 labour and sorrow. She was become morose — 
 almost malevolent ; yet somebody, it appears, cared 
 for her in her infirmities — somebody forgave her 
 trespasses, hoping to have his trespasses forgiven. 
 They lived together, these three people — the mis- 
 tress, the chaplain, the servant — all old, all feeble, 
 all sheltered under one kind wing." 
 
 He covered with his hand the upper part of his 
 
FRATERNITY. 169 
 
 face, but did not conceal his mouth, where I saw 
 hovering an expression I liked. 
 
 u I see you have entered into my secrets," said he, 
 " but how was it done ? " 
 
 So I told him how — the commission on which I 
 had been sent, the storm which had detained me, 
 the abruptness of the lady, the kindness of the 
 priest. " As I sat waiting for the rain to cease, Pere 
 Silas whiled away the time with a story," I said. 
 
 " A story ! What story ? Pere Silas is no 
 romancist." 
 
 " Shall I tell monsieur the tale ? " 
 
 " Yes : begin at the beginning. Let me hear 
 some of Miss Lucy's French — her best or her 
 worst — I don 't much care which : let us have a 
 good poignee of barbarisms, and a bounteous dose 
 of the insular accent." 
 
 " Monsieur is not going to be gratified by a tale 
 of ambitious proportions, and the spectacle of the 
 narrator sticking fast in the midst. But I will tell 
 him the title — c The Priest's Pupil.' " 
 
 " Bah ! " said he, the swarthy flush again dyeing 
 his dark cheek. " The good old father could not 
 have chosen a worst subject : it is his weak point. 
 But what of ' The Priest's Pupil ' ? " 
 
170 VILLETTE. 
 
 * Oh ! many things." 
 
 " You may as well define what things. I mean 
 to know." 
 
 " There was the pupil's youth, the pupil's man- 
 hood — his avarice, his ingratitude, his implacability, 
 his inconstancy. Such a bad pupil, monsieur ! — so 
 thankless, cold-hearted, unchivalrous, unforgiving ! " 
 
 " Et puis? " said he, taking a cigar. 
 
 " Et puis," I pursued, " he underwent calamities 
 which one did not pity — bore them in a spirit one 
 did not admire — endured wrongs for which one felt 
 no sympathy ; finally, took the unchristian revenge 
 of heaping coals of fire on his adversary's head." 
 
 " You have not told me all," said he. 
 
 " Nearly all, I think : I have indicated the heads 
 of Pere Silas's chapters." 
 
 " You have forgotten one — that which touched on 
 the pupil's lack of affection — on his hard, cold, 
 monkish heart." 
 
 " True ; I remember now. Pere Silas did say 
 that his vocation was almost that of a priest — that 
 his life was considered consecrated." 
 
 " By what bonds or duties ? " 
 
 " By the ties of the past and the charities of the 
 present." 
 
FRATERNITY. 171 
 
 " You have, then, the whole situation ? " 
 
 " I have now told monsieur all that was told me." 
 
 Some meditative minutes passed. 
 
 " Now, Mademoiselle Lucy, look at me, and with 
 that truth which I believe you never knowingly 
 violate, answer me one question. Raise your eyes ; 
 rest them on mine ; have no hesitation ; fear not to 
 trust me — I am a man to be trusted." 
 
 I raised my eyes. 
 
 " Knowing me thoroughly now — all my ante- 
 cedents, all my responsibilities — having long known 
 my faults, can you and I still be friends?" 
 
 " If monsieur wants a friend in me, I shall be 
 glad to have a friend in him." 
 
 " But a close friend I mean — intimate and real 
 — kindred in all but blood ? Will Miss Lucy be 
 the sister of a very poor, fettered, burdened, encum- 
 bered man?" 
 
 I could .not answer him in words, yet I sup- 
 pose I did answer him ; he took my hand, which 
 found comfort in the shelter of his. His friend- 
 ship was not a doubtful, wavering benefit — a cold, 
 distant hope — a sentiment so brittle as not to bear 
 the weight of a finger : I at once felt (or thought 
 I felt) its support like that of some rock. 
 
172 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 " When I talk of friendship, I mean true friend- 
 ship," he repeated emphatically ; and I could hardly 
 believe that words so earnest had blessed my ear ; 
 I hardly could credit the reality of that kind, 
 anxious look he gave. If he really wished for my 
 confidence and regard, and really would give me 
 his — why, it seemed to me that life could offer 
 nothing more or better. In that case, I was be- 
 come strong and rich : in a moment I was made 
 substantially happy. To ascertain the fact, to fix 
 and seal it, I asked — 
 
 " Is monsieur quite serious ? Does he really 
 think he needs me, and can take an interest in 
 me as a sister?" 
 
 " Surely, surely," said he ; "a lonely man like 
 me, who has no sister, must be but too glad to 
 find in some woman's heart a sister's pure affec- 
 tion." 
 
 " And dare I rely on monsieur's regard ? Dare 
 I speak to him when I am so inclined ? " 
 
 " My little sister must make her own experi- 
 ments," said he ; "I will give no promises. She 
 must tease and try her wayward brother till she 
 has drilled him into what she wishes. After all, 
 he is no inductile material in some hands." 
 
FRATERNITY. 173 
 
 While he spoke, the tone of his voice, the light 
 of his now affectionate eye, gave me such a plea- 
 sure as, certainly, I had never felt. I envied no 
 girl her lover, no bride her bridegroom, no wife 
 her husband ; I was content with this my volun- 
 tary, self-offering friend. If he would but prove 
 reliable, and he looked reliable, what, beyond his 
 friendship, could I ever covet ? But, if all melted 
 like a dream, as once before had happened ? 
 
 " Qu'est-ce done ? What is it ? " said he, as 
 this thought threw its weight on my heart, its 
 shadow on my countenance. I told him ; and 
 after a moment's pause, and a thoughtful smile, 
 he showed me how an equal fear — lest I should 
 weary of him, a man of moods so difficult and 
 fitful — had haunted his mind for more than one 
 day, or one month. 
 
 On hearing this, a quiet courage cheered me. 
 I ventured a word of re-assurance. That word 
 was not only tolerated ; its repetition was courted. 
 I grew quite happy— strangely happy — in making 
 him secure, content, tranquil. Yesterday, I could 
 not have believed that earth held, or life afforded, 
 moments like the few I was now passing. Count- 
 less times it had been my lot to watch apprehended 
 
174 VILLETTE. 
 
 sorrow close darkly in ; but to see unhoped-for 
 happiness take form, find place, and grow more 
 real as the seconds sped, was indeed a new expe- 
 rience. 
 
 " Lucy," said M. Paul, speaking low and still 
 holding my hand, " did you see a picture in the 
 boudoir of the old house ? " 
 
 " I did ; a picture painted on a panel." 
 
 " The portrait of a nun ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " You heard her history ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 *' You remember what we saw that night in the 
 berceau ? " 
 
 " I shall never forget it." 
 
 " You did not connect the two ideas ; that would 
 be folly?" 
 
 ' : I thought of the apparition when I saw the 
 portrait," said I ; which was true enough. 
 
 " You did not, nor will you fancy," pursued he, 
 " that a saint in Heaven perturbs herself with 
 rivalries of earth ? Protestants are rarely super- 
 stitious ; these morbid fancies will not beset 
 you ?" 
 
 " I know not what to think of this matter ; but 
 
FRATERNITY. 175 
 
 I believe a perfectly natural solution of this seem- 
 ing mystery will one day be arrived at." 
 
 " Doubtless, doubtless. Besides, no good living 
 woman — much less a pure, happy spirit — would 
 trouble amity like ours — n'est il pas vrai ? " 
 
 Ere I could answer, Fifine Beck burst in, rosy 
 and abrupt, calling out that I was wanted. Her 
 mother was going into town to call on some 
 English family, who had applied for a prospectus : 
 my services were needed as interpreter. The in- 
 terruption was not unseasonable : sufficient for the 
 day is always the evil ; for this hour, its good 
 sufficed. Yet I should have liked to ask M. Paul 
 whether the " morbid fancies," against which he 
 warned me, wrought in his own brain. 
 
176 VILLETTE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 THE APPLE OF DISCORD. 
 
 Besides Fifine Beck's mother, another power had 
 a word to say to M. Paul and me, before that 
 covenant of friendship could be ratified. We were 
 under the surveillance of a sleepless eye : Rome 
 watched jealously her son through that mystic lat- 
 tice at which I had knelt once, and to which M. 
 Emanuel drew nigh month by month — the sliding 
 panel of the confessional. 
 
 " Why were you so glad to be friends with M. 
 Paul?" asks the reader. " Had he not long been 
 a friend to you ? Had he not given proof on proof 
 of a certain partiality in his feelings ? " 
 
 Yes, he had ; but still I liked to hear him say 
 so earnestly —that he was my close, true friend ; 
 I liked his modest doubts, his tender deference — 
 that trust which longed to rest, and was grateful 
 
THE APPLE OF DISCORD. 177 
 
 when taught how. He had called me " sister." 
 It was well. Yes ; he might call me what he 
 pleased, so long as he confided in me. I was 
 willing to be his sister, on condition that he did 
 not invite me to fill that relation to some future 
 wife of his ; and tacitly vowed as he was to celi- 
 bacy, of this dilemma there seemed little danger. 
 
 Through most of the succeeding night, I pon- 
 dered that evening's interview. I wanted much the 
 morning to break, and then listened for the bell 
 to ring; and, after rising and dressing, I deemed 
 prayers and breakfast slow, and all the hours 
 lingering, till that arrived at last which brought the 
 lesson of literature. My wish was to get a more 
 thorough comprehension of this fraternal alliance : 
 to note with how much of the brother he would 
 demean himself when we met again ; to prove how 
 much of the sister was in my own feelings ; to dis- 
 cover whether I could summon a sister's courage, 
 and he a brother's frankness. 
 
 He came. Life is so constructed, that the event 
 does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation. 
 That whole day he never accosted me. His lesson 
 was given rather more quietly than usual, more 
 mildly, and also more gravely. He was fatherly to 
 
 VOL. III. N 
 
178 VILLETTE. 
 
 his pupils, but he was not brotherly to me. Ere 
 he left the classe, I expected a smile, if not a 
 word ; I got neither : to my portion fell one nod — 
 hurried, shy. 
 
 This distance, I argued, is accidental — it is in- 
 voluntary ; patience, and it will vanish. It vanished 
 not ; it continued for days ; it increased. I sup- 
 pressed my surprise, and swallowed whatever other 
 feelings began to surge. 
 
 Well might I ask when he offered fraternity — 
 " Dare I rely on you?" Well might he, doubtless 
 knowing himself, withhold all pledge. True, he 
 had bid me make my own experiments — tease and 
 try him. Vain injunction ! Privilege nominal 
 and unavailable ! Some women might use it ! 
 Nothing in my powers or instinct placed me 
 amongst this brave band. Left alone, I was pas- 
 sive ; repulsed, I withdrew ; forgotten — my lips 
 would not utter, nor my eyes dart a reminder. It 
 seemed there had been an error somewhere in 
 my calculations, and I waited for time to dis- 
 close it. 
 
 But the day came when, as usual, he was to give 
 me a lesson. One evening in seven he had long 
 generously bestowed on me, devoting it to the 
 
THE APPLE OF DISCORD. 1/9 
 
 examination of what had been done in various 
 studies during the past week, and to the prepara- 
 tion of work for the week in prospect. On these 
 occasions my school-room was anywhere, wherever 
 the pupils and the other teachers happened to be, 
 or in their close vicinage, very often in the large 
 second division, where it was easy to choose a quiet 
 nook when the crowding day-pupils were absent, 
 and the few boarders gathered in a knot about the 
 surveillante's estrade. 
 
 On the customary evening, hearing the customary 
 hour strike, I collected my books and papers, my 
 pen and ink, and sought the large division. 
 
 In classe there was no one, and it lay all in cool 
 deep shadow ; but through the open double doors 
 was seen the carre, filled with pupils and with light ; 
 over hall and figures blushed the westering sun. It 
 blushed so ruddily and vividly, that the hues of the 
 walls and the variegated tints of the dresses seemed 
 all fused in one warm glow. The girls were seated, 
 working or studying ; in the midst of their circle 
 stood M. Emanuel, speaking good-humouredly to 
 a teacher. His dark paletot, his jetty hair, were 
 tinged with many a reflex of crimson ; his Spanish 
 face, when he turned it momentarily, answered the 
 
180 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 sun's animated kiss with an animated smile. I 
 took my place at a desk. 
 
 The orange-trees, and several plants, full and 
 bright with bloom, basked also in the sun's laughing 
 bounty ; they had partaken it the whole day, and now 
 asked water. M. Emanuel had a taste for garden- 
 ing ; he liked to tend and foster plants. I used to 
 think that working amongst shrubs with a spade or 
 a watering-pot soothed his nerves; it was a re- 
 creation to which he often had recourse ; and now 
 he looked to the orange-trees, the geraniums, the 
 gorgeous cactuses, and revived them all with the re- 
 freshment their drought needed. His lips mean- 
 time sustained his precious cigar, that (for him) 
 first necessary and prime luxury of life ; its blue 
 wreaths curled prettily enough amongst the flowers, 
 and in the evening light. He spoke no more to 
 the pupils, nor to the mistresses, but gave many 
 an endearing word to a small spanieless (if one 
 may coin a word), that nominally belonged to the 
 house, but virtually owned him as master, being 
 fonder of him than of any inmate. A delicate, silky, 
 loving, and loveable little doggie she was, trotting at 
 his side, looking with expressive, attached eyes into 
 his face ; and whenever he dropped his bonnet-grec 
 
THE APPLE OF DISCORD. 181 
 
 or his handkerchief, which he occasionally did in 
 play, crouching beside it with the air of a miniature 
 lion guarding a kingdom's flag. 
 
 There were many plants, and as the amateur 
 gardener fetched all the water from the well in the 
 court, with his own active hands, his work spun ou 
 to some length. The great school-clock ticked on. 
 Another hour struck. The carre and the youthful 
 group lost the illusion of sunset. Day was droop- 
 ing. My lesson, I perceived, must to-night be very 
 short ; but the orange-trees, the cacti, the camelias 
 were all served now. Was it my turn ? 
 
 Alas ! in the garden were more plants to be 
 looked after, — favourite rose-bushes, certain choice 
 flowers; little Sylvie's glad bark and whine fol- 
 lowed the receding paletot down the alleys. I put 
 up some of my books ; I should not want them all ; 
 I sat and thought, and waited, involuntarily depre- 
 cating the creeping invasion of twilight. 
 
 Sylvie, gaily frisking, emerged into view once 
 more, heralding the returning paletot ; the water- 
 ing-pot was deposited beside the well; it had ful- 
 filled its office ; how glad I was ! Monsieur washed 
 his hands in a little stone bowl. There was no 
 longer time for a lesson now ; ere long the prayer- 
 
182 VILLETTE. 
 
 bell must ring ; but still we should meet ; he would 
 speak ; a chance would be offered of reading in his 
 eyes the riddle [of his shyness. His ablutions over, 
 he stood, slowly re-arranging his cuffs, looking at the 
 horn of a young moon, set pale in the opal sky, and 
 glimmering faint on the oriel of Jean Baptiste. 
 Sylvie watched the mood contemplative; its still- 
 ness irked her ; she whined and jumped to break it- 
 He looked down. 
 
 " Petite exigeante!" said he; "you must not be 
 forgotten one moment, it seems." 
 
 He stooped, lifted her in his arms, sauntered 
 across the court, within a yard of the line of win- 
 dows near one of which I sat : he sauntered linger- 
 ingly, fondling the spaniel in his bosom, calling her 
 tender names in a tender voice. On the front-door 
 steps he turned ; once again he looked at the moon, 
 at the gray cathedral, over the remoter spires and 
 house-roofs fading into a blue sea of night-mist ; 
 he tasted the sweet breath of dusk, and noted the 
 folded bloom of the garden ; he suddenly looked 
 round ; a keen beam out of his eye rased the white 
 facade of the classes, swept the long line of croisees. 
 I think he bowed ; if he did, I had no time to 
 return the courtesy. In a moment he was gone; 
 
THE APPLE OF DISCORD. 183 
 
 the moonlit threshold lay pale and shadowless be- 
 fore the closed front-door. 
 
 Gathering in my arms all that was spread on the 
 desk before me, I carried back the unused heap to 
 its place in the third classe. The prayer-bell rang ; 
 I obeyed its summons. 
 
 The morrow would not restore him to the Rue 
 Fossette, that day being devoted entirely to his col- 
 lege. I got through my teaching ; I got over the 
 intermediate hours ; I saw evening approaching, and 
 armed myself for its heavy ennuis. Whether it was 
 worse to stay with my co-inmates, or to sit alone, I 
 had not considered ; I naturally took up the latter 
 alternative ; if there was a hope of comfort for any 
 moment, the heart or head of no human being in 
 this house could yield it ; only under the lid of my 
 desk could it harbour, nestling between the leaves 
 of some book, gilding a pencil-point, the nib of a 
 pen, or tinging the black fluid in that ink-glass. 
 With a heavy heart I opened my desk-lid ; with a 
 weary hand I turned up its contents. 
 
 One by one, well-accustomed books, volumes 
 sewn in familiar covers, were taken out and put 
 back hopeless ; they had no charm ; they could not 
 comfort. Is this something new, this pamplet in 
 
184 VILLETTE. 
 
 lilac ? I have not seen it before, and I re-arranged 
 my desk this very day — this very afternoon ; the 
 tract must have been introduced within the last 
 hour, while we were at dinner. 
 
 I opened it. What was it ? What would it say 
 to me? 
 
 It was neither tale nor poem, neither essay nor 
 history ; it neither sung, nor related, nor discussed. 
 It was a theological work ; it preached and it 
 persuaded. 
 
 I. lent to it my ear very willingly, for, small as it 
 was, it possessed its own spell, and bound my atten- 
 tion at once. It preached Romanism ; it persuaded 
 to conversion. The voice of that sly little book was 
 a honied voice ; its accents were all unction and 
 balm. Here roared no utterance of Rome's thun- 
 ders, no blasting of the breath of her displeasure. 
 The Protestant was to turn Papist, not so much in 
 fear of the heretic's hell, as on account of the com- 
 fort, the indulgence, the tenderness Holy Church 
 offered : far be it from her to threaten or to coerce ; 
 her wish was to guide and win. She persecute? 
 Oh dear no ! not on any account ! 
 
 This meek volume was not addressed to the 
 hardened and worldly ; it was not even strong 
 
THE APPLE OF DISCORD. 185 
 
 meat for the strong: it was milk for babes; the 
 mild effluence of a mother's love towards her ten- 
 derest and her youngest ; intended wholly and solely 
 for those whose head is to be reached through the 
 heart. Its appeal was not to intellect ; it sought to 
 win the affectionate through their affections, the 
 sympathizing through their sympathies : St. Vincent 
 de Paul, gathering his orphans about him, never 
 spoke more sweetly. 
 
 I remember one capital inducement to apostacy 
 was held out in the fact that a Catholic who had lost 
 dear friends by death could enjoy the unspeakable 
 solace of praying them out of purgatory. The 
 writer did not touch on the firmer peace of those 
 whose belief dispenses with purgatory altogether ; 
 but I thought of this, and, on the whole, preferred 
 the latter doctrine as the most consolatory. 
 
 The little book amused, and did not painfully 
 displease me. It was a canting, sentimental, shallow 
 little book, yet something about it cheered my 
 gloom and made me smile ; I was amused with the 
 gambols of this unlicked wolf-cub muffled in the 
 fleece, and mimicking the bleat of a guileless lamb. 
 Portions of it reminded me of certain Wesleyan 
 Methodist tracts I had once read when a child ; they 
 
186 VILLETTE. 
 
 were flavoured with about the same seasoning of 
 excitation to fanaticism. He that had written it 
 was no bad man, and while perpetually betraying 
 the trained cunning — the cloven hoof of his system 
 — I should pause before accusing himself of insin- 
 cerity. His judgment, however, wanted surgical 
 props ; it was ricketty. 
 
 I smiled then over this dose of maternal tender- 
 ness, coming from the ruddy old lady of the Seven 
 Hills; smiled, too, at my own disinclination, not 
 to say disability, to meet these melting favours. 
 Glancing at the title-page, I found the name of 
 " Pere Silas." A fly-leaf bore in small, but clear 
 and well-known pencil characters : " From P. C. 
 D. E. to L — y." And when I saw this I laughed ; 
 but not in my former spirit. I was revived. 
 
 A mortal bewilderment cleared suddenly from my 
 head and vision ; the solution of the Sphynx-riddle 
 was won; the conjunction of those two names, Pere 
 Silas and Paul Emanuel, gave the key to all. The 
 penitent had been with his director ; permitted to 
 withhold nothing ; suffered to keep no corner of his 
 heart sacred to God and to himself; the whole nar- 
 rative of our late interview had been drawn from him ; 
 he had avowed the covenant of fraternity, and spoken 
 
THE APPLE OF DISCORD. 187 
 
 of his adopted sister. How could such covenant, 
 such adoption, be sanctioned by the Church ? Fra- 
 ternal communion with a heretic ! I seemed to 
 hear Pere Silas annulling the unholy pact ; warning 
 his penitent of its perils ; entreating, enjoining re- 
 serve, nay, by the authority of his office, and in the 
 name, and by the memory of all M. Emanuel held 
 most dear and sacred, commanding the enforcement 
 of that new system whose frost had pierced to the 
 marrow of my bones. 
 
 These may not seem pleasant hypotheses ; yet, by 
 comparison, they were welcome. The vision of a 
 ghostly troubler hovering in the background, was as 
 nothing, matched with the fear of spontaneous change 
 arising in M. Paul himself. 
 
 At this distance of time, I cannot be sure how far 
 the above conjectures were self-suggested : or in 
 what measure they owed their origin and confirma- 
 tion to another quarter. Help was not wanting. 
 
 This evening there was no bright sunset ; west 
 and east were one cloud ; no summer night-mist, 
 blue, yet rose-tinged, softened the distance; a 
 clammy fog from the marshes crept gray round 
 Villette. To-night the watering-pot might rest in 
 its niche by the well; a small rain had been 
 
188 VILLETTE. 
 
 drizzling all the afternoon, and still it fell fast and 
 quietly. This was no weather for rambling in the 
 wet alleys, under the dripping trees ; and I started 
 to hear Sylvie's sudden bark in the garden — her bark 
 of welcome. Surely she was not accompanied ; and 
 yet this glad, quick bark was never uttered, save in 
 homage to one presence. 
 
 Through the glass-door and the arching berceau, 
 I commanded the deep vista of the allee defendue : 
 thither rushed Sylvie, glistening through its gloom 
 like a white guelder-rose. She ran to and fro, whin- 
 ing, springing, harassing little birds amongst the 
 bushes. I watched five minutes ; no fulfilment fol- 
 lowed the omen. I returned to my books : Sylvie's 
 sharp bark suddenly ceased. Again I looked up. 
 She was standing not many yards distant, wagging 
 her white, feathery tail as fast as the muscle would 
 work, and intently watching the operations of a 
 spade, plied fast by an indefatigable hand. There 
 was M. Emanuel, bent over the soil, digging in the 
 wet mould amongst the rain-laden and streaming 
 shrubs, working as hard as if his day's pittance were 
 yet to earn by the literal sweat of his brow. 
 
 In this sign I read a ruffled mood. He would 
 dig thus in frozen snow on the coldest winter day, 
 
THE APPLE OF DISCORD. 189 
 
 when urged inwardly by painful emotion, whether 
 of nervous excitation, or sad thoughts, or self-re- 
 proach. He would dig, by the hour, with knit 
 brow and set teeth, nor once lift his head, or open 
 his lips. 
 
 Sylvie watched till she was tired. Again scamper- 
 ing devious, bounding here, rushing there, snuffing 
 and sniffing everywhere ; she at last discovered me 
 in classe. Instantly she flew barking at the panes, 
 as if to urge me forth to share her pleasure or her 
 master's toil ; she had seen me occasionally walking 
 in that alley with M. Paul ; and I doubt not, con- 
 sidered it my duty to join him now, wet as it 
 was. 
 
 She made such a bustle that M. Paul at last 
 looked up, and of course perceived why, and at 
 whom she barked. He whistled to call her off; 
 she only barked the louder. She seemed quite bent 
 upon having the glass-door opened. Tired, I sup- 
 pose, with her importunity, he threw down his 
 spade, approached, and pushed the door a-jar. 
 Sylvie burst in all impetuous, sprang to my lap, and 
 with her paws at my neck, and her little nose and 
 tongue somewhat overpoweringly busy about my 
 face, mouth, and eyes, flourished her bushy tail over 
 
190 VILLETTE. 
 
 the desk, and scattered books and papers far and 
 wide. 
 
 M. Emanuel advanced to still the clamour and 
 repair the disarrangement. Having gathered up 
 the books, he captured Sylvie, and stowed her away 
 under his paletot, where she nestled as quiet as a 
 mouse, her head just peeping forth. She was very 
 tiny, and had the prettiest little innocent face, the 
 silkiest long ears, the finest dark eyes in the world. 
 I never saw her, but I thought of Paulina de Bas- 
 sompierre : forgive the association, reader, it would 
 occur. 
 
 M. Paul petted and patted her ; the endearments 
 she received were not to be wondered at ; she invited 
 affection by her beauty and her vivacious life. 
 
 While caressing the spaniel, his eye roved over 
 the papers and books just replaced ; it settled on 
 the religious tract. His lips moved ; he half- 
 checked the impulse to speak. What ! had he pro- 
 mised never to address me more ? If so, his better 
 nature pronounced the vow " more honoured in the 
 breach than in the observance," for with a second 
 effort, he spoke : — 
 
 " You have not yet read the brochure, I presume ? 
 It is not sufficiently inviting 1 " 
 
THE APPLE OF DISCORD. 191 
 
 I replied that I had read it. 
 
 He waited, as if wishing me to give an opinion 
 upon it unasked. Unasked, however, I was in no 
 mood to do or say anything. If any concessions 
 were to be made — if any advances were demanded — 
 that was the affair of the very docile pupil of Pere 
 Silas, not mine. His eye settled upon me gently ; 
 there was mildness at the moment in its blue ray — 
 there was solicitude — a shade of pathos ; there were 
 meanings composite and contrasted — reproach 
 melting into remorse. At the moment, probably, 
 he would have been glad to see something emotional 
 in me. I could not show it. In another minute, 
 however, I should have betrayed confusion, had I 
 not bethought myself to take some quill-pens from 
 my desk, and begin soberly to mend them. 
 
 I knew that action would give a turn to his mood. 
 He never liked to see me mend pens ; my knife was 
 always dull-edged — my hand, too, was unskilful; 
 hacked and chipped. On this occasion I cut my 
 own linger — half on purpose. I wanted to restore 
 him to his natural state, to set him at his ease, to 
 get him to chide. 
 
 " Maladroite ! " he cried at last, " she will make 
 mincemeat of her hands." 
 
192 VILLETTE. 
 
 He put Sylvie down, making her lie quiet beside 
 his bonnet-grec, and, depriving me of the pens and 
 penknife, proceeded to slice, nib, and point with the 
 accuracy and celerity of a machine. 
 
 " Did I like the little book ? " he now inquired. 
 
 Suppressing a yawn, I said I hardly knew. 
 
 * Had it moved me ? " 
 
 " I thought it had made me a little sleepy." 
 
 (After a pause) " Allons done ! It was of no use 
 taking that tone with him. Bad as I was— and 
 he should be sorry to have to name all my faults 
 at a breath — God and nature had given me ' trop 
 de sensibilite et de sympathie ' not to be pro- 
 foundly affected by an appeal so touching." 
 
 " Indeed ! " I responded, rousing myself quickly, 
 " I was not affected at all — not a whit." 
 
 And in proof, I drew from my pocket a perfectly 
 dry handkerchief, still clean and in its folds. 
 
 Hereupon I was made the object of a string of 
 strictures rather piquant than polite. I listened with 
 zest. After those two days of unnatural silence, it 
 was better than music to hear M. Paul haranguing 
 again just in his old fashion. I listened, and mean- 
 time solaced myself and Sylvie with the contents of 
 a bonbonniere, which M. Emanuel's gifts kept well 
 
THE APPLE OF DISCORD. 193 
 
 supplied with chocolate comfits. It pleased him 
 to see even a small matter from his hand duly appre- 
 ciated. He looked at me and the spaniel while we 
 shared the spoil ; he put up his penknife. Touching 
 my hand with the bundle of new-cut quills, he said : — 
 
 " Dites-donc, petite sceur — speak frankly — what 
 have you thought of me during the last two days ? " 
 
 But of this question I would take no manner of 
 notice ; its purport made my eyes fill. I caressed 
 Sylvie assiduously. M. Paul, leaning over the desk, 
 bent towards us : — 
 
 " I called myself your brother," he said ; " I 
 hardly know what I am — brother — friend — I cannot 
 tell. I know I think of you — I feel I wish you 
 well — but I must check myself; you are to be 
 feared. My best friends point out danger, and 
 whisper caution." 
 
 " You do right to listen to your friends. By all 
 means be cautious." 
 
 " It is your religion — your strange, self-reliant, 
 invulnerable creed, whose influence seems to clothe 
 you in, I know not what, unblessed panoply. You 
 are good — Pere Silas calls you good, and loves you 
 — but your terrible, proud, earnest Protestantism? 
 there is the danger. It expresses itself by your eye 
 
 VOL. III. O 
 
194 VILLETTE. 
 
 at times ; and again, it gives you certain tones and 
 certain gestures that make my flesh creep. You are 
 not demonstrative, and yet, just now — when you 
 handled that tract — my God ! I thought Lucifer 
 smiled." 
 
 " Certainly I don't respect that tract — what then?" 
 
 " Not respect that tract? But it is the pure 
 essence of faith, love, charity ! I thought it would 
 touch you : in its gentleness, I trusted that it could 
 not fail. I laid it in your desk with a prayer. I 
 must indeed be a sinner : Heaven will not hear the 
 petitions that come warmest from my heart. You 
 scorn my little offering. Oh, cela me fait mal! " 
 
 " Monsieur, I don't scorn it — at least, not as your 
 gift. Monsieur, sit down ; listen to me. I am not a 
 heathen, I am not hard-hearted, I am not un- 
 christian, I am not dangerous, as they tell you ; I 
 would not trouble your faith ; you believe in God 
 and Christ and the Bible, and so do I." 
 
 " But do you believe in the Bible ? Do you re- 
 ceive Revelation? What limits are there to the 
 wild, careless daring of your country and sect? 
 Pere Silas dropped dark hints." 
 
 By dint of persuasion, I made him half-define 
 these hints; they amounted to crafty Jesuit-slan- 
 
THE APPLE OF DISCORD. 195 
 
 ders. That night M. Paul and I talked seriously 
 and closely. He pleaded, he argued. I could not 
 argue— a fortunate incapacity ; it needed but trium- 
 jDhant, logical opposition to effect all the director 
 wished to be effected ; but I could talk in my own 
 way — the way M. Paul was used to — and of which 
 he could follow the meanderings and fill the hiatus, 
 and pardon the strange stammerings, strange to 
 him no longer. At ease with him, I could defend 
 my creed and faith in my own fashion ; in some 
 degree I could lull his prejudices. He was not 
 satisfied when he went away, hardly was he ap- 
 peased; but he was made thoroughly to feel that 
 Protestants were not necessarily the irreverent Pa- 
 gans his director had insinuated ; he was made to 
 comprehend something of their mode of honouring 
 the Light, the Life, the Word ; he was enabled partly 
 to perceive that, while their veneration for things 
 venerable was not quite like that cultivated in his 
 Church, it had its own, perhaps, deeper power — its 
 own more solemn awe. 
 
 I found that Pere Silas (himself, I must repeat, 
 not a bad man, though the advocate of a bad cause) 
 had darkly stigmatized Protestants in general, and 
 myself by inference, with strange names, had. 
 
196 V1LLETTE. 
 
 ascribed to us strange " isms ;" Monsieur Emanuel 
 revealed all this in his frank fashion, which knew 
 not secretiveness, looking at me as he spoke with a 
 kind, earnest fear, almost trembling lest there should 
 be truth in the charges. Pere Silas, it seems, had 
 closely watched me, had ascertained that I went by 
 turns, and indiscriminately, to the three Protestant 
 Chapels of Villette — the French, German, and 
 English — id est, the Presbyterian, Lutheran, Epis- 
 copalian. Such liberality argued in the Father's 
 eyes profound indifference — who tolerates all, he 
 reasoned, can be attached to none. Now, it hap- 
 pened that I had often secretly wondered at the 
 minute and unimportant character of the differences 
 between these three sects — at the unity and identity 
 of their vital doctrines : I saw nothing to hinder 
 them from being one day fused into one grand 
 Holy Alliance, and I respected them all, though I 
 thought that in each there were faults of form ; in- 
 cumbrances, and trivialities. Just what I thought, 
 that did I tell M. Emanuel, and explained to him 
 that my own last appeal, the guide to which I 
 looked, and the teacher which I owned, must 
 always be the Bible itself, rather than any sect, of 
 whatever name or nation. 
 
THE APPLE OF DISCORD. 197 
 
 He left me soothed, yet full of solicitude, breath- 
 ing a wish, as strong as a prayer, that if I were 
 wrong, Heaven would lead me right. I heard, 
 poured forth on the threshold, some fervid mur- 
 murings to " Marie, Reine du Ciel," some deep 
 aspiration that his hope might yet be mine. 
 
 Strange ! I had no such feverish wish to turn him 
 from the faith of his fathers. I thought Romanism 
 wrong, a great mixed image of gold and clay ; but it 
 seemed to me that this Romanist held the purer 
 elements of his creed with an innocency of heart 
 which God must love. 
 
 The preceding conversation passed between eight 
 and nine o'clock of the evening, in a school-room of 
 the quiet Rue Fossette, opening on a sequestered 
 garden. Probably about the same, or a somewhat 
 later hour of the succeeding evening, its echoes, 
 collected by holy obedience, were breathed verbatim 
 in an attent ear, at the panel of a confessional, in 
 the hoary church of the Magi. It ensued that 
 Pere Silas paid a visit to Madame Beck, and 
 stirred by I know not what mixture of motives, 
 persuaded her to let him undertake for a 
 time the heretic Englishwoman's spiritual direc- 
 tion. 
 
198 VILLETTE. 
 
 Hereupon I was put through a course of reading 
 — that is, I just glanced at the books lent me ; they 
 were too little in my way to be thoroughly read, 
 marked, learned, or inwardly digested. And besides 
 I had a book up-stairs, under my pillow, whereof 
 certain chapters satisfied my needs in the article of 
 spiritual lore, furnishing such precept and example 
 as, to my heart's core, I was convinced could not be 
 improved on. 
 
 Then Pere Silas showed me the fair side of 
 Rome, her good works, and bade me judge the tree 
 by its fruits. 
 
 In answer, I felt and I avowed that these works 
 were not the fruits of Rome; they were but her 
 abundant blossoming, but the fair promise she 
 showed the world. That bloom, when set, savoured 
 not of charity ; the apple full-formed was ignorance, 
 abasement, and bigotry. Out of men's afflictions 
 and affections were forged the rivets of their servi- 
 tude. Poverty was fed and clothed, and sheltered 
 to bind it by obligation to " the Church ; " orphan- 
 age was reared and educated that it might grow up 
 in the fold of " the Church ;" sickness was tended 
 that it might die after the formula and in the 
 ordinance of " the Church ; " and men were over- 
 
THE APPLE OF DISCORD. 199 
 
 wrought, and women most murderously sacrificed, 
 and all laid down a world God made pleasant for 
 his creatures' good, and took up a cross, monstrous 
 in its galling weight, that they might serve Rome, 
 prove her sanctity, confirm her power, and spread 
 the reign of her tyrant "Church." 
 
 For man's good was little done; for God's glory 
 less. A thousand ways were opened with pain, with 
 blood-sweats, with lavishing of life ; mountains were 
 cloven through their breasts, and rocks were split 
 to their base; and all for what? That a Priesthood 
 might march straight on and straight upward to an 
 all-dominating eminence, whence they might at last 
 stretch the sceptre of their Moloch " Church." 
 
 It will not be. God is not with Rome, and, were 
 human sorrows still for the Son of God, would he 
 not mourn over her cruelties and ambitions, as once 
 he mourned over the crimes and woes of doomed 
 Jerusalem ! 
 
 Oh, lovers of power ! Oh, mitred aspirants for 
 this world's kingdoms ! an hour will come, even to 
 you, when it will be well for your hearts — pausing 
 faint at each broken beat — that there is a Mercy 
 beyond human compassions, a Love stronger than, 
 this strong death which even you must face, and 
 
200 VILLETTE. 
 
 before it, fall ; a Charity more potent than any sin, 
 even yours ; a Pity which redeems worlds — nay, ab- 
 solves Priests. 
 
 My third temptation was held out in the pomp of 
 Rome, the glory of her kingdom. I was taken to 
 the churches on solemn occasions — days of f£te and 
 state ; I was shown the Papal ritual and ceremonial. 
 I looked at it. 
 
 Many people — men and women — no doubt far 
 my superiors in a thousand ways, have felt this 
 display impressive, have declared that though their 
 Reason protested, their Imagination was subju- 
 gated. I cannot say the same. Neither full pro- 
 cession, nor high mass, nor swarming tapers, nor 
 swinging censers, nor ecclesiastical millinery, nor 
 celestial jewellery, touched my imagination a whit. 
 What I saw struck me as tawdry, not grand ; as 
 grossly material, not poetically spiritual. 
 
 This I did not tell Pere Silas ; he was old, he 
 looked venerable, through every abortive experi- 
 ment, under every repeated disappointment, he re- 
 mained personally kind to me, and I felt tender of 
 hurting his feelings. But on the evening of a 
 
THE APPLE OF DISCORD. 201 
 
 certain day when, from the balcony of a great 
 house, I had been made to witness a huge mingled 
 procession of the church and the army — priests 
 with relics, and soldiers with weapons, an obese and 
 aged archbishop, habited in cambric and lace, 
 looking strangely like a gray daw in bird-of-para- 
 dise plumage, and a band of young girls fantastically 
 robed and garlanded — then I spoke my mind to 
 M. Paul. 
 
 " I did not like it," I told him, " I did not respect 
 such ceremonies ; I wished to see no more." 
 
 And having relieved my conscience by this de- 
 claration, I was able to go on, and, speaking more 
 currently and clearlj 7 than my wont, to show him 
 that I had a mind to keep to my reformed creed ; 
 that the more I saw of Popery the closer I clung 
 to Protestantism; doubtless there were errors in 
 every Church, but I now perceived by contrast how 
 severely pure was my own, compared with her 
 whose painted and meretricious face had been 
 unveiled for my admiration. I told him how we 
 kept fewer forms between us and God ; retaining, 
 indeed, no more than, perhaps, the nature of man- 
 kind in the mass rendered necessary for due ob- 
 servance. I told him I could not look on flowers 
 
202 VILLETTE. 
 
 and tinsel, on wax-lights and embroidery, at such 
 times and under such circumstances as should be 
 devoted to lifting the secret vision to Him whose 
 home is Infinity, and his being — Eternity. That 
 when I thought of sin and sorrow, of earthly cor- 
 ruption, mortal depravity, weighty temporal woe — 
 I could not care for chanting priests or mumming 
 officials ; that when the pains of existence and the 
 terrors of dissolution pressed before me — when the 
 mighty hope and measureless doubt of the future 
 arose in view — then, even the scientific strain, or the 
 prayer in a language learned and dead, harassed 
 with hindrance a heart which only longed to cry — 
 
 " God be merciful to me, a sinner !" 
 
 When I had so spoken, so declared my faith, 
 and so widely severed myself from him I addressed 
 — then, at last, came a tone accordant, an echo 
 responsive, one sweet chord of harmony in two 
 conflicting spirits. 
 
 " Whatever say priests or controversialists," mur- 
 mured M. Emanuel, " God is good, and loves all 
 the sincere. Believe, then, what you can ; believe 
 it as you can ; one prayer, at least, we have in 
 common ; I also cry— ' Dieu, sois appaise envers 
 moi qui suis pecheur ! ' " 
 
THE APPLE OF DISCORD. 203 
 
 He leaned on the back of my chair. After some 
 thought he again spoke : 
 
 " How seem in the eyes of that God who made 
 all firmaments, from whose nostrils issued whatever 
 of life is here, or in the stars shining yonder — how 
 seem the differences of man ? But as Time is not for 
 God, nor Space, so neither is Measure, nor Com- 
 parison. We abase ourselves in our littleness, and 
 we do right ; yet it may be that the constancy of 
 one heart, the truth and faith of one mind accord- 
 ing to the light He has appointed, import as much 
 to Him as the just motion of satellites about their 
 planets, of planets about their suns, of suns around 
 that mighty unseen centre incomprehensible, ir- 
 realizable, with strange mental effort only divined. 
 
 " God guide us all ! God bless you, Lucy ! " 
 
204 VILLETTE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 SUNSHINE. 
 
 It was very well for Paulina to decline farther cor- 
 respondence with Graham till her father had sanc- 
 tioned the intercourse, but Dr. Bretton could not 
 live within a league of the Hotel Crecy, and not 
 eontrive to visit there often. Both lovers meant at 
 first, I believe, to be distant ; they kept their inten- 
 tion so far as demonstrative courtship went, but in 
 feeling they soon drew very near. 
 
 All that was best in Graham sought Paulina; 
 whatever in him was noble, awoke, and grew in her 
 presence. With his past admiration of Miss Fan- 
 shawe, I suppose his intellect had little to do, but 
 his whole intellect, and his highest tastes, came in 
 question now. These, like all his faculties, were 
 active, eager for nutriment, and alive to gratification 
 when it came. 
 
SUNSHINE. 205 
 
 I cannot say that Paulina designedly led him to 
 talk of books, or formally proposed to herself for a 
 moment the task of winning him to reflection, or 
 planned the improvement of his mind, or so much. 
 as fancied his mind could in any one respect be 
 improved. She thought him very perfect ; it was 
 Graham himself, who, at first by the merest chance, 
 mentioned some book he had been reading, and 
 when in her response, sounded a welcome harmony 
 of sympathies, something pleasant to his soul, he 
 talked on, more and better perhaps than he had ever 
 talked before on such subjects. She listened with 
 delight, and answered with, animation. In each, 
 successive answer, Graham heard a music waxing 
 finer and finer to his sense ; in each he found a sug- 
 gestive, persuasive, magic accent that opened a 
 scarce known treasure-house within, showed him 
 unsuspected power in his own mind, and what was 
 better, latent goodness in his heart. Each liked 
 the way in which the other talked ; the voice, the 
 diction, the expression pleased ; each keenly relished 
 the flavour of the other's wit ; they met each other's 
 meaning with strange quickness, their thoughts 
 often matched like carefully-chosen pearls. Gra- 
 ham had wealth of mirth by nature ; Paulina pos- 
 
206 VILLETTE. 
 
 sessed no such inherent flow of animal spirits — 
 unstimulated, she inclined to be thoughtful and 
 pensive — but now she seemed merry as a lark ; in 
 her lover's genial presence, she glanced like some 
 soft glad light. How beautiful she grew in her 
 happiness, I can hardly express, but I wondered to 
 see her. As to that gentle ice of hers — that reserve 
 on which she had depended; where was it now? 
 Ah ! Graham would not long bear it ; he brought 
 with him a generous influence that soon thawed the 
 timid, self-imposed restriction. 
 
 Now were the old Bretton days talked over ; per- 
 haps brokenly at first, with a sort of smiling dif- 
 fidence, then with opening candour and still grow- 
 ing confidence. Graham had made for himself a 
 better opportunity than that he had wished me to 
 give ; he had earned independence of the co 1 lateral 
 help that disobliging Lucy had refused; all his 
 reminiscences of " little Polly" found their proper 
 expression in his own pleasant tones, by his own 
 kind and handsome lips ; how much better than if 
 suggested by me. 
 
 More than once when we were alone, Paulina 
 would tell me how wonderful and curious it was to 
 discover the richness and accuracy of his memory in 
 
SUNSHINE. 207 
 
 this matter. How, while he was looking at her, 
 recollections would seem to be suddenly quickened 
 in his mind. He reminded her that she had once 
 gathered his head in her arms, caressed his leonine 
 graces, and cried out, " Graham, I do like you ! " 
 He told her how she would set a footstool beside 
 him, and climb by its aid to his knee. At this day 
 he said he could recall the sensation of her little 
 hands smoothing his cheek, or burying themselves 
 in his thick mane. He remembered the touch of 
 her small forefinger, placed half tremblingly, half 
 curiously, in the cleft in his chin, the lisp, the look 
 with which she would name it " a pretty dimple,' 
 then seek his eyes and question why they pierced so, 
 telling him he had a " nice, strange face ; far nicer, 
 far stranger, than either his mama or Lucy Snowe." 
 " Child as I was," remarked Paulina, " I wonder 
 how I dared be so venturous. To me he seems now 
 all sacred, his locks are inaccessible, and, Lucy, I 
 feel a sort of fear when I look at his firm, marble 
 chin, at his straight Greek features. Women are 
 called beautiful, Lucy; he is not like a woman, 
 therefore I suppose he is not beautiful, but what is 
 he then ? Do other people see him with my eyes ? 
 Do you admire him ?" 
 
208 VILLETTB. 
 
 " I '11 tell you what I do, Paulina," was once my 
 answer to her many questions. " I never see him. I 
 looked at him twice or thrice about a year ago, 
 before he recognized me, and then I shut my eyes ; 
 and if he were to cross their balls twelve times 
 between each day's sunset and sunrise, except from 
 memory, I should hardly know what shape had 
 gone by." 
 
 " Lucy, what do you mean ? " said she, under her 
 breath. 
 
 " I mean that I value vision, and dread being 
 struck stone blind." It was best to answer her 
 strongly at once, and to silence for ever the tender, 
 passionate confidences which left her lips, sweet 
 honey, and sometimes dropped in my ear — molten 
 lead. To me, she commented no more on her 
 lover's beauty. 
 
 Yet speak of him she would ; sometimes shyly in 
 quiet, brief phrases ; sometimes with a tenderness of 
 cadence, and music of voice exquisite in itself, but 
 which chafed me at times miserably ; and then, I 
 know, I gave her stern looks and words ; but cloud- 
 less happiness had dazzled her native clear sight, 
 and she only thought Lucy — fitful. 
 
 " Spartan girl ! Proud Lucy ! " she would say, 
 
SUNSHINE. 209 
 
 smiling at me. " Graham says you are the most 
 peculiar, capricious little woman he knows ; but 
 yet you are excellent ; we both think so." 
 
 " You both think you know not what," said I. 
 " Have the goodness to make me as little the 
 subject of your mutual talk and thoughts as pos- 
 sible. I have my sort of life apart from yours." 
 
 " But ours, Lucy, is a beautiful life, or it will 
 be ; and you shall share it." 
 
 " I shall share no man's or woman's life in this 
 world, as you understand sharing. I think I have 
 one friend of my own, but am not sure ; and till 
 I am sure, I live solitary." 
 
 " But solitude is sadness." 
 
 " Yes ; it is sadness. Life, however, has worse 
 than that. Deeper than melancholy, lies heart- 
 break." 
 
 " Lucy, I wonder if anybody will ever compre- 
 hend you altogether." 
 
 There is, in lovers, a certain infatuation of 
 egotism; they will have a witness of their happi- 
 ness, cost that witness what it may. Paulina had 
 forbidden letters, yet Dr. Bretton wrote ; she had 
 resolved against correspondence, yet she answered, 
 were it only to chide. She showed me these 
 
 VOL. III. p 
 
210 VILLETTE. 
 
 letters; with something of the spoiled child's wil- 
 fulness, and of the heiress's irnperiousness, she 
 made me read them, As I read Graham's, I 
 scarce wondered at her exaction, and understood 
 her pride : they were fine letters — manly and fond 
 — modest and gallant. Hers must have appeared 
 to him beautiful. They had not been written to 
 show her talents ; still less, I think, to express her 
 love. On the contrary, it appeared that she had 
 proposed to herself the task of hiding that feeling, 
 and bridling her lover's ardour. But how could 
 such letters serve such a purpose ? Graham was 
 become dear as her life ; he drew her like a 
 powerful magnet. For her there was influence 
 unspeakable in all he uttered, wrote, thought, or 
 looked. With this unconfessed confession, her 
 letters glowed ; it kindled them, from greeting to 
 adieu. 
 
 " I wish papa knew ; I do wish papa knew ! " 
 began now to be her anxious murmur. " I wish, and 
 yet I fear. I can hardly keep Graham back from 
 telling him. There is nothing I long for more 
 than to have this affair settled — to speak out can- 
 didly ; and yet I dread the crisis. I know, I am 
 certain, papa will be angry at the first ; I fear he 
 
SUNSHINE. 211 
 
 will dislike me almost ; it will seem to him an 
 untoward business ; it will be a surprise, a shock ; 
 I can hardly foresee its whole effect on him." 
 
 The fact was — her father, long calm, was begin- 
 ning to be a little stirred : long blind on one point, 
 an importunate light was beginning to trespass on 
 his eye. 
 
 To her, he said nothing ; but when she was not 
 looking at, or perhaps thinking of him, I saw him 
 gaze and meditate on her. 
 
 One evening — Paulina was in her dressing-room, 
 writing, I believe, to Graham ; she had left me in 
 the library, reading — M. de Bassompierre came 
 in ; he sat down : I was about to withdraw ; he 
 requested me to remain — gently, yet in a manner 
 which showed he wished compliance. He had taken 
 his seat near the window, at a distance from me; 
 he opened a desk ; he took from it what looked 
 like a memorandum-book ; of this book he studied 
 a certain entry for several minutes. 
 
 " Miss Snowe," said he, laying it down, " do 
 you know my little girl's age 1" 
 
 " About eighteen, is it not, sir i" 
 
 " It seems so. This old pocket-book tells me 
 she was born on the 5th of May, in the year 
 
212 VILLETTE. 
 
 18 — , eighteen years ago. It is strange ; I had 
 lost the just reckoning of her age. I thought of 
 her as twelve — fourteen — an indefinite date ; but 
 she seemed a child." 
 
 " She is about eighteen," I repeated. " She is 
 grown up ; she will be no taller." 
 
 " My little jewel ! " said M. de Bassompierre, 
 in a tone which penetrated like some of his 
 daughter's accents. 
 
 He sat very thoughtful. 
 
 " Sir, don't grieve," I said ; for I knew his 
 feelings, utterly unspoken as they were. 
 
 " She is the only pearl] I have," he said ; M and 
 now others will find out that she is pure and of 
 price ; they will covet her." 
 
 I made no answer. Graham Bretton had dined 
 with us that day ; he had shone both in converse 
 and looks : I know not what pride of bloom em- 
 bellished his aspect and mellowed his intercourse. 
 Under the stimulus of a high hope, something 
 had unfolded in his whole manner which com- 
 pelled attention. I think he had purposed on 
 that day to indicate the origin of his endeavours, 
 and the aim of his ambition. M. de Bassompierre 
 had found himself forced, in a manner, to descry 
 
SUNSHINE. 213 
 
 the direction and catch the character of his homage. 
 Slow in remarking, he was logical in reasoning ; 
 having once seized the thread, it had guided him 
 through a long labyrinth. 
 
 " Where is she?" he asked. 
 
 " She is up-stairs." 
 
 " What is she doing?" 
 
 " She is writing." 
 
 " She writes, does she ? Does she receive 
 letters?" 
 
 " None but such as she can show me. And — 
 sir — she — they have long wanted to consult you." 
 
 " Pshaw ! They don't think of me — an old 
 father ! I am in the way," 
 
 " Ah, M. de Bassompierre — not so — that can't 
 be ! But Paulina must speak for herself ; and 
 Dr. Bretton, too, must be his own advocate." 
 
 " It is a little late. Matters are advanced, it 
 seems." 
 
 " Sir, till you approve, nothing is done — only 
 they love each other." 
 
 " Only ! " he echoed. 
 
 Invested by fate with the part of confidante an d 
 mediator, I was obliged to go on : — 
 
 " Hundreds of times has Dr. Bretton been on 
 
214 VILLETTE. 
 
 the point of appealing to you, sir ; but, with all 
 his high courage, he fears you mortally." 
 
 " He may well — he may well fear me. He has 
 touched the best thing I have. Had he but let 
 her§ alone, she would have remained a child for 
 years yet. So. Are they engaged?" 
 
 " They could not become engaged without your 
 permission." 
 
 " It is well for you, Miss Snowe, to talk and 
 think with that propriety which always charac- 
 terizes you ; but this matter is a grief to me ; my 
 little girl was all I had ; I have no more daughters 
 and no son ; Bretton might as well have looked 
 elsewhere ; there are scores of rich and pretty 
 women who would not, I daresay, dislike him ; he 
 has looks, and conduct, and connection. Would 
 nothing serve him but my Polly 1 " 
 
 " If he had never seen your ' Polly,' others 
 might and would have pleased him — your niece, 
 Miss Fanshawe, for instance." 
 
 " Ah ! I would have given him Ginevra with all 
 
 my heart ; but Polly ! 1 can 't let him have her. 
 
 No — I can 't. He is not her equal," he affirmed, 
 rather gruffly. " In what particular is he her 
 match 1 They talk of fortune ! I am not an 
 
SUNSHINE. 215 
 
 avaricious or interested man, but the world thinks 
 of these things — and Polly will be rich." 
 
 " Yes, that is known," said I : " all Villette 
 knows her as an heiress." 
 
 " Do they talk of my little girl in that light?" 
 
 « They do, sir." 
 
 He fell into deep thought. I ventured to say : — 
 
 " Would you, sir, think any one Paulina's 
 match 1 Would you prefer any other to Dr. Bret- 
 ton? Do you. think higher rank or more wealth 
 would make much difference in your feelings towards 
 a future son-in-law ? " 
 
 " You touch me there," said he. 
 
 " Look at the aristocracy of Villette — you would 
 not like them, sir ? " 
 
 " I should not — never a due, baron, or vicomte of 
 the lot." 
 
 " I am told many of these persons think about 
 her, sir," I went on, gaining courage on finding that 
 I met attention rather than repulse. " Other suitors 
 will come, therefore, if Dr. Bretton is refused. 
 Wherever you go, I suppose, aspirants will not be 
 wanting. Independent of heiress-ship, it appears to 
 me that Paulina charms most of those who see 
 her." 
 
216 VILLETTE. 
 
 " Does she ? How ? My little girl is not thought 
 a beauty. " 
 
 " Sir, Miss De Bassompierre is very beautiful." 
 
 " Nonsense ! — begging your pardon, Miss Snowe, 
 but I think you are too partial. / like Polly : I 
 like all her ways and all her looks — but then I am 
 her father ; and even / never thought about beauty. 
 She is amusing, fairy-like, interesting to me ; — you 
 must be mistaken in supposing her handsome? " 
 
 " She attracts, sir : she would attract without the 
 advantages of your wealth and position." 
 
 " My wealth and position ! Are these any bait 
 to Graham ? If I thought so " 
 
 " Dr. Bretton knows these points perfectly, as 
 you may be sure, M. de Bassompierre^ and values 
 them as any gentleman would — as you would your- 
 self, under the same circumstances — but they are 
 not his baits. He loves your daughter very much ; 
 he feels her finest qualities, and they influence him 
 worthily." 
 
 " What ! has my little pet < fine qualities ? ' " 
 
 " Ah, sir ! did you observe her that evening 
 when so many men of eminence and learning dined 
 here ? " 
 
 " I certainly was rather struck and surprised with 
 
SUNSHINE. 217 
 
 her manner that day; its womanliness made me 
 smile." 
 
 " And did you see those accomplished Frenchmen 
 gather round her in the drawing-room ? " 
 
 " I did ; but I thought it was by way of relaxa- 
 tion — as one might amuse one's self with a pretty 
 infant." 
 
 " Sir, she demeaned herself with distinction ; and 
 I heard the French gentlemen say she was ' petrie 
 d'esprit et de graces.' Dr. Bretton thought the 
 same." 
 
 " She is a good, dear child, that is certain ; and I 
 do believe she has some character. When I think 
 of it, I was once ill ; Polly nursed me ; they thought 
 I should die ; she, I recollect, grew at once 
 stronger and tenderer as I grew worse in health. 
 And as I recovered, what a sunbeam she was in 
 my sick-room ! Yes ; she played about my chair as 
 noiselessly and as cheerful as light. And now she 
 is sought in marriage ! I don't want to part with 
 her," said he, and he groaned. 
 
 " You have known Dr. and Mrs. Bretton so 
 long," I suggested, " it would be less like separation 
 to give her to him than to another." 
 
 He reflected rather gloomily. 
 
218 VILLETTE. 
 
 " True. I have long known Louisa Bretton," he 
 murmured. " She and I are indeed old, old friends : 
 a sweet, kind girl she was when she was young. 
 You talk of beauty, Miss Snowe ! she was handsome, 
 if you will — tall, straight, and blooming — not the 
 mere child or elf my Polly seems to me : at eighteen, 
 Louisa had a carriage and stature lit for a princess. 
 She is a comely and a good woman now. The lad 
 is like her ; I have always thought so, and favoured 
 and wished him well. Now he repays me by this 
 robbery ! My little treasure used to love her old 
 father dearly and truly. It is all over now, doubt- 
 less — I am an incumbrance." 
 
 The door opened — his " little treasure " came in. 
 She was dressed, so to speak, in evening beauty ; 
 that animation which sometimes comes with the 
 close of day, warmed her eye and cheek ; a tinge of 
 summer crimson heightened her complexion ; her 
 curls fell full and long on her lily neck ; her white 
 dress suited the heat of June. Thinking me alone, 
 she had brought in her hand the letter just written 
 — brought it folded but unsealed. I was to read it. 
 When she saw her father, her tripping step faltered 
 a little, paused a moment — the colour in her cheek 
 flowed rosy over her whole face. 
 
SUNSHINE. 219 
 
 " Polly," said M. de Bassompierre, in a low voice, 
 with a grave smile, " do you blush at seeing papa ? 
 That is something new." 
 
 " I don 't blush — I never do blush," affirmed she, 
 while another eddy from the heart sent up its scarlet. 
 " But I thought you were in the dining-room, and 
 I wanted Lucy." 
 
 " You thought I was with John Graham Bretton, 
 I suppose? But he has just been called out: he 
 will be back soon, Polly. He can post your letter 
 for you ; it will save Matthieu a * course,' as he 
 calls it." 
 
 " I don't post letters," said she, rather pettishly. 
 
 " What do you do with them, then ? — come here 
 and tell me." 
 
 Both her mind and gesture seemed to hesitate a 
 second — to say "Shall I come?" — but she approached. 
 
 "How long is it since you became a letter-writer, 
 Polly ? It only seems yesterday when you were at 
 your pot-hooks, labouring away absolutely with both 
 hands at the pen." 
 
 " Papa, they are not letters to send to the post in 
 your letter-bag ; they are only notes, which I give 
 now and then into the person's hand, just to 
 satisfy." 
 
220 VILLETTE. 
 
 " The person ! That means Miss Snowe, I sup- 
 pose?". 
 
 " No, papa — not Lucy." 
 
 " Who then ? Perhaps Mrs. Bretton ?" 
 
 " No, papa — not Mrs. Bretton." 
 
 " Who then, my little daughter ? Tell papa the 
 truth." 
 
 " Oh, papa !" she cried with earnestness, " I will — 
 I will tell you the truth — all the truth ; I am glad 
 to tell you — glad, though I tremble." 
 
 She did tremble: growing excitement, kindling 
 feeling, and also gathering courage, shook her. 
 
 " I hate to hide my actions from you, papa. I 
 fear you and love you above everything but God. 
 Bead the letter ; look at the address." 
 
 She laid it on his knee. He took it up and read 
 it through ; his hand shaking, his eyes glistening 
 meantime. 
 
 He re-folded it, and viewed the writer with a 
 strange, tender, mournful amaze. 
 
 " Can she write so — the little thing that stood at 
 my knee but yesterday? Can she feel so ?" 
 
 " Papa, is it wrong ? Does it pain you?" 
 
 " There is nothing wrong in it, my innocent little 
 Mary ; but it pains me." 
 
SUNSHINE. 221 
 
 " But, papa, listen ! You shall not be pained by 
 me. I would give up everything — almost " (correct- 
 ing herself) : " I would die rather than make you 
 unhappy ; that would be too wicked ! " 
 
 She shuddered. 
 
 "Does the letter not please you? Must it not 
 go ? Must it be torn ? It shall, for your sake, if 
 you order it." 
 
 " I order nothing." 
 
 " Order something, papa ; express your wish ; 
 only don't hurt, don't grieve Graham. I cannot, 
 cannot bear that. I love you, papa; but I love 
 Graham too, because — because — it is impossible to 
 help it." 
 
 " This splendid Graham is a young scamp, Polly — 
 that is my present notion of him : it will surprise 
 you to hear that, for my part, I do not love him one 
 whit. Ah ! years ago I saw something in that lad's 
 eye I never quite fathomed — something his mother 
 had not — a depth which warned a man not to wade 
 into that stream too far ; now, suddenly, I find my- 
 self taken over the crown of the head." 
 
 " Papa, you don't — you have not fallen in ; you 
 are safe on the bank ; you can do as you please ; 
 your power is despotic ; you can shut me up in a 
 
222 VILLETTE. 
 
 convent, and break Graham's heart to-morrow, if 
 you choose to be so cruel. Now autocrat, now 
 czar, will you do this ?" 
 
 " Off with him to Siberia, red whiskers and all ; 
 I say, I don't like him, Polly, and I wonder that 
 you should." 
 
 "Papa," said she, "do you know you are very 
 naughty? I never saw you look so disagreeable, 
 so unjust, so almost vindictive before. There is an 
 expression in your face which does not belong to 
 you." 
 
 " Off with him!" pursued Mr. Home, who cer- 
 tainly did look sorely crossed and annoyed — even a 
 little bitter; "but, I suppose, if he went, Polly 
 would pack a bundle and run after him ; her heart 
 is fairly won — won, and weaned from her old 
 father." 
 
 " Papa, I say it is naughty, it is decidedly wrong, 
 to talk in that way. I am not weaned from you, 
 and no human being and no mortal influence can 
 wean me." 
 
 " Be married, Polly ! Espouse the red whiskers. 
 Cease to be a daughter ; go and be a wife ! " 
 
 " Red whiskers ! I wonder what you mean, 
 papa. You should take care of prejudice. You 
 
SUNSHINE. 223 
 
 sometimes say to me that all the Scotch, your 
 countrymen, are the victims of prejudice. It is 
 proved now, I think, when no distinction is to be 
 made between red and deep nut-brown." 
 
 " Leave the prejudiced old Scotchman ; go away." 
 
 She stood looking at him a minute. She wanted 
 to show firmness, superiority to taunts ; knowing 
 her father's character, guessing his few foibles, she 
 had expected the sort of scene which was now 
 transpiring : it did not take her by surprise, and 
 she desired to let it pass with dignity, reliant upon 
 reaction. Her dignity stood her in no stead. 
 Suddenly her soul melted in her eyes ; she fell on 
 his neck : — 
 
 " I won't leave you, papa ; I '11 never leave you. 
 I won't pain you ; I '11 never pain you ! " was her 
 cry. 
 
 " My lamb ! my treasure ! " murmured the loving 
 though rugged sire. He said no more for the 
 moment ; indeed, those two words were hoarse. 
 
 The room was now darkening. I heard a move- 
 ment, a step without. Thinking it might be a 
 servant coming with candles, I gently opened, to 
 prevent intrusion. In the ante-room stood no ser- 
 vant ; a tall gentleman was placing his hat on the 
 
224 VILLETTE. 
 
 table, drawing off his gloves slowly — lingering, 
 waiting, it seemed to me. He called me neither by 
 sign nor word ; yet his eye said : — 
 
 " Lucy, come here." And I went. 
 
 Over his face a smile flowed, while he looked 
 down on me : no temper, save his own, would have 
 expressed by a smile the sort of agitation which now 
 fevered him. 
 
 " Mr. de Bassompierre is there — is he not ? " he 
 inquired, pointing to the library. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " He noticed me at dinner ? He understood me ? " 
 
 " Yes, Graham." 
 
 "I am brought up for judgment, then, and so is 
 she?" 
 
 " Mr. Home " (we now and always continued to 
 term him Mr. Home at times) "is talking to his 
 daughter." 
 
 " Ha ! These are sharp moments, Lucy ! " 
 
 He was quite stirred up ; his young hand trembled ; 
 a vital (I was going to write mortal, but such words 
 ill apply to one all living like him)— a vital sus- 
 pense now held, now hurried, his breath : in all 
 this trouble his smile never faded. 
 
 " Is he very angry, Lucy ? " 
 
SUNSHINE. 225 
 
 " She is very faithful, Graham." 
 
 "What will be done unto me?" 
 
 " Graham, your star must be fortunate." 
 
 " Must it ? Kind prophet ! So cheered, I should 
 be a faint heart indeed to quail. I think I find all 
 women faithful, Lucy. I ought to love them, and I 
 do. My mother is good ; she is divine ; and you are 
 true as steel. Are you not 1" 
 
 " Yes, Graham." 
 
 " Then give me thy hand, my little god-sister ; it 
 is a friendly little hand to me, and always has been.* 
 And now for the great venture. God be with the 
 right ! Lucy, say, Amen ! " 
 
 He turned, and waited till I said " Amen ! " — 
 which I did to please him : the old charm, in doing 
 as he bid me, came back. I wished him success ; 
 and successful I knew he would be. He was born 
 victor, as some are born vanquished. 
 
 " Follow me !" he said ; and I followed him into 
 Mr. Home's presence. 
 
 " Sir," he asked, " what is my sentence ? " 
 
 The father looked at him ; the daughter kept her 
 face hid. 
 
 "Well, Bretton," said Mr. Home, "you have 
 given me the usual reward of hospitality. I enter- 
 
 VOL. III. Q 
 
226 VILLETTE. 
 
 tained you ; you have taken my best. I was always 
 glad to see you ; you were glad to see the one pre- 
 cious thing I had. You spoke me fair ; and, mean- 
 time, I will not say you robbed me, but I am be- 
 reaved, and what I have lost, you, it seems, have 
 won." 
 
 " Sir, I cannot repent." 
 
 " Repent ! Not you ! You triumph, no doubt : 
 John Graham, you descended partly from a High- 
 lander and a chief, and there is a trace of the Celt 
 in all you look, speak, and think. You have his 
 
 cunning and his charm. The red (Well, then, 
 
 Polly, the fair) hair, the tongue of guile, and brain 
 of wile, are all come down by inheritance." 
 
 " Sir, I feel honest enough," said Graham ; and 
 a genuine English blush covered its face with its 
 warm witness of sincerity. " And yet," he added, 
 " I won't deny that in some respects you accuse me 
 justly. In your presence I have always had a 
 thought which I dared not show you. I did truly 
 regard you as the possessor of the most valuable 
 thing the world owns for me. I wished for it ; I 
 tried for it. Sir, I ask for it now." 
 
 *' John, you ask much." 
 
 " Very much, sir. It must come from your gene- 
 
SUNSHINE. 227 
 
 rosity, as a gift; from your justice, as a reward. I 
 can never earn it." 
 
 "Ay! Listen to the Highland tongue!" said 
 Mr. Home. " Look up, Polly ! Answer this, 
 ' braw wooer ;' send him away !" 
 
 She looked up. She shyly glanced at her eager, 
 handsome suitor. She gazed tenderly on her fur- 
 rowed sire. 
 
 "Papa, I love you both," said she; "I can take 
 care of you both. I need not send Graham away — 
 he can live here ; he will be no inconvenience," 
 she alleged with that simplicity of phraseology 
 which at times was wont to make both her father 
 and Graham smile. They smiled now. 
 
 " He will be a prodigious inconvenience to me," 
 still persisted Mr. Home. " I don't want him, 
 Polly ; he is too tall ; he is in my way. Tell him 
 to march." 
 
 "You will get used to him, papa. He seemed 
 exceedingly tall to me at first — like a tower when 
 I looked up at him; but, on the whole, I would 
 rather not have him otherwise." 
 
 " I object to him altogether, Polly ; I can do 
 without a son-in-law. I should never have 
 requested the best man in the land to stand 
 
228 VILLETTE. 
 
 to me in that relation. Dismiss this gentle- 
 man." 
 
 " But he has known you so long, papa, and suits 
 you so well." 
 
 " Suits me, forsooth ! Yes ; he has pretended to 
 make my opinions and tastes his own. He has 
 humoured me for good reasons. I think, Polly, 
 you and I will bid him good bye." 
 
 " Till to-morrow only. Shake hands with Graham, 
 papa." 
 
 " No : I think not : I am not friends with him. 
 Don't think to coax me between you." 
 
 " Indeed, indeed, you are friends. Graham, 
 stretch out your right hand. Papa, put out yours. 
 Now, let them touch. Papa, don't be stiff; close 
 your fingers ; be pliant — there ! But that is not a 
 clasp — it is a grasp ! Papa, you grasp like a vice. 
 You crush Graham's hand to the bone ; you hurt 
 him!" 
 
 He must have hurt him ; for he wore a massive 
 ring, set round with brilliants, of which the sharp 
 facets cut into Graham's flesh and drew blood : but 
 pain only made Dr. John laugh, as anxiety had 
 made him smile. 
 
 " Come with me into my study," at last, said 
 
SUNSHINE. 2'29 
 
 Mr. Home to the doctor. They went. Their inter- 
 view was not long, but I suppose it was conclusive. 
 The suitor had to undergo an interrogatory and a 
 scrutiny on many things. Whether Dr. Bretton 
 was at times guileful in look and language or not, 
 there was a sound foundation below. His answers, 
 I understood afterwards, evinced both wisdom and 
 integrity. He had managed his affairs well. He 
 had struggled through entanglements ; his fortunes 
 were in the way of retrieval ; he proved himself in a 
 position to marry. 
 
 Once more the father and lover appeared in the 
 library. M. de Bassompierre shut the door ; he 
 pointed to his daughter. 
 
 " Take her," he said. " Take her, John Bretton ; 
 and may God deal with you as you deal with 
 her!" 
 
 Not long after, perhaps a fortnight, I saw three 
 persons, Count de Bassompierre, his daughter, and 
 Dr. Graham Bretton, sitting on one seat, under a 
 low-spreading and umbrageous tree, in the grounds 
 of the palace at Bois l'Etang. They had come 
 
230 VILLETTE. 
 
 thither to enjoy a summer evening : outside the 
 magnificent gates their carriage waited to take 
 them home ; the green sweeps of turf spread round 
 them quiet and dim ; the palace rose at a distance, 
 white as a crag on Pentelicus ; the evening star 
 shone above it ; a forest of flowering shrubs em- 
 balmed the climate of this spot ; the hour was still 
 and sweet ; the scene, but for this group, was 
 solitary. 
 
 Paulina sat between the two gentlemen; while 
 they conversed, her little hands were busy at some 
 work ; I thought at first she was binding a nosegay. 
 No ; with the tiny pair of scissors, glittering in her 
 lap, she had severed spoils from each manly head 
 beside her, and was now occupied in plaiting toge- 
 ther the gray lock and the golden wave. The plait 
 woven — no silk-thread being at hand to bind it — a 
 tress of her own hair was made to serve that pur- 
 pose ; she tied it like a knot, prisoned it in a locket, 
 and laid it on her heart. 
 
 " Now," said she, " there is an amulet made, which 
 has virtue to keep you two always friends. You 
 can never quarrel so long as Iwear this." 
 
 An amulet was indeed made, a spell framed 
 which rendered enmity impossible. She was become 
 
SUNSHINE. 231 
 
 a bond to both, an influence over each, a mutual 
 concord. From theui she drew her happiness, 
 and what she borrowed, she, with interest, gave 
 back. 
 
 Is there, indeed, such happiness on earth? I 
 asked, as I watched the father, the daughter, 
 the future husband, now united — all blessed and 
 blessing. 
 
 Yes ; it is so. Without any colouring of romance, 
 or any exaggeration of fancy, it is so. Some real 
 lives do — for some certain days or years — actually 
 anticipate the happiness of Heaven ; and, I believe 
 if such perfect happiness is once felt by good people 
 (to the wicked it never comes), its sweet effect is 
 never wholly lost. Whatever trials follow, what- 
 ever pains of sickness or shades of death, the glory 
 precedent still shines through, cheering the keen 
 anguish, and tinging the deep cloud. 
 
 I will go farther. I do believe there are some 
 human beings so born, so reared, so guided from a 
 soft cradle to a calm and late grave, that no ex- 
 cessive suffering penetrates their lot, and no tem- 
 pestuous blackness overcasts their journey. And 
 often, these are not pampered, selfish beings, but 
 Nature's elect, harmonious and benign ; men and 
 
232 VILLETTE. 
 
 women mild with charity, kind agents of God's kind 
 attributes. 
 
 Let me not delay the happy truth. Graham 
 Bretton and Paulina de Bassompierre were married, 
 and such an agent did Dr. Bretton prove. He did 
 not with time degenerate; his faults decayed, his 
 virtues ripened ; he rose in intellectual refinement, 
 he won in moral profit : all dregs filtered away, 
 the clear wine settled bright and tranquil. Bright, 
 too, was the destiny of his sweet wife. She kept 
 her husband's love, she aided in his progress — of 
 his happiness she was the corner stone. 
 
 This pair was blessed indeed, for years brought 
 them, with great prosperity, great goodness ; they 
 imparted with open hand, yet wisely. Doubtless 
 they knew crosses, disappointments, difficulties ; 
 but these were well borne. More than once, too, 
 they had to look on Him whose face flesh scarce 
 can see and live : they had to pay their tribute to 
 the King of Terrors. In the fulness of years, M. 
 de Bassompierre was taken; in ripe old age de- 
 parted Louisa Bretton. Once even there rose a cry 
 in their halls, of Rachel weeping for her children ; 
 but others sprang healthy and blooming to replace 
 the lost : Dr. Bretton saw himself live again in a 
 
SUNSHINE. 233 
 
 son who inherited his looks and his disposition ; he 
 had stately daughters, too, like himself; these chil- 
 dren he reared with a suave, yet a firm hand ; 
 they grew up according to inheritance and nurture. 
 . In short, I do but speak the truth when I say 
 that these two lives of Graham and Paulina were 
 blessed, like that of Jacob's favoured son, with 
 " blessings of Heaven above, blessings of the deep 
 that lies under." It was so, for God saw that it was 
 good. 
 
234 VILLETTE. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 CLOUD. 
 
 But it is not so for all. What then? His will 
 be done, as done it surely will be, whether we 
 humble ourselves to resignation or not. The im- 
 pulse of creation forwards it; the strength, of 
 powers, seen and unseen, has its fulfilment in 
 charge. Proof of a life to come must be given. 
 In fire and in blood, if needful, must that proof 
 be written. In fire and in blood do we trace the 
 record throughout nature. In fire and in blood does 
 it cross our own experience. Sufferer, faint not 
 through terror of this burning evidence. Tired 
 wayfarer, gird up thy loins, look upward, march 
 onward. Pilgrims and brother mourners, join in 
 friendly company. Dark through the wilderness 
 of this world stretches the way for most of us : 
 equal and steady be our tread ; be our cross our 
 
cloud. 235 
 
 banner. For staff we have His promise, whose 
 "word is tried, whose way perfect:" for present 
 hope His providence, " who gives the shield of sal- 
 vation, whose gentleness makes great;" for final 
 home His bosom, who " dwells in the height of 
 Heaven ; " for crowning prize a glory, exceeding 
 and eternal. Let us so run that we may obtain ; 
 let us endure hardness as good soldiers ; let us finish 
 our course, and keep the faith, reliant in the issue 
 to come off more than conquerors : " Art thou not 
 from everlasting mine Holy One ? We shall not 
 die!" 
 
 On a Thursday morning we were all assembled 
 in classe, waiting for the lesson of literature. The 
 hour was come ; we expected the master. 
 
 The pupils of the first classe sat very still ; the 
 cleanly-written compositions prepared since the 
 last lesson lay ready before them, neatly tied with 
 ribbon, waiting to be gathered by the hand of the 
 professor as he made his rapid round of the desks. 
 The month was July, the morning fine, the glass- 
 door stood ajar, through it played a fresh breeze, 
 and plants, growing at the lintel, waved, bent, 
 looked in, seeming to whisper tidings. 
 
 M. Emanuel was not always quite punctual ; we 
 
236 VILLETTE. 
 
 scarcely wondered at his being a little late, but we 
 wondered when the door at last opened and, instead 
 of him with his swiftness and his fire, there came 
 quietly upon us, the cautious Madame Beck. 
 
 She approached M. Paul's desk ; she stood before 
 it ; she drew round her the light shawl covering 
 her shoulders ; beginning to speak in low, yet firm 
 tones, and with a fixed gaze, she said— 
 
 " This morning there will be no lesson of litera- 
 ture." 
 
 The second paragraph of her address followed, 
 after about two minutes' pause. 
 
 "It is probable the lessons will be suspended for 
 a week. I shall require at least that space of time 
 to find an efficient substitute for M. Emanuel. 
 Meanwhile, it shall be our study to fill the blanks 
 usefully. 
 
 " Your professor, ladies," she went on, " intends^ 
 if possible, duly to take leave of you. At the 
 present moment he has not leisure for that cere- 
 mony. He is preparing for a long voyage. A very 
 sudden and urgent summons of duty calls him to a 
 great distance. He has decided to leave Europe 
 for an indefinite time. Perhaps he may tell you 
 more himself. Ladies, instead of the usual lesson 
 
cloud. 237 
 
 with M. Emanuel, you will, this morning, read 
 English with Mademoiselle Lucy." 
 
 She bent her head courteously, drew closer the 
 folds of her shawl, and passed from the classe. 
 
 A great silence fell : then a murmur went round 
 the room : I believe some pupils wept. 
 
 Some time elapsed. The noise, the whispering, 
 the occasional sobbing increased. I became con- 
 scious of a relaxation of discipline, a sort of growing 
 disorder, as if my girls felt that vigilance was with- 
 drawn, and that surveillance had virtually left the 
 classe. Habit and the sense of duty enabled me 
 to rally quickly, to rise in my usual way, to speak 
 in my usual tone, to enjoin, and finally to establish 
 quiet. I made the English reading long and close. 
 I kept them at it the whole morning. I remember 
 feeling a sentiment of impatience towards the pupils 
 who sobbed. Indeed, their emotion was not of 
 much value ; it was only an hysteric agitation. I 
 told them so unsparingly. I half ridiculed them. I 
 was severe. The truth was, I could not do with 
 their tears, or that gasping sound ; I could not bear 
 it. A rather weak-minded, low-spirited pupil kept 
 it up when the others had done ; relentless necessity 
 obliged and assisted me so to accost her, that ehe 
 
238 VILLETTE. 
 
 dared not carry on the demonstration, that she was 
 forced to conquer the convulsion. 
 
 That girl would have had a right to hate me, 
 except that, when school was over and her com- 
 panions departing, I ordered her to stay, and when 
 they were gone, I did what I had never done to 
 one among them before — pressed her to my heart 
 and kissed her cheek. But, this impulse yielded 
 to, I speedily put her out of the classe, for, upon 
 that poignant strain, she wept more bitterly than 
 ever. 
 
 I filled with occupation every minute of that day, 
 and should have liked to sit up all night if I might 
 have kept a candle burning • the night, however, 
 proved a bad tinie, and left bad effects, preparing 
 me ill for the next day's ordeal of insufferable 
 gossip. Of course this news fell under general 
 discussion. Some little reserve had accompanied 
 the first surprise : that soon wore off; every mouth 
 opened ; every tongue wagged ; teachers, pupils, the 
 very servants, mouthed the name of " Emanuel." 
 He, whose connection with the school was contem- 
 porary with its commencement, thus suddenly to 
 withdraw ! All felt it strange. 
 
 They talked so much, so long, so often, that, out 
 
cloud. 239 
 
 of the very multitude of their words and rumours, 
 grew at last some intelligence. About the third 
 day I heard it said that he was to sail in a week ; 
 then — that he was bound for the West Indies. I 
 looked at Madame Beck's face, and into her eyes, 
 for disproof or confirmation of this report ; I pe- 
 rused her all over for information, but no part of 
 her disclosed more than what was unperturbed and 
 commonplace. 
 
 " This secession was an immense loss to her," she 
 alleged. " She did not know how she should fill 
 up the vacancy. She was so used to her kinsman, 
 he had become her right hand ; what should she do 
 without him? She had opposed the step, but M. 
 Paul had convinced her it was his duty." 
 
 She said all this in public, in classe, at the 
 dinner - table, speaking audibly to Zelie St. 
 Pierre. 
 
 " Why was it his duty ? " I could have asked 
 her that. I had impulses to take hold of her 
 suddenly, as she calmly passed me in classe, to 
 stretch out my hand and grasp her fast, and say, 
 " Stop. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole 
 matter. Why is it his duty to go into banishment ?" 
 But Madame always addressed some other teacher, 
 
240 VILLETTE. 
 
 and never looked at me, never seemed conscious I 
 could have a care in the question. 
 
 The week wore on. Nothing more was said 
 about M. Emanuel coming to bid us good-bye; 
 none seemed anxious for his coming ; none ques- 
 tioned whether or not he would come; none be- 
 trayed torment lest he should depart silent and 
 unseen ; incessantly did they talk, and never, in all 
 their talk, touched on this vital point. As to 
 Madame, she of course could see him, and say to 
 him as much as she pleased. What should she care 
 whether or not he appeared in the school-room ? 
 
 The week consumed. We were told that he was 
 going on such a day, that his destination was 
 " Basseterre in Guadaloupe :" the business which 
 called him abroad related to a friend's interests, not 
 his own : I thought as much. 
 
 " Basseterre in Guadaloupe." I had little sleep 
 about this time, but whenever I did slumber, it 
 followed infallibly that I was quickly roused with a 
 start, while the words " Basseterre," " Guadaloupe," 
 seemed pronounced over my pillow, or ran athwart 
 the darkness around and before me, in zig-zag 
 characters of red or violet light. 
 
 For what I felt there was no help, and how could 
 
CLOUD. 241 
 
 I help feeling ? M. Emanuel had been very kind 
 to me of late days ; he had been growing hourly 
 better and kinder. It was now a month since we 
 had settled the theological difference, and in all that 
 time there had been no quarrel. Nor had our 
 peace been the cold daughter of divorce ; we had 
 not lived aloof; he had come oftener, he had talked 
 with me more than before ; he had spent hours 
 with me, with temper soothed, with eye content, 
 with manner home-like and mild. Kind subjects 
 of conversation had grown between us ; he had 
 inquired into my plans of life, and I had com- 
 municated them ; the school-project pleased him ; 
 he made me repeat it more than once, though he 
 called it an Alnaschar dream. The jar was over ; 
 the mutual understanding was settling and fixing ; 
 feelings of union and hope made themselves pro- 
 foundly felt in the heart ; affection and deep esteem 
 and dawning trust had each fastened its bond. 
 
 What quiet lessons I had about this time ! No 
 more taunts on my " intellect," no more menaces of 
 grating public shows ! How sweetly, for^the jealous 
 gibe, and the more jealous, half-passionate eulogy, 
 were substituted a mute, indulgent help, a fond 
 guidance, and a tender forbearance which forgave 
 
 VOL. III. R 
 
242 VILLETTE. 
 
 but never praised. There were times when he 
 would sit for many minutes and not speak at all ; 
 and when dusk or duty brought separation, he 
 would leave with words like these : " II est doux, le 
 repos ! II est precieux, le calme bonheur !" 
 
 One evening, not ten short days since, he joined 
 me whilst walking in my alley. He took my hand. 
 I looked up in his face ; I thought he meant to 
 arrest my attention. 
 
 " Bonne petite amie ! " said he, softly ; " douce 
 consolatrice ! " But through his touch, and with his 
 words, a new feeling and a strange thought found a 
 course. Could it be that he was becoming more 
 than friend or brother? Did his look speak a kind- 
 ness beyond fraternity or amity ? 
 
 His eloquent look had more to say, his hand drew 
 me forward, his interpreting lips stirred. No. Not 
 now. Here into the twilight alley broke an inter- 
 ruption : it came dual and ominous : we faced two 
 bodeful forms— a woman's and a priest's — Madame 
 Beck and Pere Silas. 
 
 The aspect of the latter I shall never forget. On 
 the first impulse, it expressed a Jean-Jacques sensi- 
 bility, stirred by the signs of affection just surprised; 
 then, immediately, darkened over it the jaundice of 
 
cloud. 243 
 
 ecclesiastieal jealousy. He spoke to me with 
 unction. He looked on his pupil with sternness. 
 As to Madame Beck, she, of course, saw nothing — 
 nothing ; though her kinsman retained in her 
 presence the hand of the heretic foreigner, not suf- 
 fering withdrawal, but clasping it close and fast. 
 
 Following these incidents, that sudden announce- 
 ment of departure had struck me at first as incred- 
 ible. Indeed, it was only frequent repetition, and 
 the credence of the hundred and fifty minds round 
 me, which forced on me its full acceptance. As to- 
 that week of suspense, with its blank yet burn- 
 ing days, which brought from him no word of 
 explanation — I remember, but I cannot describe its- 
 passage. 
 
 The last day broke. Now would he visit us. Now 
 he would come and speak his farewell, or he would 
 vanish mute, and be seen by us nevermore. 
 
 This alternative seemed to be present in the mind 
 of not a living creature in that school. All rose at 
 the usual hour ; all breakfasted as usual ; all, with- 
 out reference to, or apparent thought of their late 
 professor, betook themselves with wonted phlegm to 
 their ordinary duties. 
 
 So oblivious was the house, so tame, so trained its 
 
244 VILLETTE. 
 
 proceedings, so inexpectant its aspect — I scarce 
 knew how to breathe in an atmosphere thus stag- 
 nant, thus smothering. Would no one lend me a 
 voice 1 Had no one a wish, no one a word, no one 
 a prayer to which I could say — Amen ? 
 
 I had seen them unanimous in demand for the 
 merest trifle — a treat, a holiday, a lesson's remis- 
 sion ; they could not, they would not now band to 
 besiege Madame Beck, and insist on a last interview 
 with a Master who had certainly been loved, at 
 least by some — loved as they could love — but, oh ! 
 what is the love of the multitude ? 
 
 I knew where he lived : I knew where he was to 
 be heard of, or communicated with ; the distance 
 was scarce a stone's-throw ; had it been in the next 
 room — unsummoned, I could make no use of my 
 knowledge. To follow, to seek out, to remind, to 
 recall — for these things I had no faculty. 
 
 M. Emanuel might have passed within reach of 
 my arm : had he passed silent and unnoticing, 
 silent and stirless, should I have suffered him to 
 go by. 
 
 Morning wasted. Afternoon came, and I thought 
 all was over. My heart trembled in its place. My 
 blood was troubled in its current. I was quite sick, 
 
cloud. 245 
 
 and hardly knew how to keep at my post or do my 
 work. Yet the little world round me plodded on 
 indifferent ; all seemed jocund, free of care, or fear, 
 or thought : the very pupils who, seven days since, 
 had wept hysterically at a startling piece of news, 
 appeared quite to have forgotten the news, its im- 
 port, and their emotion. 
 
 A little before five o'clock, the hour of dismissal, 
 Madame Beck sent for me to her chamber, to read 
 over and translate some English letter she had 
 received, and to write for her the answer. Before 
 settling to this work, I observed that she softly 
 closed the two doors of her chamber ; she even 
 shut and fastened the casement, though it was a hot 
 day, and free circulation of air was usually regarded 
 by her as indispensable. Why this precaution ? A 
 keen suspicion, an almost fierce distrust, suggested 
 such question. Did she want to exclude sound? 
 what sound? 
 
 I listened as I had never listened before ; I lis- 
 tened like the evening and winter-wolf, snuffing the 
 snow, scenting prey, and hearing far off the tra- 
 veller's tramp. Yet I could both listen and write. 
 About the middle of the letter I heard — what 
 checked my pen — a tread in the vestibule. No 
 
246 VILLETTE. 
 
 door-bell had rung ; Rosine — acting doubtless by 
 orders — had anticipated such reveillee. Madame 
 saw me halt. She coughed, made a bustle, spoke 
 louder. The tread had passed on to the classes. 
 
 " Proceed," said Madame ; but my hand was 
 fettered, my ear enchained, my thoughts were car- 
 ried off captive. 
 
 The classes formed another building ; the hall 
 parted them from the dwelling-house : despite dis- 
 tance and partition, I heard the sudden stir of num- 
 bers, a whole division rising at once. 
 
 " They are putting away work," said Madame. 
 It was indeed the hour to put away work, but 
 why that sudden hush — that instant quell of the 
 tumult ? 
 
 " Wait, madame — I will see whatit is." 
 And I put down my pen and left her. Left her ? 
 !No : she would not be left : powerless to detain me, 
 she rose and followed, close as my shadow. I 
 turned on the last step of the stair : — 
 " Are you coming too ? " I asked. 
 " Yes," said she ; meeting my glance with a 
 peculiar aspect — a look, clouded, yet resolute. We 
 proceeded then, not together, but she walked in my 
 steps. 
 
cloud. 247 
 
 He was come. Entering; the first classe, I saw 
 him. There, once more appeared the form most 
 familiar. I doubt not they had tried to keep him 
 away, but he was come. 
 
 The girls stood in a semi-circle ; he was passing 
 round, giving his farewells, pressing each hand, 
 touching with his lips each cheek. This last cere- 
 mony, foreign custom permitted at such a parting — 
 so solemn, to last so long. 
 
 I felt it hard that Madame Beck should dog 
 me thus ; following and watching me close ; my neck 
 and shoulder shrunk in fever under her breath ; I 
 became terribly goaded. 
 
 He was approaching ; the semi-circle was almost 
 travelled round ; he came to the last pupil ; he 
 turned. But Madame was before me; she had 
 stepped out suddenly ; she seemed to magnify her 
 proportions and amplify her drapery ; she eclipsed 
 me; I was hid. She knew my weakness and 
 deficiency ; she could calculate the degree of moral 
 paralysis — the total default of self-assertion — with 
 which, in a crisis, I could be struck. She hastened 
 to her kinsman, she broke upon him volubly, she 
 mastered his attention, she hurried him to the door 
 — the glass-door opening on the garden, I think 
 
248 VILLETTE. 
 
 he looked round ; could I but have caught his eye, 
 courage, I think, would have rushed in to aid 
 feeling, and there would have been a charge, and, 
 perhaps a rescue ; but already the room was all 
 confusion, the semi-circle broken into groups, my 
 figure was lost among thirty more conspicuous. 
 Madame had her will ; yes, she got him away, and 
 he had not seen me ; he thought me absent. Five 
 o'clock struck, the loud dismissal bell rung, the 
 school separated, the room emptied. 
 
 There seems, to my memory, an entire darkness 
 and distraction in some certain minutes I then 
 passed alone — a grief inexpressible over a loss unen- 
 durable. What should I do ; oh ! what should I 
 do ; when all my life's hope was thus torn by the 
 roots out of my riven, outraged heart ? 
 
 What I should have done, I know not, when a 
 little child — the least child in the school — broke with 
 its simplicity and its unconsciousness into the raging 
 yet silent centre of that inward conflict. 
 
 " Mademoiselle," lisped the treble voice, " I am 
 to give you that. M. Paul said I was to seek you 
 all over the house, from the grenier to the cellar, 
 and when I found you, to give you that." 
 
 And the child delivered a note; the little dove 
 
cloud. 249 
 
 dropped on my knee, its olive-leaf plucked off. 
 I found neither address nor name, only these 
 words : — 
 
 " It was not my intention to take leave of you 
 when I said good-bye to the rest, but I hoped to see 
 you in classe. I was disappointed. The interview 
 is deferred. Be ready for me. Ere I sail, I must 
 see you at leisure, and speak with you at length. 
 Be ready; my moments are numbered, and, just 
 now, monopolized ; besides I have a private business 
 on hand which I will not share with any, nor com- 
 municate — even to you. — Paul." 
 
 " Be ready ?" Then it must be this evening ; was 
 he not to go on the morrow ? Yes ; of that point 
 I was certain. I had seen the date of his vessel's 
 departure advertised. Oh ! / would be ready, but 
 could that longed-for meeting really be achieved? 
 the time was so short, the schemers seemed so 
 watchful, so active, so hostile ; the way of access 
 appeared strait as a gully, deep as a chasm — Apol- 
 lyon straddled across it, breathing flames. Could 
 my Greatheart overcome? Could my guide reach 
 me? 
 
 Who might tell? Yet I began to take some 
 courage, some comfort ; it seemed to me that I felt 
 
250 VILLETTE. 
 
 a pulse of his heart beating yet true to the whole 
 throb of mine. 
 
 I waited my champion. Apollyon came trailing 
 his Hell behind him. I think if Eternity held tor- 
 ment, its form would not be fiery rack, nor its 
 nature, despair. I think that on a certain day 
 amongst those days which never dawned, and will 
 not set, an angel entered Hades — stood, shone, 
 smiled, delivered a prophecy of conditional pardon, 
 kindled a doubtful hope of bliss to come, not now, 
 but at a day and hour unlooked for, revealed in his 
 own glory and grandeur the height and compass of 
 his promise ; spoke thus — then towering, became a 
 star, and vanished into his own Heaven. His 
 legacy was suspense — a worse boon than despair. 
 
 All that evening I waited, trusting in the dove- 
 sent olive-leaf, yet in the midst of my trust, terribly 
 fearing. My fear pressed heavy. Cold and pecu- 
 liar, I knew it for the partner of a rarely-belied 
 presentiment. The first hours seemed long and 
 slow ; in spirit I clung to the flying skirts of the 
 last. They passed like drift cloud — like the rack 
 scudding before a storm. 
 
 They passed. All the long, hot summer day 
 burned away like a Yule-log; the crimson of its 
 
CLOUD. 251 
 
 close perished ; I was left bent among the cool 
 blue shades, over the pale and ashen gleams of 
 its night. 
 
 Prayers were over ; it was bed-time ; my co-in- 
 mates were all retired. I still remained in the 
 gloomy first-classe, forgetting, or at least disregard- 
 ing, rules I had never forgotten or disregarded 
 before. 
 
 How long I paced that classe I cannot tell; I 
 must have been afoot many hours ; mechanically 
 had I moved aside benches and desks, and had made 
 for myself a path down its length. There I walked, 
 and there, when certain that the whole household 
 were abed, and quite out of hearing — there, I at 
 last wept. Reliant on Night, confiding in Solitude, 
 I kept my tears sealed, my sobs chained, no longer ; 
 they heaved my heart ; they tore their way. In this 
 house, what grief could be sacred ? 
 
 Soon after eleven o'clock — a very late hour for the 
 Rue Fossette — the door unclosed, quietly but not 
 stealthily ; a lamp's flame invaded the moonlight ; 
 Madame Beck entered, with the same com- 
 posed air, as if coming on an ordinary occasion, at 
 an ordinary season. Instead of at once addressing 
 me, she went to her desk, took her keys, and 
 
252 VILLETTE. 
 
 seemed to seek something ; she loitered over this 
 feigned search long, too long. She was calm, too 
 calm ; my mood scarce endured the pretence ; 
 driven beyond common range, two hours since I 
 had left behind me wonted respects and fears. Led 
 by a touch, and ruled by a word, under usual cir- 
 cumstances, no yoke could now be borne — no curb 
 obeyed. 
 
 " It is more than time for retirement," said 
 Madame ; " the rule of the house has already been 
 transgressed too long." 
 
 Madame met no answer : I did not check my 
 walk ; when she came in my way, I put her out 
 of it. 
 
 " Let me persuade you to calm, meess ; let me lead 
 you to your chamber," said she, trying to speak 
 softly. 
 
 "No!" I said; "neither you nor another shall 
 persuade or lead me." 
 
 " Your bed shall be warmed. Goton is sitting up 
 still. She shall make you comfortable : she shall 
 give you a sedative." 
 
 " Madame," I broke out, " you are a sensualist. 
 Under all your serenity, your peace, and your de- 
 corum, you are an undenied sensualist. Make your 
 
cloud. 253 
 
 own bed warm and soft ; take sedatives and meats, 
 and drinks spiced and sweet, as much as you will. 
 If you have any sorrow or disappointment — and, 
 perhaps, you have — nay, I know you have — seek your 
 own palliatives, in your own chosen resources. 
 Leave me, however. Leave me, I say ! " 
 
 " I must send another to watch you, meess ; I 
 must send Goton." 
 
 " I forbid it. Let me alone. Keep your hand 
 off me, and my life, and my troubles. Oh, Madame ! 
 in your hand there is both chill and poison. You 
 envenom and you paralyze." 
 
 " What have I done, meess? You must not 
 marry Paul. He cannot marry." 
 
 " Dog in the manger ! " I said ; for I knew she 
 secretly wanted him, and had always wanted him. 
 She called him " insupportable ; " she railed at him 
 for a " devot ; " she did not love, but she wanted to 
 marry, that she might bind him to her interest. 
 Deep into some of Madame's secrets I had entered — 
 I know not how ; by an intuition or an inspiration 
 which came to me — I know not whence. In the 
 course of living with her, too, I had slowly learned, 
 that, unless with an inferior, she must ever be a rival. 
 She was my rival, heart and soul, though secretly, 
 
254 VILLETTE. 
 
 under the smoothest bearing, and utterly unknown 
 to all save her and myself. 
 
 Two minutes I stood over Madame, feeling that 
 the whole woman was in my power, because in 
 some moods, such as the present — in some stimulated 
 states of perception, like that of this instant — her 
 habitual disguise, her mask and her domino, were 
 to me a mere network reticulated with holes ; and I 
 saw underneath a being heartless, self-indulgent, 
 and ignoble. She quietly retreated from me ; meek 
 and self-possessed, though very uneasy, she said, 
 " If I would not be persuaded to take rest, she must 
 reluctantly leave me." Which she did incontinent, 
 perhaps even more glad to get away, than I was to 
 see her vanish. 
 
 This was the sole flash-eliciting, truth-extorting, 
 rencontre which ever occurred between me and 
 Madame Beck; this short night-scene was never 
 repeated. It did not one whit change her manner 
 to me. I do not know that she revenged it. I do 
 not know that she hated me the worse for my fell 
 candour. I think she bucklered herself with the 
 secret philosophy of her strong mind, and resolved 
 to forget what it irked her to remember. I know 
 that to the end of our mutual lives there occurred 
 
cloud. 255 
 
 no repetition of, no allusion to, that fiery pas- 
 sage. 
 
 That night passed : all nights — even the starless 
 night before dissolution — must wear away. About 
 six o'clock, the hour which called up the household, 
 I went out to the court, and washed my face in its 
 cold, fresh, well-water. Entering by the carre, a 
 piece of mirror-glass, set in an oaken cabinet, re- 
 peated my image. It said I was changed; my 
 cheeks and lips were sodden-white, my eyes were 
 glassy, and my eye-lids swollen and purple. 
 
 On rejoining my companions, I knew they all 
 looked at me — my heart seemed discovered to them ; 
 I believed myself self-betrayed. Hideously certain 
 did it seem that the very youngest of the school 
 must guess why and for whom I despaired. 
 
 " Isabelle," the child whom I had once nursed in 
 sickness, approached me. Would she, too, mock 
 me? 
 
 " Que vous etes pale ! Vous etes done bien 
 malade, mademoiselle !" said she, putting her 
 finger in her mouth, and staring with a wistful 
 stupidity which at the moment seemed to me more 
 beautiful than the keenest intelligence. 
 
 Isabelle did not long stand alone in the recom- 
 
256 VILLETTE. 
 
 mendation of ignorance ; before the day was over, 
 I gathered cause of gratitude towards the whole 
 blind household. The multitude have something 
 else to do than to read hearts and interpret dark 
 sayings. Who wills, may keep his own counsel — 
 be his own secret's sovereign. In the course of 
 that day, proof met me on proof, not only that 
 the cause of my present sorrow was unguessed, 
 but that my whole inner life for the last six months, 
 was still mine only. It was not known — it had 
 not been noted — that I held in peculiar value one 
 life among all lives. Gossip had passed me by ; 
 curiosity had looked me over : both subtle influ- 
 ences, hovering always round, had never become 
 centred upon me. A given organization may live 
 in a full fever-hospital, and escape typhus. M. 
 Emanuel had come and gone ; I had been taught 
 and sought ; in season and out of season he had 
 called me, and I had obeyed him : " M. Paul 
 wants Miss Lucy"—" Miss Lucy is with M. Paul" — 
 such had been the perpetual bulletin ; and nobody 
 commented, far less condemned. Nobody hinted, 
 nobody jested. Madame Beck read the riddle ; 
 none else resolved it. What I now suffered was 
 called illness — a headache : I accepted the baptism. 
 
cloud. 257 
 
 But what bodily illness was ever like this pain ? 
 This certainty that he was gone without a fare- 
 well — this cruel conviction that fate and pursuing 
 furies— a woman's envy and a priest's bigotry — 
 would suffer me to see him no more ? What 
 wonder that the second evening found me like 
 the first — untamed, tortured, again pacing a soli- 
 tary room in an unalterable passion of silent deso- 
 lation ? 
 
 Madame Beck did not herself summon me to 
 bed that night — she did not come near me; she 
 sent Ginevra Fanshawe — a more efficient agent 
 for the purpose she could not have employed. 
 Ginevra's first words — " Is your headache very 
 bad to-night ? " (for Ginevra, like the rest, thought 
 I had a headache — an intolerable headache which 
 made me frightfully white in the face, and insanely 
 restless in the foot) — her first words, I say, inspired 
 the impulse to flee anywhere, so that it were only 
 out of reach. And soon, what followed — plaints 
 about her own headaches — completed the business. 
 
 I went up-stairs. Presently I was in my bed — 
 my miserable bed — haunted with quick scorpions. 
 I had not been laid down five minutes, when 
 another emissary arrived : Goton came, bringing 
 
 vol. m. s 
 
258 VILLETTE. 
 
 me something to drink. I was consumed with 
 thirst — I drank eagerly ; the beverage was sweet, 
 but I tasted a drug. 
 
 " Madame says it will make you sleep chou- 
 chou," said Goton, as she received back the 
 emptied cup. 
 
 Ah ! the sedative had been administered. In 
 fact, they had given me a strong opiate. I was 
 to be held quiet for one night. 
 
 The household came to bed, the night-light was 
 lit, the dormitory hushed. Sleep soon reigned : 
 over those pillows, sleep won an easy supremacy ; 
 contented sovereign over heads and hearts which 
 did not ache — he passed by the unquiet. 
 
 The drug wrought. I know not whether Madame 
 had over-charged or under-charged the dose ; its 
 result was not that she intended. Instead of stupor, 
 came excitement. I became alive to new thought — 
 to reverie peculiar in colouring. A gathering call 
 ran among the faculties, their bugles sang, their 
 trumpets rang an untimely summons. Imagina- 
 tion was roused from her rest, and she came forth 
 impetuous and venturous. With scorn she looked 
 on Matter, her mate — 
 
 "Rise!" she said. "Sluggard! this night 
 
cloud. 259 
 
 I will have my will ; nor shalt thou pre- 
 vail." 
 
 " Look forth and view the night !" was her cry ; 
 and when I lifted the heavy blind from the case- 
 ment close at hand — with her own royal gesture, 
 she showed me a moon supreme, in an element 
 deep and splendid. 
 
 To my gasping senses she made the glimmering 
 gloom, the narrow limits, the oppressive heat of the 
 dormitory, intolerable. She lured me to leave this 
 den and follow her forth into dew, coolness, and 
 glory. 
 
 She brought upon me a strange vision of Villette 
 at midnight. Especially she showed the park, the 
 summer-park, with its long alleys all silent, lone 
 and safe ; among these lay a huge stone-basin — 
 that basin I knew, and beside which I had often 
 stood — deep-set in the tree-shadows, brimming with 
 cool water, clear, with a green, leafy, rushy bed. 
 What of all this ? The park-gates were shut up, 
 locked, sentinelled ; the place could not be entered. 
 
 Could it not ? A point worth considering ; and 
 while revolving it, I mechanically dressed. Utterly 
 incapable of sleeping or lying still — excited from 
 head to foot — what could I do better than dress ? 
 
260 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 The gates were locked, soldiers set before them ; 
 was there, then, no admission to the park ? 
 
 The other day, in walking past, I had seen, with- 
 out then attending to the circumstance, a gap in the 
 paling — one stake broken down : I now saw this 
 gap again in recollection — saw it very plainly — the 
 narrow, irregular aperture visible between the stems 
 of the lindens, planted orderly as a colonade. A man 
 could not have made his way through that aperture, 
 nor could a stout woman, perhaps not Madame 
 Beck; but I thought I might: I fancied I should 
 like to try, and once within, at this hour the whole 
 park would be mine — the moonlight, midnight 
 park ! 
 
 How soundly the dormitory slept ! What deep 
 slumbers ! What quiet breathing ! How very still 
 the whole large house ! What was the time ? I 
 felt restless to know. There stood a clock in the 
 classe below; what hindered me from venturing 
 down to consult it ? By such a moon, its large 
 white face and jet black figures must be vividly 
 distinct. 
 
 As for hindrance to this step, there offered not so 
 much as a creaking hinge or a clicking latch. On 
 these hot July nights, close air could not be tole- 
 
CLOUD. 261 
 
 rated, and the chamber-door stood wide open. Will 
 the dormitory-planks sustain my tread untraitor- 
 ous ? Yes. I know wherever a board is loose, and 
 will avoid it. The oak staircase creaks somewhat 
 as I descend, but not much : — I am in the carre. 
 
 The great classe-doors are close shut ; they are 
 bolted. On the other hand, the entrance to the 
 corridor stands open. The classes seem to my 
 thought, great dreary jails, buried far back beyond 
 thoroughfares, and for me, filled with spectral and 
 intolerable memories, laid miserable amongst their 
 straw and their manacles. The corridor offers a 
 cheerful vista, leading to the high vestibule which 
 opens direct upon the street. 
 
 Hush ! — the clock strikes. Ghostly deep as is 
 the stillness of this convent, it is only eleven. 
 While my ear follows to silence the hum of the 
 last stroke, I catch faintly from the built-out capital, 
 a sound like bells or like a band — a sound where 
 sweetness, where victory, where mourning blend. 
 Oh, to approach this music nearer, to listen to it 
 alone by the rushy basin ! Let me go — oh, let me 
 go ! What hinders, what does not aid freedom ? 
 
 There, in the corridor, hangs my garden-costume, 
 my large hat, my shawl. There is no lock on the 
 
262 VILLETTE. 
 
 huge, heavy, porte-cochere ; there is no key to 
 seek ; it fastens with a sort of spring-bolt, not to be 
 opened from the outside, but which, from within, 
 may be noiselessly withdrawn. Can I manage it ? 
 It yields to my hand, yields with propitious facility. 
 I wonder as that portal seems almost spontaneously 
 to unclose ; I wonder as I cross the threshold and 
 step on the paved street, wonder at the strange ease 
 with which this prison has been forced. It seems 
 as if I had been pioneered invisibly, as if some dis- 
 solving force had gone before me ; for myself, I 
 have scarce made an effort. 
 
 Quiet Rue Fossette ! I find on this pavement 
 that wanderer-wooing summer night of which I 
 mused ; I see its moon over me ; I feel its dew in 
 the air. But here I cannot stay ; I am still too 
 near old haunts ; so close under the dungeon, I can 
 hear the prisoners moan. This solemn peace is not 
 what I seek, it is not what I can bear ; to me the 
 face of that sky bears the aspect of a world's death. 
 The park also will be calm — I know, a mortal 
 serenity prevails everywhere — yet let me seek the 
 park. 
 
 I took a route well-known, and went up towards 
 the palatial and royal Haute-Ville ; thence the 
 
cloud. 263 
 
 music 1 had heard, certainly floated ; it was hushed 
 now, but it might re-waken. I went on ; neither 
 band nor bell-music came to meet me ; another 
 sound replaced it, a sound like a strong tide, a great 
 flow, deepening as I proceeded. Light broke, 
 movement gathered, chimes pealed — to what was 
 I coming ? Entering on the level of a Grande 
 Place, I found myself, with the suddenness of magic, 
 plunged amidst a gay, living, joyous crowd. 
 
 Villette is one blaze, one broad illumination ; the 
 whole world seems abroad ; moonlight and heaven 
 are banished: the town, by her own flambeaux, 
 beholds her own splendour — gay dresses, grand 
 equipages, fine horses and gallant riders throng 
 the bright streets. I see even scores of masks. It 
 is a strange scene, stranger than dreams. But 
 where is the park ? — I ought to be near it. In the 
 midst of this glare the park must be shadowy and 
 calm — there, at least, are neither torches, lamps, nor 
 crowd ? 
 
 I was asking this question, when an open carriage 
 passed me filled with known faces. Through the 
 deep throng it could pass but slowly ; the spirited 
 horses fretted in their curbed ardour. I saw the 
 occupants of that cariage well ; me they could not 
 
264 VILLETTE. 
 
 see, or, at least, not know, folded close in my large 
 shawl, screened with my straw hat (in that motley 
 crowd no dress was noticeably strange). I saw the 
 Count de Bassompierre ; I saw my godmother, 
 handsomely apparelled, comely and cheerful ; I 
 saw, too, Paulina Mary, compassed with the triple 
 halo of her beauty, her youth, and her happiness. 
 In looking on her countenance of joy, and eyes of 
 festal light, one scarce remembered to note the gala 
 elegance of what she wore ; I know only that the 
 drapery floating about her was all white and light 
 and bridal: seated opposite to her I saw Gra- 
 ham Bretton ; it was in looking up at him her 
 aspect had caught its lustre — the light repeated 
 in her eyes beamed first out of his. 
 
 It gave me strange pleasure to follow these 
 friends viewlessly, and I did follow them, as I 
 thought, to the park. I watched them alight 
 (carriages were inadmissible) amidst new and un- 
 anticipated splendours. Lo ! the iron gateway, 
 between the stone columns, was spanned by a 
 flaming arch built of massed stars ; and, following 
 them cautiously beneath that arch, where were they, 
 and where was I ? 
 
 In a land of enchantment, a garden most gor- 
 
cloud. 265 
 
 geous, a plain sprinkled with coloured meteors, a 
 forest with sparks of purple and ruby and golden 
 fire gemming the foliage ; a region, not of trees and 
 shadow, but of strangest architectural wealth — of 
 altar and of temple, of pyramid, obelisk, and 
 sphynx; incredible to say, the wonders and the 
 symbols of Egypt teemed throughout the park of 
 Villette. 
 
 No matter that in five minutes the secret was 
 mine — the key of the mystery picked up, and its 
 illusion unveiled — no matter that I quickly recog- 
 nized the material of these solemn fragments — the 
 timber, the paint, and the pasteboard — these inevi- 
 table discoveries failed to quite destroy the charm, 
 or undermine the marvel of that night. No matter 
 that I now seized the explanation of the whole great 
 fete — a fete of which the conventual Rue Fossette 
 had not tasted, though it had opened at dawn 
 that morning, and was still in full vigour near mid- 
 night. 
 
 In past days there had been, said history, an awful 
 crisis in the fate of Labassecour, involving I know 
 not what peril to the rights and liberties of her 
 gallant citizens. Rumours of wars, there had been, 
 if not wars themselves ; a kind of struggling in the 
 
206 VILLETTE. 
 
 sessed no such inherent flow of animal spirits — 
 unstimulated, she inclined to be thoughtful and 
 pensive — but now she seemed merry as a lark ; in 
 her lover's genial presence, she glanced like some 
 soft glad light. How beautiful she grew in her 
 happiness, I can hardly express, but I wondered to 
 see her. As to that gentle ice of hers — that reserve 
 on which she had depended; where was it now? 
 Ah ! Graham would not long bear it ; he brought 
 with him a generous influence that soon thawed the 
 timid, self-imposed restriction. 
 
 Now were the old Bretton days talked over ; per- 
 haps brokenly at first, with a sort of smiling dif- 
 fidence, then with opening candour and still grow- 
 ing confidence. Graham had made for himself a 
 better opportunity than that he had wished me to 
 give ; he had earned independence of the co 1 lateral 
 help that disobliging Lucy had refused ; all his 
 reminiscences of " little Polly" found their proper 
 expression in his own pleasant tones, by his own 
 kind and handsome lips ; how much better than if 
 suggested by me. 
 
 More than once when we were alone, Paulina 
 would tell me how wonderful and curious it was to 
 discover the richness and accuracy of his memory in 
 
SUNSHINE. 207 
 
 this matter. How, while he was looking at her, 
 recollections would seem to be suddenly quickened 
 in his mind. He reminded her that she had once 
 gathered his head in her arms, caressed his leonine 
 graces, and cried out, " Graham, I do like you ! " 
 He told her how she would set a footstool beside 
 him, and climb by its aid to his knee. At this day 
 he said he could recall the sensation of her little 
 hands smoothing his cheek, or burying themselves 
 in his thick mane. He remembered the touch of 
 her small forefinger, placed half tremblingly, half 
 curiously, in the cleft in his chin, the lisp, the look 
 with which she would name it " a pretty dimple,' 
 then seek his eyes and question why they pierced so, 
 telling him he had a " nice, strange face ; far nicer, 
 far stranger, than either his mama or Lucy Snowe." 
 " Child as I was," remarked Paulina, " I wonder 
 how I dared be so venturous. To me he seems now 
 all sacred, his locks are inaccessible, and, Lucy, I 
 feel a sort of fear when I look at his firm, marble 
 chin, at his straight Greek features. Women are 
 called beautiful, Lucy; he is not like a woman, 
 therefore I suppose he is not beautiful, but what is 
 he then ? Do other people see him with my eyes ? 
 Do you admire him ?" 
 
268 VILLETTE. 
 
 mirror of crystal, and surprise the moon glassing 
 therein her pearly front. 
 
 I knew my route, yet it seemed as if I was 
 hindered from pursuing it direct : now a sight, and 
 now a sound, called me aside, luring me down this 
 alley and down that. Already I saw the thick- 
 planted trees which framed this tremulous and 
 rippled glass, when, choiring out of a glade to the 
 right, broke such a sound as I thought might be 
 heard if Heaven were to open — such a sound, per- 
 haps, as was heard above the plain of Bethlehem, 
 on the night of glad tidings. 
 
 The song, the sweet music, rose afar, but rushing 
 swiftly on fast-strengthening pinions — there swept 
 through these shades so full a storm of harmonies 
 that, had no tree been near against which to lean, I 
 think I must have dropped. Voices were there, it 
 seemed to me, unnumbered ; instruments varied and 
 countless — bugle, horn, and trumpet I knew. The 
 effect was as a sea breaking into song with all its 
 waves. 
 
 The swaying tide swept this way, and then it fell 
 back, and 1 followed its retreat. It led me towards 
 a Byzantine building — a sort of kiosk near the park's 
 centre. Round about stood crowded thousands, 
 
cloud. 269 
 
 gathered to a grand concert in the open air. What 
 I had heard was, I think, a wild Jager chorus ; 
 the night, the space, the scene, and my own mood, 
 had but enhanced the sounds and their impression. 
 
 Here were assembled ladies, looking by this light 
 most beautiful ; some of their dresses were gauzy, 
 and some had the sheen of satin ; the flowers and 
 the blond trembled, and the veils waved about their 
 decorated bonnets, as that host-like chorus, with its 
 greatly-gathering sound, sundered the air above 
 them. Most of these ladies occupied the little light 
 park-chairs, and behind and beside them stood guar- 
 dian gentlemen. The outer ranks of the crowd 
 were made up of citizens, plebeians and police. 
 
 In this outer rank I took my place. I rather 
 liked to find myself the silent, unknown, conse- 
 quently unaccosted neighbour of the short petticoat 
 and the sabot ; and only the distant gazer at the 
 silk robe, the velvet mantle, and the plumed cha- 
 peau. Amidst so much life and joy, too, it suited 
 me to be alone — quite alone. Having neither wish 
 nor power to force my way through a mass so close- 
 packed, my station was on the farthest confines, 
 where, indeed, I might hear, but could see little. 
 
 '* Mademoiselle is not well placed," said a voice 
 
270 VILLETTE. 
 
 at my elbow. Who dared accost me, a being in a 
 mood so little social? I turned, rather to repel than 
 to reply. I saw a man — a burgher — an entire 
 stranger, as I deemed him for one moment, but the 
 next, recognized in him a certain tradesman — a 
 bookseller, whose shop furnished the Rue Fossette 
 with its books and stationery ; a man notorious in 
 our pensionnat for the excessive brittleness of his 
 temper, and frequent snappishness of his manner, 
 even to us, his principal customers ; but whom, 
 for my solitary self, I had ever been disposed to 
 like, and had always found civil, sometimes kind ; 
 once, in aiding me about some troublesome little 
 exchange of foreign money, he had done me a 
 service. He was an intelligent man ; under his 
 asperity, he was a good-hearted man ; the thought 
 had sometimes crossed me, that a part of his nature 
 bore affinity to a part of M. Emanuel's, (whom he 
 knew well, and whom I had often seen sitting on 
 Miret's counter, turning over the current month's 
 publications) ; and it was in this affinity I read the 
 explanation of that conciliatory feeling with which 
 I instinctively regarded him. 
 
 Strange to say, this man knew me under my 
 straw-hat and closely-folded shawl; and, though I 
 
CLOUD. 271 
 
 deprecated the effort, he insisted on making a way 
 for me through the crowd, and finding me a better 
 situation. He carried his disinterested civility 
 further, and, from some quarter, procured me a 
 chair. Once and again, I have found that the 
 most cross-grained are by no means the worst of 
 mankind ; nor the humblest in station, the least 
 polished in feeling. This man, in his courtesy, 
 seemed to find nothing strange in my being here 
 alone ; only a reason for extending to me, as far as 
 he could, a retiring, yet efficient attention. Hav- 
 ing secured me a place and a seat, he withdrew 
 without asking a question, without obtruding a 
 remark, without adding a superfluous word. No 
 wonder that Professor Emanuel liked to take his 
 cigar and his lounge, and to read his feuilleton in 
 M. Miret's shop ; the two must have suited. 
 
 I had not been seated five minutes, ere I became 
 aware that chance and my worthy burgher friend 
 had brought me once more within view of a familiar 
 and domestic group. Eight before me sat the 
 Brettons and De Bassompierres. Within reach of 
 my hand — had I chosen to extend it — sat a figure 
 like a fairy-queen, whose array, lilies and their 
 leaves seemed to have suggested ; whatever was 
 
272 VILLETTE. 
 
 not spotless white, being forest-green. My god- 
 mother, too, sat so near, that, had I leaned for- 
 ward, my breath might have stirred the ribbon of 
 her bonnet. They were too near; having been just 
 recognized by a comparative stranger, I felt uneasy 
 at this close vicinage of intimate acquaintance. 
 
 It made me quite start when Mrs. Bretton, turn- 
 ing to Mr. Home, and speaking out of a kind im- 
 pulse of memory, said, — 
 
 " I wonder what my steady little Lucy would say 
 to all this if she were here ? I wish we had brought 
 her, she would have enjoyed it much." 
 
 •' So she would, so she would, in her grave sen- 
 sible fashion ; it is a pity but we had asked her," 
 rejoined the kind gentleman; and added, " I like 
 to see her so quietly pleased ; so little moved, yet 
 so content." 
 
 Dear were they both to me, dear are they to this 
 day in their remembered benevolence. Little knew 
 they the rack of pain which had driven Lucy almost 
 into fever, and brought her out, guideless and reck- 
 less, urged and drugged to the brink of frenzy. I 
 had half a mind to bend over the elders' shoulders, 
 and answer their goodness with the thanks of my 
 eyes. M. de Bassompierre did not well know me, 
 
cloud. 273 
 
 but I knew him, and honoured and admired his 
 nature, with all its plain sincerity, its warm affec- 
 tion, and unconscious enthusiasm. Possibly I might 
 have spoken, but just then Graham turned, he 
 turned with one of his stately firm movements, so 
 different from those of a sharp-tempered undersized 
 man ; there was behind him a throng, a hundred 
 ranks deep ; there were thousands to meet his eye 
 and divide its scrutiny — why then did he concen- 
 trate all on me — oppressing me with the whole force 
 of that full, blue, steadfast orb ? Why, if he would 
 look, did not one glance satisfy him ? why did he 
 turn on his chair, rest his elbow on its back, and 
 study me leisurely ? He could not see my face, I 
 held it down ; surely, he could not recognize me ; 
 I stooped, I turned, I would not be known. He 
 rose, by some means he contrived to approach, in 
 two minutes he would have had my secret; my 
 identity would have been grasped between his, never 
 tyrannous, but always powerful hands. There was 
 but one way to evade or to check him. I implied, 
 by a sort of supplicatory gesture, that it was my 
 prayer to be let alone ; after that, had he persisted, 
 he would perhaps have seen the spectacle of Lucy 
 incensed : not all that was grand, or good, or kind 
 
 VOL. III. t 
 
274 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 in him (and Lucy felt the full amount) should nave 
 kept her quite tame, or absolutely inoffensive and 
 shadowlike. He looked, but he desisted. He 
 shook his handsome head, but he was mute. He 
 resumed his seat, nor did he again turn or disturb 
 me by a glance, except indeed for one single instant, 
 when a look, rather solicitous than curious, stole 
 my way — speaking what somehow stilled my heart 
 like " the south-wind quieting the earth." Gra- 
 ham's thoughts of me were not entirely those of a 
 frozen indifference, after all. I believe in that 
 goodly mansion, his heart, he kept one little place 
 under the skylights where Lucy might have enter- 
 tainment, if she chose to call. It was not so hand- 
 some as the chambers where he lodged his male 
 friends ; it was not like the hall where he accom- 
 modated his philanthropy, or the library where he 
 treasured his science, still less did it resemble the 
 pavilion where his marriage feast was splendidly 
 spread ; yet, gradually, by long and equal kindness, 
 he proved to me that he kept one little closet, over 
 the door of which was written " Lucy's Room." I 
 kept a place for him, too — a place of which I never 
 took the measure, either by rule or compass: I 
 think it was like the tent of Peri-Banou. All my 
 
cloud. 275 
 
 life long I carried it folded in the hollow of my 
 hand — yet, released from that hold and constriction, 
 I know not hut its innate capacity for expanse might 
 have magnified it into a tabernacle for a host. 
 
 Forbearing as he was to-night, I could not stay 
 in this proximity ; this dangerous place and seat 
 must be given up ; I watched my opportunity, rose, 
 and stole away. He might think, he might even 
 believe that Lucy was contained within that shawl, 
 and sheltered under that hat ; he could never be 
 certain, for he did not see my face. 
 
 Surely the spirit of restlessness was by this time 
 appeased ? Had I not had enough of adventure ? 
 Did I not begin to flag, quail, and wish for safety 
 under a roof? Not so. I still loathed my bed in 
 the school-dormitory more than words can express ; 
 I clung to whatever could distract thought. Some- 
 how I felt, too, that the night's drama was but 
 begun, that the prologue was scarce spoken : 
 throughout this woody and turfy theatre reigned a 
 shadow of mystery ; actors and incidents unlooked- 
 for, waited behind the scenes : I thought so : fore- 
 boding told me as much. 
 
 Straying at random, obeying the push of every 
 chance elbow, I was brought to a quarter where 
 
276 VILLETTE. 
 
 trees planted in clusters, or towering singly, broke 
 up somewhat the dense packing of the crowd, and 
 gave it a more scattered character. These confines 
 were far from the music, and somewhat aloof even 
 from the lamps, but there was sound enough to 
 soothe, and with that full, high moon, lamps were 
 scarce needed. Here had chiefly settled family- 
 groups, burgher-parents ; some of them, late as was 
 the hour, actually surrounded by their children, 
 with whom it had not been thought advisable to 
 venture into the closer throng. 
 
 Three fine tall trees growing close, almost twined 
 stem within stem, lifted a thick canopy of shade 
 above a green knoll, crowned with a seat — a seat 
 which might have held several, yet it seemed aban- 
 doned to one, the remaining members of the 
 fortunate party in possession of this site standing 
 dutifully round ; yet, amongst this reverent circle 
 was a lady, holding by the hand a little girl. 
 
 When I caught sight of this little girl, she was 
 twisting herself round on her heel, swinging from 
 her conductress's hand, flinging herself from side to 
 side with wanton and fantastic gyrations. These 
 perverse movements arrested my attention, they 
 struck me as of a character fearfully familiar. On 
 
cloud. 277 
 
 clos inspection, no less so appeared the child's 
 equipment ; the lilac silk pelisse, the small swans- 
 down boa, the white bonnet — the whole holiday 
 toilette, in short, was the gala garb of a cherub but 
 too-well known, of that tadpole, Desiree Beck — 
 and Desiree Beck it was — she, or an imp in her 
 likeness. 
 
 I might have taken this discovery as a thunder- 
 clap, but such hyperbole would have been pre- 
 mature ; discovery was destined to rise more than 
 one degree, ere it reached its climax. 
 
 On whose hand could the amiable Desiree swing 
 thus selfishly, whose glove could she tear thus reck- 
 lessly, whose arm thus strain with impunity, or on 
 the borders of whose dress thus turn and trample 
 insolently, if not the hand, glove, arm, and robe of 
 her lady-mother ? And there, in an Indian shawl 
 and a pale-green crape bonnet — there, fresh, portly, 
 blithe, and pleasant — there stood Madame Beck. 
 
 Curious ! I had certainly deemed Madame in 
 her bed, and Desiree in her crib, at this blessed 
 minute, sleeping, both of them, the sleep of the just, 
 within the sacred walls, amidst the profound seclu- 
 sion of the Rue Fossette. Most certainly also they 
 did not picture "Meess Lucie" otherwise engaged; 
 
278 VILLETTE. 
 
 and here we all three were taking our "ebats" in 
 the fete-blazing park at midnight ! 
 
 The fact was, Madame was only acting according 
 to her quite justifiable wont. I remembered now I 
 had heard it said amon°; the teachers — though with- 
 out at the time particularly noticing the gossip — 
 that often, when we thought Madame in her cham- 
 ber, sleeping, she was gone, full-dressed, to take 
 her pleasure at operas, or plays, or balls. Madame 
 had no sort of taste for a monastic life, and took care 
 — largely, though discreetly — to season her exist- 
 ence with a relish of the world. 
 
 Half a dozen gentlemen of her friends stood 
 about her. Amongst these, I was not slow to re- 
 cognize two or three. There was her brother, M. 
 Victor Kint ; there was another person, moustached 
 and with long hair — a calm, taciturn man, but whose 
 traits bore a stamp and a semblance I could not 
 mark unmoved, Amidst reserve and phlegm, 
 amidst contrasts of character and of countenance, 
 something there still was which recalled a face — 
 mobile, fervent, feeling — a face changeable, now 
 clouded, and now alight — a face from my world 
 taken away, for my eyes lost, but where my best 
 spring-hours of life had alternated in shadow and 
 
cloud. 279 
 
 in glow — that face, where I had often seen move- 
 ments, so near the signs of genius — that why there 
 did not shine fully out, the undoubted fire, the thing, 
 the spirit, and the secret itself— I could never tell. 
 Yes — this Josef Emanuel— this man of peace — re- 
 minded me of his ardent brother. 
 
 Besides Messieurs Victor and Josef, I knew 
 another of this party. This third person stood be- 
 hind and in the shade, his attitude too was stooping, 
 yet his dress and bald white head made him the 
 most conspicuous figure of the group. He was an 
 ecclesiastic : he was Pere Silas. Do not fancy, 
 reader, that there was any inconsistency in the 
 priest's presence at this fete. This was not consi- 
 dered a show of Vanity Fair, but a commemoration 
 of patriotic sacrifice. The Church patronized it, 
 even with ostentation. There were troops of priests 
 in the park that night. 
 
 Pere Silas stooped over the seat with its single 
 occupant, the rustic bench and that which sat upon 
 it : a strange mass it was — bearing no shape, yet 
 magnificent. You saw, indeed, the outline of a face 
 and features, but these were so cadaverous and so 
 strangely placed, you could almost have fancied a 
 head severed from its trunk, and flung at random 
 
VILLETTE. 
 
 on a pile of rich merchandize. The distant lamp- 
 rays glanced on clear pendants, on broad rings ; 
 neither the chasteness of moonlight, nor the distance 
 of the torches, could quite subdue the gorgeous dyes 
 of the drapery. Hail, Madame Walravens ! I think 
 you looked more witch-like than ever. And pre- 
 sently the good lady proved that she was indeed no 
 corpse or ghost, but a harsh and hardy old woman ; 
 for, upon some aggravation in the clamorous peti- 
 tion of Desiree Beck to her mother, to go to the 
 kiosk and take sweetmeats, the hunchback suddenly 
 fetched her a resounding rap with her gold-knobbed 
 cane. 
 
 There, then, were Madame Walravens, Madame 
 Beck, Pere Silas — the whole conjuration, the secret 
 junta. The sight of them thus assembled did me 
 good. I cannot say that I felt weak before them, 
 or abashed, or dismayed. They outnumbered me, 
 and I was worsted and under their feet ; but, as 
 yet, I was not dead. 
 
OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCE. 281 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 Fascinated as by a basilisk with three heads, I 
 could not leave this clique ; the ground near them 
 seemed to hold my feet. The canopy of entwined 
 trees held out shadow, the night whispered a pledge 
 of protection, and an officious lamp flashed just one 
 beam to show me an obscure, safe seat, and then 
 vanished. Let me now briefly tell the reader all 
 that, during the past dark fortnight, I have been 
 silently gathering from Rumour, respecting the 
 origin and the object of M. Emanuel's departure. 
 The tale is short, and not new : its alpha is Mam- 
 mon, and its omega, Interest. 
 
 If Madame Walravens was hideous as a Hindoo 
 idol, she seemed also to possess, in the estimation of 
 these her votaries, an idol's consequence. The fact 
 was, she had been rich — very rich ; and though for 
 
282 VILLETTE. 
 
 the present, without the command of money, she 
 was likely one day to be rich again. At Basseterre, 
 in Guadaloupe, she possessed a large estate, re- 
 ceived in dowry on her marriage sixty years ago, 
 sequestered since her husband's failure ; but now, it 
 was supposed, cleared of claim, and, if duly looked 
 after by a competent agent of integrity, considered 
 capable of being made, in a few years, largely pro- 
 ductive. 
 
 Pere Silas took an interest in this prospective 
 improvement for the sake of religion and the 
 church, whereof Magloire Walravens was a devout 
 daughter. Madame Beck, distantly related to the 
 hunchback, and knowing her to be without family 
 of her own, had long brooded over contingencies 
 with a mother's calculating forethought, and, harshly 
 treated as she was by Madame Walravens, never 
 ceased to court her for interest's sake. Madame 
 Beck and the priest were thus, for money reasons, 
 equally and sincerely interested in the nursing of 
 the West-Indian estate. 
 
 But the distance was great, and the climate 
 hazardous. The competent and upright agent 
 wanted, must be a devoted man. Just such a man 
 had Madame Walravens retained for twenty years 
 
OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCE. 283 
 
 in her service, blighting his life, and then living on 
 him, like an old fungus ; such a man had Pere Silas 
 trained, taught, and bound to him by the ties of 
 gratitude, habit, and belief. Such a man Madame 
 Beck knew, and could in some measure influence. 
 "My pupil," said Pere Silas, "if he remains in 
 Europe, runs risk of apostacy, for he has become 
 entangled with a heretic." Madame Beck made 
 also her private comment, and preferred in her own 
 breast her secret reason for desiring expatriation. 
 The thing she could not obtain, she desired not 
 another to win; rather would she destroy it. As to 
 Madame Walravens, she wanted her money and 
 her land, and knew Paul, if he liked, could make 
 the best and faithful'lest steward : so the three self- 
 seekers banded and beset the one unselfish. They 
 reasoned, they appealed, they implored; on his 
 mercy they cast themselves, into his hands they 
 confidingly thrust their interests. They asked but 
 two or three years of devotion — after that, he should 
 live for himself: one of the number, perhaps, wished 
 that in the mean time he might die. 
 
 No living being ever humbly laid his advantage 
 at M. Emanuel's feet, or confidingly put it into his 
 hands, that he spurned the trust, or repulsed the 
 
284 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 repository. What might be his private pain or 
 inward reluctance to leave Europe — what his calcu- 
 lations for his own future — none asked, or knew, or 
 reported. All this was a blank to me. His con- 
 ferences with his confessor I might guess ; the part 
 duty and religion were made to play in the per- 
 suasions used, I might conjecture. He was gone, 
 and had made no sign. There my knowledge 
 closed. 
 
 With my head bent, and my forehead resting on 
 my hands, I sat amidst grouped tree-stems and 
 branching brushwood. Whatever talk passedamongst 
 my neighbours, I might hear, if I would ; I was 
 near enough ; but, for some time, there was scarce 
 motive to attend. They gossiped about the dresses, 
 the music, the illuminations, the fine night. I list- 
 ened to hear them say, " It is calm weather for his 
 voyage; the 'Antigua' " (his ship) " will sail pros- 
 perously." No such remark fell: neither the 
 " Antigua," nor her course, nor her passenger, were 
 named. 
 
 Perhaps the light chat scarcely interested old Ma- 
 dame Walravens more than it did me ; she appeared 
 
OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCE. 285 
 
 restless, turning her head now to this side, now that, 
 looking through the trees, and among the crowd, 
 as if expectant of an arrival and impatient of a delay. 
 " Ou sont-ils ? Pourquoi ne viennent-ils ? " I heard 
 her mutter more than once ; and at last, as if de- 
 termined to have an answer to her question — which 
 hitherto none seemed to mind, she spoke aloud this 
 phrase — a phrase brief enough, simple enough, but 
 it sent a shock through me — 
 
 " Messieurs et mesdames," said she, * ou done est 
 Justine Marie ? " 
 
 " Justine Marie ! " What name was this ? Jus- 
 tine Marie — the dead nun — where was she ? Why 
 in her grave, Madame Walravens — what can 
 you want with her ? You shall go to her, but she 
 shall not come to you. 
 
 Thus / should have answered, had the response 
 lain with me, but nobody seemed to be of my mind ; 
 nobody seemed surprised, startled, or at a loss. 
 The quietest common-place answer met the strange, 
 the dead-disturbing, the Witch-of-Endor query of 
 the hunchback." 
 
 " Justine Marie," said one, " is coming ; she is 
 in the kiosk ; she will be here presently." 
 
 Out of this question and reply sprang a change 
 
286 VILLETTE. 
 
 in the chat — chat it still remained — easy, desultory, 
 familiar gossip. Hint, allusion, comment, went 
 round the circle, but all so broken, so dependent 
 on references to persons not named, or circumstances 
 not defined, that, listen intently as I would — and I 
 did listen now with a fated interest — I could make out 
 no more than that some scheme was on foot, in which 
 this ghostly Justine Marie — dead or alive — was con- 
 cerned. This family-junta seemed grasping at her 
 somehow, for some reason ; there seemed question 
 of a marriage, of a fortune, for whom I could not 
 quite make out — perhaps for Victor Kint, perhaps 
 for Josef Emanuel — both were bachelors. Once I 
 thought the hints and jests rained upon a young 
 fair-haired foreigner of the party, whom they called 
 Heinrich Muhler. Amidst all the badinage, Madame 
 Walravens still obtruded, from time to time, hoarse, 
 cross-grained speeches ; her impatience being di- 
 verted only by an implacable surveillance of Desiree, 
 who could not stir, but the old woman menaced her 
 with her staff. 
 
 " La voila ! " suddenly cried one of the gentle- 
 men, " voila. Justine Marie qui arrive ! " 
 
 This moment was for me peculiar. I called up 
 to memory the pictured nun on the panel ; present 
 
OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCE. 287 
 
 to my mind was the sad love-story ; I saw in 
 thought the vision of the garret, the apparition of 
 the alley, the strange birth of the berceau : I 
 underwent a presentiment of discovery, a strong 
 conviction of coming disclosure. Ah ! when ima- 
 gination once runs riot where do we stop 1 What 
 winter tree so bare and branchless — what way-side, 
 hedge-munching animal so humble, that Fancy, a 
 passing cloud, and a struggling moonbeam, will not 
 clothe it in spirituality, and make of it a phantom ? 
 
 With solemn force pressed on my heart, the 
 expectation of mystery breaking up : hitherto I 
 had seen this spectre only through a glass darkly ; 
 now was I to behold it face to face. I leaned 
 forward : I looked. 
 
 " She comes ! " cried Josef Emanuel. 
 
 The circle moved as if opening to admit a new and 
 welcome member. At this instant a torch chanced 
 to be carried past ; its blaze aided the pale moon in 
 doing justice to the crisis, in lighting to perfection 
 the denouement pressing on. Surely those near me 
 must have felt some little of the anxiety I felt, in 
 degree so unmeted. Of that group, the coolest 
 must have " held his breath for a time ! " As for 
 me, my life stood still. 
 
288 VILLETTE. 
 
 It is over. The moment and the nun are come. 
 The crisis and the revelation are passed by. 
 
 The flambeau glares still within a yard, held up in 
 a park-keeper's hand ; its long eager tongue of flame 
 almost licks the figure of the Expected — there — 
 where she stands full in my sight. What is she 
 like? What does she wear ? How does she look? 
 Who is she? 
 
 There are many masks in the Park to-night, and 
 as the hour wears late, so strange a feeling of 
 revelry and mystery begins to spread abroad, that 
 scarce would you discredit me, reader, were I to 
 say that she is like the nun of the attic, that she 
 wears black skirts and white head -clothes, that she 
 looks the resurrection of the flesh, and that she is 
 a risen ghost. 
 
 All falsities — all figments ! We will not deal in 
 this gear. Let us be honest, and cut, as heretofore, 
 from the homely web of truth. 
 
 Homely, though, is an ill-chosen word. What I 
 see is not precisely homely. A girl of Villette stands 
 there — a girl fresh from her pensionnat. She is very 
 comely, with the beauty indigenous to this country ; 
 she looks well-nourished, fair, and fat of flesh. Her 
 cheeks are round, her eyes good ; her hair is abundant. 
 
OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCE. 289 
 
 She is handsomely dressed. She is not alone ; her 
 escort consists of three persons — two being elderly ; 
 these she addresses as " Mon Oncle" and " Ma 
 Tante." She laughs, she chats : good-humoured, 
 buxom, and blooming, she looks, at all points, the 
 bourgeoise belle. 
 
 So much for "Justine Marie;" so much for 
 ghosts and mystery : not that this last was solved — 
 this girl certainly is not my nun ; what I saw in the 
 garret and garden must have been taller by a 
 span. 
 
 We have looked at the city belle ; we have cur- 
 sorily glanced at the respectable old uncle and aunt. 
 Have we a stray glance to give to the third member 
 of this company? Can we spare him a moment's 
 notice? We ought to distinguish him so far, 
 reader ; he has claims on us ; we do not now meet 
 him for the first time. I elapsed my hands very 
 hard, and I drew my breath very deep ; I held in 
 the cry, I devoured the ejaculation, I forbade the 
 start, I spoke and I stirred no more than a stone ; 
 but I knew what I looked on ; through the dimness 
 left in my eyes by many nights' weeping, I knew 
 him. They said he was to sail by the "Antigua." 
 Madame Beck said so. She lied, or she had uttered 
 
 VOL. III. u 
 
290 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 what was once truth, and failed to contradict it, when 
 it became false. The "Antigua" was gone, and 
 there stood Paul Emanuel. 
 
 Was I glad? A huge load left me. Was it a 
 fact to warrant joy ? I know not. Ask first what 
 were the circumstances attendant ^on this respite? 
 How far did this delay concern me? Were there 
 not those whom it might touch more nearly 1 
 
 After all, who may this young girl, this Justine 
 Marie be ? Not a stranger, reader ; she is known 
 to me by sight ; she visits at the Rue Fossette ; she 
 is often of Madame Beck's Sunday parties. She is 
 a relation of both the Becks and Walravens ; she 
 derives her baptismal name from the sainted nun 
 who would have been her aunt had she lived ; her 
 patronymic is Sauveur ; she is an heiress and an 
 orphan, and M. Emanuel is her guardian ; some 
 say her godfather. The family junta wish this 
 heiress to be married to one of their band — which is 
 it ? Vital question — which is it ? 
 
 I felt very glad now, that the drug administered in 
 the sweet draught had filled me with a possession 
 which made bed and chamber intolerable. I always, 
 through my whole life, liked to penetrate to the 
 real truth ; I like seeking the goddess in her temple, 
 
OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCE. 291 
 
 and handling the veil, and daring the dread glance. 
 
 Titaness amongst deities ! The covered outline 
 of thine aspect sickens often through its uncertainty, 
 but define to us one trait, show us one lineament, 
 clear in awful sincerity ; we may gasp in untold 
 terror, but with that gasp we drink in a breath of 
 thy divinity; our heart shakes, and its currents 
 sway like rivers lifted by earthquake, but we have 
 swallowed strength. To see and know the worst is 
 to take from Fear her main advantage. 
 
 The Walravens' party, augmented in numbers, 
 now became very gay. The gentlemen fetched 
 refreshments from the kiosk, all sat down on the 
 turf under the trees ; they drank healths and senti- 
 ments ; they laughed, they jested. M. Emanuel 
 underwent some raillery, half good-humoured, half, 
 
 1 thought, malicious, especially on Madame Beck's 
 part. I soon gathered that his voyage had been 
 temporarily deferred of his own will, without the 
 concurrence, even against the advice of his friends ; 
 he had let the "Antigua" go, and had taken his berth 
 in the " Paul et Virginie," appointed to sail a fort- 
 night later. It was his reason for this resolve which 
 they teased him to assign, and which he would only 
 vaguely indicate as " the settlement of a little piece 
 
292 VILLETTE. 
 
 of business which he had set his heart upon." 
 What was this business ? Nobody knew. Yes, 
 there was one who seemed partly, at least, in his 
 confidence; a meaning look passed between him 
 and Justine Marie. " La petite va m'aider — n'est 
 ce pas ?" said he. The answ r er was prompt enough, 
 God knows ! 
 
 " Mais oui, je vous aiderai de tout mon coeur. 
 Vous ferez de moi tout ce que vous voudrez, mon 
 parrain." 
 
 And this dear " parrain " took her hand and 
 lifted it to his grateful lips. Upon which demon- 
 stration, I saw the light- complexioned young Teuton, 
 Heinrich Muhler, grow restless, as if he did not like 
 it. He even grumbled a few words, whereat M. 
 Emanuel actually laughed in his face, and with the 
 ruthless triumph of the assured conqueror, he drew 
 his ward nearer to him. 
 
 M.Emanuel was indeed very joyous that night. 
 He seemed not one whit subdued by the change of 
 scene and action impending. He was the true life 
 of the party ; a little despotic perhaps, determined 
 to be chief in mirth, as well as in labour, yet from 
 moment to moment proving indisputably his right 
 of leadership. His was the wnttiest word, the 
 
OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCE. 293 
 
 pleasantest anecdote, the frankest laugh. Restlessty 
 active, after his manner, he multiplied himself to 
 wait on all ; but oh ! I saw which was his favourite. 
 I saw at whose feet he lay on the turf, I saw whom 
 he folded carefully from the night air, whom he 
 tended, watched, and cherished as the apple of his 
 eye. 
 
 Still, hint and raillery flew thick, and still I 
 gathered that while M. Paul should be absent, 
 working for others, these others, not quite ungrate- 
 ful, would guard for him the treasure he left in 
 Europe. Let him bring them an Indian fortune ; 
 they would give him in return a young bride and a 
 rich inheritance. As for the saintly consecration, 
 the vow of constancy, that was forgotten : the bloom- 
 ing and charming Present prevailed over the Past ; 
 and at length his nun was indeed buried. 
 
 Thus it must be. The revelation was indeed 
 come. Presentiment had not been mistaken in her 
 impulse; there is a kind of presentiment which 
 never is mistaken ; it was I who had for a moment 
 miscalculated ; not seeing the true bearing of the 
 oracle, I had thought she muttered of vision when, 
 in truth, her prediction touched reality. 
 
 I might have paused longer upon what I 
 
294 VILLETTE. 
 
 saw ; I might have deliberated ere I drew in- 
 ferences. Some perhaps would have held the 
 premises doubtful, the proofs insufficient; some slow 
 sceptics would have incredulously examined, ere 
 they conclusively accepted the project of a marriage 
 between a poor and unselfish man of forty, and his 
 wealthy ward of eighteen ; but far from me such 
 shifts and palliatives, far from me such temporary 
 evasion of the actual, such coward fleeing from the 
 dread, the swift-footed, the all-overtaking Fact, 
 such feeble suspense of submission to her the sole 
 sovereign, such paltering and faltering resistance to 
 the Power whose errand is to march conquering 
 and to conquer, such traitor defection from the 
 Truth. 
 
 No. I hastened to accept the whole plan. I 
 extended my grasp and took it all in. I gathered 
 it to me with a sort of rage of haste, and folded it 
 round me, as the soldier struck on the field folds 
 his colours about his breast. I invoked Conviction 
 to nail upon me the certainty, abhorred while 
 embraced, to fix it with the strongest spikes her 
 strongest strokes could drive ; and when the iron 
 had entered well my soul, I stood up, as I thought 
 renovated. 
 
OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCE. 295 
 
 In my infatuation, I said, " Truth, you are a good 
 mistress to your faithful servants ! While a Lie 
 pressed me, how I suffered ! Even when the 
 Falsehood was still sweet, still flattering to the 
 fancy, and warm to the feelings, it wasted me with 
 hourly torment. The persuasion that affection was 
 won could not be divorced from the dread that, by 
 another turn of the wheel, it might be lost. Truth 
 stripped away Falsehood, and Flattery, and Expec- 
 tancy, and here I stand — free!" 
 
 Nothing remained now but to take my freedom to 
 my chamber, to carry it with me to my bed and see 
 what I could make of it. The play was not yet 
 indeed quite played out, I might have waited and 
 watched longer that love scene under the trees, that 
 sylvan courtship. Had there been nothing of love 
 in the demonstration, my Fancy in this hour was 
 so generous, so creative, she could have modelled 
 for it the most salient lineaments, and given it the 
 deepest life and highest colour of passion. But I 
 would not look ; I had fixed my resolve, but I would 
 not violate my nature. And then — something tore 
 me so cruelly under my shawl, something so dug 
 into my side, a vulture so strong in beak and talon, 
 I must be alone to grapple with it. I think I 
 
296 VILLETTE. 
 
 never felt jealousy till now. This was not like 
 enduring the endearments of Dr. John and Paulina, 
 against which while I sealed my eyes and my ears, 
 while I withdrew thence my thoughts, my sense of 
 harmony still acknowledged in it a charm. This 
 was an outrage. The love, born of beauty was not 
 mine ; I had nothing in common with it : I could 
 not dare to meddle with it, but another love, ven- 
 turing diffidently into life after long acquaintance, 
 furnace-tried by pain, stamped by constancy, con- 
 solidated by affection's pure and durable alloy, sub- 
 mitted by intellect to intellect's own tests, and 
 finally wrought up, by his own process, to his own 
 unflawed completeness, this Love that laughed at 
 Passion, his fast frenzies and his hot and hurried 
 extinction, in this Love I had a vested interest; 
 and whatever tended either to its culture or its 
 destruction, I could not view impassibly. 
 
 I turned from the group of trees and the " merrie 
 companie " in its shade. Midnight was long past ; 
 the concert was over, the crowds were thinning. I 
 followed the ebb. Leaving the radiant park and 
 well-lit Haute-Ville (still well-lit, for this it seems 
 was to be a a nuit blanche" in Villette), I sought 
 the dim lower quarter. 
 
OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCE. 297 
 
 Dim I should not say, for the beauty of moon- 
 light — forgotten in the park — here once more 
 flowed in upon perception. (High she rode, and 
 calm and stainlessly she shone. The music and 
 the mirth of the fete, the fire and bright hues of 
 those lamps had out-done and out-shone her for an 
 hour, but now, again, her glory and her silence 
 triumphed. The rival lamps were dying : she held 
 her course like a white fate. Drum, trumpet, 
 bugle, had uttered their clangour and were for- 
 gotten : with pencil-ray she wrote on heaven and 
 on earth records for archives everlasting. She and 
 those stars seemed to me at once the types and 
 witnesses of truth all regnant. The night-sky lit 
 her reign : like its slow-wheeling progress, ad- 
 vanced her victory — that onward movement which 
 has been, and is, and will be from eternity to 
 eternity. 
 
 These oil-twinkling streets are very still : I like 
 them for their lowliness and peace. Homeward- 
 bound burghers pass me now and then, but these 
 companies are pedestrian, make little noise, and are 
 soon gone. So well do I love Villette under her 
 present aspect, not willingly would I re-enter under 
 a roof, but that I am bent on pursuing my strange 
 
VILLETTE. 
 
 adventure to a successful close, and quietly re- 
 gaining my bed in the great dormitory, before 
 Madame Beck comes home. 
 
 Only one street lies between me and the Rue 
 Fossette ; as I enter it, for the first time, the sound 
 of a carriage tears up the deep peace of this 
 quarter. It comes this way — comes very fast. 
 How loud sounds its rattle on the paved path ! 
 The street is narrow and I keep carefully to the 
 causeway, The carriage thunders past, but what 
 do I see, or fancy I see, as it rushes by? Surely 
 something white fluttered from that window — surely 
 a hand waved a handkerchief. Was that signal 
 meant for me ? Am I known ? Who could re- 
 cognize me ? That is not M. de Bassompierre's 
 carriage, nor Mrs. Bretton's ; and besides, neither 
 the Hotel Crecy nor the chateau of La Terrasse 
 lies in that direction. Well, I have no time for 
 conjecture : I must hurry home. 
 
 Gaining the Rue Fossette, reaching the Pension- 
 nat, all there was still; no fiacre had yet arrived 
 with Madame and Desiree. I had left the great 
 door ajar; should I find it thus? Perhaps the 
 wind or some other accident may have thrown 
 it to with sufficient force to start the spring-bolt ? 
 
OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCE. 299 
 
 In that case, hopeless became admission ; my ad- 
 venture must issue in catastrophe. I lightly pushed 
 the heavy leaf: would it yield? 
 
 Yes. As soundless, as unresisting, as if some 
 propitious genius had waited on a sesame-charm, in 
 the vestibule within. Entering with bated breath, 
 quietly making all fast, shoelessly mounting the 
 staircase, I sought the dormitory, and reached ray 
 couch. 
 
 Aye ! I reached it, and once more drew a free 
 inspiration. The next moment, I almost shrieked— 
 almost, but not quite, thank Heaven ! 
 
 Throughout the dormitory, throughout the house, 
 there reigned at this hour the stillness of death. 
 All slept, and in such hush, it seemed that none 
 dreamed. Stretched on the nineteen beds lay nine- 
 teen forms, at full-length and motionless. On mine 
 — the twentieth couch — nothing ought to have lain: 
 I had left it void, and void should have found it. 
 What, then, do I see between the half-drawn cur- 
 tains ? What dark, usurping shape, supine, long, 
 and strange ? Is it a robber who has made his way 
 
300 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 through the open street-door, and lies there in wait ? 
 
 It looks very black, I think it looks — not human. 
 
 Can it be a wandering dog that has come in from the 
 
 street and crept and nestled hither ? Will it spring, 
 
 will it leap out if I approach ? Approach I must. 
 
 Courage ! One step ! — 
 
 My head reeled, for by the faint night-lamp, I 
 
 saw stretched on my bed the old phantom — the 
 
 Nun. 
 
 A cry at this moment might have ruined me. 
 
 Be the spectacle what it might, I could afford 
 neither consternation, scream, nor swoon. Besides, 
 I was not overcome. Tempered by late incidents, 
 my nerves disdained hysteria. Warm from illu- 
 minations, and music, and thronging thousands, 
 thoroughly lashed up by a new scourge, I defied 
 spectra. In a moment, without exclamation, I had 
 rushed on the haunted couch ; nothing leaped out, or 
 sprung, or stirred ; all the movement was mine, so 
 was all the life, the reality, the substance, the force ; 
 as my instinct felt. I tore her up — the incubus ! 
 I held her on high — the goblin ! I shook her loose 
 — the mystery ! And down she fell — down all 
 round me — down in shreds and fragments — and I 
 trode upon her. 
 
OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCE. 301 
 
 Here again — behold the branchless tree, the un- 
 stabled Bosinante ; the film of cloud, the flicker of 
 moonshine. The long nun proved a long bolster 
 dressed in a long black stole, and artfully invested 
 with a white veil. The garments in very truth — 
 strange as it may seem — were genuine nun's gar- 
 ments, and by some hand they had been disposed 
 with a view to illusion. Whence came these vest- 
 ments ? Who contrived this artifice ? These ques- 
 tions still remained. To the head-bandage was 
 pinned a slip of paper : it bore in pencil these 
 mocking words : — 
 
 " The nun of the attic bequeaths to Lucy Snowe 
 her wardrobe. She will be seen in the Rue Fos- 
 sette no more." 
 
 And what and who was she that had haunted 
 me? She, I had actually seen three times? Not a 
 woman of my acquaintance had the stature of that 
 ghost. She was not of female height. Not to any 
 man I knew could the machination, for a moment, 
 be attributed. 
 
 Still mystified beyond expression, but as tho- 
 roughly, as suddenly, relieved from all sense of the 
 spectral and unearthly; scorning also to wear out 
 my brain with the fret of a trivial though insoluble 
 
302 VILLETTE. 
 
 riddle. I just bundled together stole, veil, and 
 bandages, thrust them beneath my pillow, lay down, 
 listened till I heard the wheels of Madame's home- 
 returning fiacre, then turned, and worn out by 
 many nights' vigils, conquered, too, perhaps, by the 
 now reacting narcotic, I deeply slept. 
 
THE HAPPY PAIR. 303 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 THE HAPPY PAIR. 
 
 The day succeeding this remarkable Midsummer 
 night, proved no common day. I do not mean that 
 it brought signs in heaven above, or portents on the 
 earth beneath; nor do I allude to meteorological 
 phenomena, to storm, flood, or whirlwind. On the 
 contrary : the sun rose jocund, with a July face. 
 Morning decked her beauty with rubies, and so 
 filled her lap with roses, that they fell from her in 
 showers, making her path blush : the Hours woke 
 fresh as nymphs, and emptying on the early hills 
 their dew-vials, they stepped out dismantled of 
 vapour : shadowless, azure, and glorious, they led 
 the sun's steeds on a burning and unclouded course. 
 In short, it was as fine a day as the finest summer 
 could boast: but I doubt whether I was not the 
 sole inhabitant of the Rue Fossette, who cared or 
 
304 VILLETTE. 
 
 remembered to note this pleasant fact. Another 
 thought busied all other heads ; a thought, indeed, 
 which had its share in my meditations ; but this 
 master consideration, not possessing for me so entire 
 a novelty, so overwhelming a suddenness, especially 
 so dense a mystery, as it offered to the majority of 
 my co-speculators thereon, left me somewhat more 
 open than the rest, to any collateral observation or 
 impression. 
 
 Still, while walking in the garden, feeling the 
 sunshine, and marking the blooming and growing 
 plants, I pondered the same subject the whole 
 house discussed. 
 
 What subject? 
 
 Merely this. When matins came to be said, 
 there was a place vacant in the first rank of 
 boarders. When breakfast was served, there re- 
 mained a coffee-cup unclaimed. When the house- 
 maid made the beds, she found in one, a bolster laid 
 lengthwise, clad in a cap and nightgown ; and when 
 Ginevra Fanshawe's music-mistress came early, as 
 usual, to give the morning lesson, that accomplished 
 and promising young person, her pupil, failed 
 utterly to be forthcoming. 
 
 High and low was Miss Fanshawe sought ; 
 
THE HAPPY PAIR. 305 
 
 through length and breadth was the house ran- 
 sacked ; vainly ; not a trace, not an indication, not 
 so much as a scrap of a billet rewarded the search ; 
 the nymph was vanished, engulfed in the past 
 night, like a shooting star swallowed up by 
 darkness. 
 
 Deep was the dismay of surveillante teachers, 
 deeper the horror of the defaulting directress. 
 Never had I seen Madame Beck so pale or so 
 appalled. Here was a blow struck at her tender 
 part, her weak side ; here was damage done to 
 her interest. How, too, had the untoward event 
 happened ? By what outlet had the fugitive taken 
 wing? Not a casement was found unfastened, not 
 a pane of glass broken ; all the doors were bolted 
 secure. Never to this day has Madame Beck ob- 
 tained satisfaction on this point, nor indeed has any- 
 body else concerned, save and excepting one, Lucy 
 Snowe, who could not forget how, to facilitate a 
 certain enterprise, a certain great door had been 
 drawn softly to its lintel, closed, indeed, but neither 
 bolted nor ^secure. The thundering carriage-and- 
 pair encountered were now likewise recalled, as 
 well as that puzzling signal, the waved handerchief. 
 From these premises, and one or two others, in- 
 vol. m. x 
 
306 VILLETTE. 
 
 accessible to any but myself, I could draw but one 
 inference. It was a case of elopement. Morally 
 certain on this head, and seeing Madame Beck's 
 profound embarrassment, I at last communicated 
 my conviction. Having alluded to M. de Hamal's 
 suit, I found, as I expected, that Madame Beck 
 was perfectly au fait to that affair. She had long 
 since discussed it with Mrs. Cholmondeley, and 
 laid her own responsibility, in the business, on that 
 lady's shoulders. To Mrs. Cholmondeley and 
 M. de Bassompierre she now had recourse. 
 
 We found that the Hotel Crecy was already alive 
 to what had happened. Ginevra had written to her 
 cousin Paulina, vaguely signifying hymeneal in- 
 tentions ; communications had been received from 
 the family of de Hamal; M. de Bassompierre was 
 on the track of the fugitives. He overtook them 
 too late. 
 
 In the course of the week, the post brought me 
 a note. I may as well transcribe it; it contains 
 explanation on more than one point : — 
 
 "Dear old Tim" (short for Timon), — "I 
 am off you see — gone like a shot. Alfred 
 and I intended to be married in this way almost 
 
THE HAPPY PAIR. 307 
 
 from the first ; we never meant to be spliced in the 
 humdrum way of other people; Alfred has too 
 much spirit for that, and so have I — Dieu merci ! 
 Do you know, Alfred, who used to call you ' the 
 dragon,' has seen so much of you during the last 
 few months, that he begins to feel quite friendly 
 towards you. He hopes you won't miss him now 
 that he is gone ; he begs to apologize for any little 
 trouble he may have given you. He is afraid he 
 rather inconvenienced you once when he came upon 
 you in the grenier, just as you were reading a letter 
 seemingly of the most special interest ; but he could 
 not resist the temptation to give you a start, you 
 appeared so wonderfully taken up with your corre- 
 spondent. En revanche, he says you once fright- 
 ened him by rushing in for a dress or a shawl, or 
 some other chiffon, at the moment when he had 
 struck a light, and was going to take a quiet whiff 
 of his cigar, while waiting for me. 
 
 " Do you begin to comprehend by this time that 
 M. le Comte de Hamal was the nun of the attic, 
 and that he came to see your humble servant ? I 
 will tell you how he managed it. You know he has 
 the entree of the Athenee, where two or three of 
 his nephews, the sons of his eldest sister, Madame 
 
308 VILLETTE. 
 
 de Melcy, are students. You know the court of 
 the Athenee is on the other side of the high wall 
 bounding your walk, the allee defendue. Alfred 
 can climb as well as he can dance or fence ; his 
 amusement was to make the escalade of our pen- 
 sionnat by mounting, first the wall ; then — by the 
 aid of that high tree overspreading the grand ber- 
 ceau, and resting some of its boughs on the roof of 
 the lower buildings of our premises — he managed to 
 scale the first classe and the grande salle. One 
 night, by the way, he fell out of this tree, tore down 
 some of the branches, nearly broke his own neck, 
 and after all, in running away, got a terrible fright, 
 and was nearly caught by two people, Madame 
 Beck and M. Emanuel, he thinks, walking in the 
 alley. From the grande salle the ascent is not 
 difficult to the highest block of building, finishing 
 in the great garret. The skylight, you know, is 
 day and night left half-open for air ; by the sky light 
 he entered. Nearly a year ago, I chanced to tell 
 him our legend of the nun, that suggested his 
 romantic idea of the spectral disguise, which I 
 think you must allow he has very cleverly carried 
 out. 
 
 " But for the nun's black gown and white veil, 
 
THE HAPPY PAIR. 309 
 
 he would have been caught again and again both 
 by you and that tiger-Jesuit, M. Paul. He thinks 
 you both capital ghost-seers, and very brave. What 
 I wonder at is, rather your secretiveness than your 
 courage. How could you endure the visitations of 
 that long spectre, time after time, without crying 
 out, telling everybody, and rousing the whole house 
 and neighbourhood ? 
 
 " Oh, and how did you like the nun as a bed- 
 fellow? I dressed her up? — didn't I do it well? 
 Did you shriek when you saw her 1 I should have 
 gone mad ; but then you have such nerves ! — real 
 iron and bend leather ! I believe you feel nothing. 
 You havn't the same sensitiveness that a person of 
 my constitution has. You seem to me insensible 
 both to pain and fear and grief. You are a real 
 old Diogenes. 
 
 " Well, dear grandmother ! and are you not 
 mightily angry at my moonlight flitting and run- 
 away match ? I assure you it is excellent fun, and 
 I did it partly to spite that minx, Paulina, and that 
 bear, Dr. John — to show them that, with all their 
 airs, I could get married as well as they. M. de 
 Bassompierre was at first in a strange fume with 
 Alfred ; he threatened a prosecution for ' detourne- 
 
310 VILLETTE. 
 
 ment de mineur,' and I know not what ; he was so 
 abominably in earnest, that I found myself forced to 
 do a little bit of the melodramatic — go down on my 
 knees, sob, cry, drench three pocket-handkerchiefs. 
 Of course, ' mon oncle ' soon gave in ; indeed, where 
 was the use of making a fuss ? I am married, and 
 that 's all about it. He still says our marriage is 
 not legal, because I am not of age, forsooth ! As if 
 that made any difference ! I am just as much 
 married as if I were a hundred. However, we are 
 to be married again, and I am to have a trousseau, 
 and Mrs. Cholmondeley is going to superintend it ; 
 and there are some hopes that M. de Bassompierre 
 will give me a decent portion, which will be very 
 convenient, as dear Alfred has nothing but his 
 nobility, native and hereditary, and his pay. I only 
 wish uncle would do things unconditionally, in a 
 generous, gentleman-like fashion ; he is so disagree- 
 able as to make the dowry depend on Alfred's 
 giving his written promise that he will never touch 
 cards or dice from the day it is paid down. They 
 accuse my angel of a tendency to play : I don 't 
 know anything about that, but I do know he is a 
 dear, adorable creature. 
 
 " I cannot sufficiently extol the genuis with which 
 
THE HAPPY PAIR. 311 
 
 De Hamal managed our flight. How clever in him 
 to select the night of the fete, when Madame (for he 
 knows her habits), as he said, would infallibly be 
 absent at the concert in the park. I suppose you 
 must have gone with her. I watched you rise and 
 leave the dormitory about eleven o'clock. How 
 you returned alone, and on foot, I cannot conjecture. 
 That surely was you we met in the narrow old Rue 
 St. Jean ? Did you see me wave my handkerchief 
 from the carriage window? 
 
 "Adieu! Rejoice in my good luck: congratulate 
 me on my supreme happiness, and believe me, dear 
 eynic and misanthrope, yours, in the best of health, 
 and spirits, 
 
 " Ginevra Laura de Hamal, 
 nee Fan sh awe. 
 
 " P.S. — Remember, I am a countess now. Papa, 
 mama, and the girls at home, will be delighted to 
 hear that. ' My daughter, the Countess ! My sister, 
 the Countess.' Bravo ! Sounds rather better thai* 
 Mrs. John Bretton, hein ? " 
 
312 VILLETTE. 
 
 In winding up Mistress Fanshawe's memoirs, the 
 reader will no doubt expect to hear that she came 
 finally to bitter expiation of her youthful levities. 
 Of course, a large share of suffering lies in reserve 
 for her future. 
 
 A few words will embody my farther knowledge 
 respecting her. 
 
 I saw towards the close of her honeymoon. She 
 called on Madame Beck, and sent for me into the 
 salon. She rushed into my arms laughing. She 
 looked very blooming and beantiful : her curls were 
 longer, her cheeks rosier than ever : her white 
 bonnet and her Flanders veil, her orange flowers 
 and her bride's dress, became her mightily. 
 
 " I have got my portion ! " she cried at once ; 
 (Ginevra ever stuck to the substantial ; I always 
 thought there was a good trading element in her 
 composition, much as she scorned the " bour- 
 geoisie ; ") " and uncle de Bassompiere is quite 
 reconciled. I don't mind his calling Alfred a 
 * nincompoop ' — that's only his coarse Scotch breed- 
 ing; and I believe Paulina envies me, and Dr. 
 John is wild with jealousy — fit to blow his brains 
 out — and I'm so happy ! I really think I've 
 hardly anything left to wish for — unless it be a 
 
THE HAPPY PAIR. 313 
 
 carriage and a hotel, and — oh! I must introduce 
 you to ' mon mari.' Alfred, come here ! " 
 
 And Alfred appeared from the inner salon, where 
 he was talking to Madame Beck, receiving the 
 blended felicitations and reprimands of that lady. 
 I was presented under my various names : the 
 Dragon, Diogenes, and Timon. The young Colonel 
 was very polite. He made me a prettily-turned, 
 neatly-worded apology, about the ghost-visits, &c, 
 concluding with saying that " the best excuse for 
 all his iniquities stood there ! " pointing to his 
 bride. 
 
 And then the bride sent him back to Madame 
 Beck, and she took me to herself, and proceeded 
 literally to suffocate me with her unrestrained 
 spirits, her girlish, giddy, wild nonsense. She 
 showed her ring exultingly ; she called herself 
 Madame la Comtesse de Hamal, and asked how it 
 sounded, a score of times. I said very little. I gave 
 her only the crust and rind of my nature. No 
 matter : she expected of me nothing better — she 
 knew me too well to look for compliments — my 
 dry gibes pleased her well enough, and the more 
 impassible and prosaic my mien, the more merrily 
 she laughed. 
 
314 VILLETTE. 
 
 Soon after his marriage, M. de Hamal was per- 
 suaded to leave the army as the surest way of wean- 
 ing him from certain unprofitable associates and 
 habits ; a post of attache was procured for him, and 
 he and his young wife went abroad. I thought she 
 would forget me now, but she did not. For many 
 years, she kept up a capricious, fitful sort of corres- 
 pondence. During the first year or two, it was 
 only of herself and Alfred she wrote ; then, Alfred 
 faded in the background ; herself and a certain new 
 comer prevailed ; one Alfred Fanshawe de Bassom- 
 pierre de Hamal began to reign in his father's 
 stead. There were great boastings about this per- 
 sonage, extravagant amplifications upon miracles of 
 precocity, mixed with vehement objurgations against 
 the phlegmatic incredulity with which I received 
 them. I didn't know " what it wa"s to be a 
 mother:" "unfeeling thing that I was, the sensi- 
 bilities of the maternal heart were Greek and He- 
 brew to me," and so on. In due course of nature 
 this young gentleman took his degrees in teething, 
 measles, hooping-cough : that was a terrible time 
 for me — the mama's letters became a perfect shout 
 of affliction — never woman was so put upon by 
 calamity : never human being stood in such need of 
 
THE HAPPY PAIR. 315 
 
 sympathy. I was frightened at first, and wrote 
 back pathetically ; but I soon found out there was 
 more cry than wool in the business, and relapsed 
 into my natural cruel insensibility. As to the youth- 
 ful sufferer, he weathered each storm like a hero. 
 Five times was that youth " in articulo mortis," and 
 five times did he miraculously revive. 
 
 In the course of years there arose ominous mur- 
 murings against Alfred the First ; M. de Bassom- 
 pierre had to be appealed to, debts had to be paid, 
 some of them of that dismal and dingy order, called 
 " debts of honour ;" ignoble plaints and difficulties 
 became frequent. Under every cloud, no matter 
 what its nature, Ginevra, as of old, called out lustily 
 for sympathy and aid. She had no notion of meet- 
 ing any distress single-handed. In some shape, 
 from some quarter or other, she was pretty sure to 
 obtain her will, and so she got on — fighting the 
 battle of life by proxy, and, on the whole, suffering 
 as little as any human being I have ever known. 
 
316 VILLETTE. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 FAUBOURG CLOTILDE. 
 
 Must I, ere I close, render some account of that 
 Freedom and Renovation which I won on the fete- 
 night? Must I tell how I and the two stalwart 
 companions I brought home from the illuminated 
 park bore the test of intimate acquaintance? 
 
 I tried them the very next day. They had 
 boasted their strength loudly when they reclaimed 
 me from love and its bondage, but upon my de- 
 manding deeds, not words, some evidence of better 
 comfort, some experience of a relieved life — Freedom 
 excused himself, as for the present, impoverished 
 and disabled to assist ; and Renovation never spoke ; 
 he had died in the night suddenly. 
 
 I had nothing left for it then but to trust secretly 
 that conjecture might have hurried me too fast and 
 too far, to sustain the oppressive hour by reminders 
 
FAUBOURG CLOTILDE, 317 
 
 of the distorting and discolouring magic of jealousy. 
 After a short and vain struggle, I found myself 
 brought back captive to the old rack of suspense, 
 tied down and strained anew. 
 
 Shall I yet see him before he goes ? Will he bear 
 me in mind? Does he purpose to come? Will 
 this day — will the next hour bring him ? or must I 
 again assay that corroding pain of long attent — that 
 rude agony of rupture at the close, that mute, mortal 
 wrench, which, in at once uprooting hope and doubt, 
 shakes life ; while the hand that does the violence 
 cannot be caressed to pity, because absence inter- 
 poses her barrier ! 
 
 It was the Feast of the Assumption ; no school 
 was held. The boarders and teachers, after attend- 
 ing mass in the morning, were gone a long walk 
 into the country to take their gouter, or afternoon 
 meal at some farm-house. I did not go with them, 
 for^ now but two days remained^ ere the " Paul et 
 Virginie " must sail, and I was clinging to my last 
 chance, as the living waif of a wreck clings to his 
 last raft or cable. 
 
 There was some joiners' work to do in the first 
 classe, some bench or desk to repair ; holidays were 
 often turned to account for the performance of these 
 
318 VILLETTE. 
 
 operations, which could not be executed when the 
 rooms were filled with pupils. As I sat solitary, 
 purposing to adjourn to the garden and leave the 
 coast clear, but too listless to fulfil my own intent, 
 I heard the workman coming. 
 
 Foreign artizans and servants do everything by 
 couples : I believe it would take two Labassecourien 
 carpenters to drive a nail. While tying on my bonnet, 
 which had hitherto hung by its ribbons from my 
 idle hand, I vaguely and momentarily wondered to 
 hear the step of but one " ouvrier." I noted, too — 
 as captives in dungeons find sometimes dreary 
 leisure to note the merest trifles — that this man 
 wore shoes, and not sabots : I concluded that it 
 must be the master-carpenter, coming to inspect, 
 before he sent his journeymen. I threw round me 
 my scarf. He advanced ; he opened the door ; my 
 back was towards it ; I felt a little thrill — a curious 
 sensation, too quick and transient to be analyzed. 
 I turned, I stood in the supposed master-artizan's 
 presence : looking towards the door-way, I saw it 
 filled with a figure, and my eyes printed upon my 
 brain the picture of M. Paul. 
 
 Hundreds of the prayers with which we weary 
 Heaven, bring to the suppliant no fulfilment. Once 
 
FAUBOURG CLOTILDE. 319 
 
 haply in life, one golden gift falls prone in the lap — 
 one boon full and bright, perfect from Fruition's 
 mint. 
 
 M. Emanuel wore the dress in which he pro- 
 bably purposed to travel — a surtout, guarded with 
 velvet; I thought him prepared for instant de- 
 parture, and yet I had understood that two days 
 were yet to run before the ship sailed. He looked 
 well, and cheerful. He looked kind and benign : 
 he came in with eagerness; he was close to me in 
 one second ; he was all amity. It might be his 
 bridegroom-mood which thus brightened him. What- 
 ever the cause, I could not meet his sunshine with 
 cloud. If this were my last moment with him, I 
 would not waste it in forced, unnatural distance. I 
 loved him well — too well not to smite out of my 
 path even Jealousy herself, when she would have 
 obstructed a kind farewell. A cordial word from 
 his lips, or a gentle look from his eyes, would do 
 me good, for all the span of life that remained to 
 me ; it would be comfort in the last strait of lone- 
 liness; I would take it — I would taste the elixir, 
 and pride should not spill the cup. 
 
 The interview would be short, of course: he 
 would say to me just what he had said to each of 
 
320 VILLETTE. 
 
 the assembled pupils ; he would take and hold my 
 hand two minutes ; he would touch my cheek with 
 his lips for the first, last, only time — and then — no 
 more. Then, indeed, the final parting, then the wide 
 separation, the great gulf I could not pass to go to 
 him — across which, haply, he would not glance, to 
 remember me. 
 
 He took my hand in one of his, with the other 
 he put back my bonnet ; he looked into my face, his 
 luminous smile went out, his lips expressed some- 
 thing almost like the wordless language of a mother 
 who finds a child greatly and unexpectedly changed, 
 broken with illness, or worn-out by want. A check 
 supervened. 
 
 "Paul, Paul!" said a woman's hurried voice be- 
 hind, "Paul, come into the salon; I have yet a 
 great many things to say to you — conversation for 
 the whole day — and so has Victor ; and Josef is 
 here. Come, Paul, come to your friends." 
 
 Madame Beck, brought to the spot by vigilance 
 or an inscrutable instinct, pressed so near, she 
 almost thrust herself between me and M. Emanuel. 
 " Come, Paul ! " she reiterated, her eye grazing me 
 with its hard ray like a steel stylet. She pushed 
 against her kinsman. I thought he receded ; I 
 
FAUBOURG CLOTILDE. 321 
 
 thought he would go. Pierced deeper than I could 
 endure, made now to feel what defied suppression, 
 I cried — 
 
 "My heart will break!" 
 
 What I felt seemed literal heart-break ; but the 
 seal of another fountain yielded under the strain: 
 one breath fromM. Paul, the whisper, " Trust me!" 
 lifted a load, opened an outlet. With many a deep 
 sob, with thrilling, with icy shiver, with strong 
 trembling, and yet with relief— I wept. 
 
 " Leave her to me ; it is a crisis ; I will give her 
 a cordial, and it will pass," said the calm Madame 
 Beck. 
 
 To be left to her and her cordial, seemed to me 
 something like being left to the poisoner and her 
 bowl. When M. Paul answered deeply, harshly, 
 and briefly — 
 
 " Laissez-moi !" in the grim sound I felt a music 
 strange, strong, but life-giving. 
 
 "Laissez-moi!" he repeated, his nostrils open- 
 ing, and his facial muscles all quivering as he 
 spoke. 
 
 " But this will never do," said Madame, with 
 sternness. More sternly rejoined her kinsman — 
 
 "Sortez d'ici!" 
 
 VOL. III. Y 
 
322 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 " I will send for Pere Silas ; on the spot I will 
 send for him," she threatened pertinaciously. 
 
 "Femme!" cried the professor, not now in his 
 deep tones, but in his highest and most excited key, 
 • Femme ! sortez a l'instant !" 
 
 He was roused, and I loved him in his wrath with 
 a passion beyond what I had yet felt. 
 
 " What you do is wrong," pursued Madame ; " it 
 is an act characteristic of men of your unreliable, 
 imaginative temperament; a step impulsive, inju- 
 dicious, inconsistent — a proceeding vexatious, and 
 not estimable in the view of persons of steadier and 
 more resolute character." 
 
 " You know not what I have of steady and reso- 
 lute in me," said he, " but you shall see ; the event 
 shall teach you. Modeste," he continued less 
 fiercely, " be gentle, be pitying, be a woman ; look 
 at this poor face, and relent. You know I am your 
 friend, and the friend of your friends ; in spite of 
 your taunts, you well and deeply know I may be 
 trusted. Of sacrificing myself I made no difficulty, 
 but my heart is pained by what I see ; it must have 
 and give solace. Leave me!" 
 
 This time, in the " leave me" there was an intona- 
 tion so bitter and so imperative, I wondered that 
 
 
FAUBOURG CLOTILDE, 323 
 
 even Madame Beck herself could for one moment 
 delay obedience ; but she stood firm ; she gazed 
 upon him dauntless ; she met his eye, forbidding 
 and fixed as stone. She was opening her lips to 
 retort; I saw over all M. Paul's face a quick 
 rising light and fire : I can hardly tell how he 
 managed the movement ; it did not seem violent ; it 
 kept the form of courtesy ; he gave his hand ; it 
 scarce touched her, I thought ; she ran, she whirled 
 from the room ; she was gone and the door shut in 
 one second. 
 
 This flash of passion was all over very soon. He 
 smiled as he told me to wipe my eyes ; he waited 
 quietly till I was calm, dropping from time to time 
 a stilling, solacing word. Ere long I sat beside 
 him once more myself — re-assured — not desperate, 
 nor yet desolate; not friendless, not hopeless, not 
 sick of life, and seeking death. 
 
 " It made you very sad then to lose your friend ?" 
 said he. 
 
 " It kills me to be forgotten, monsieur," I said. 
 " All these weary days I have not heard from you 
 one word, and I was crushed with the possibility, 
 growing to certainty, that you would depart without 
 saying farewell ! " 
 
324 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 " Must I tell you what I told Modeste Beck — 
 that you do not know me ? Must I show and teach 
 you my character? You will have proof that I can 
 be a firm friend ? Without clear proof this hand 
 will not lie still in mine, it will not trust my 
 shoulder as a safe stay 1 Good. The proof is ready. 
 I come to justify myself." 
 
 " Say anything, teach anything, prove anything, 
 monsieur : I can listen now." 
 
 " Then, in the first place, you must go out with 
 me a good distance into the town. I came on pur- 
 pose to fetch you." 
 
 Without questioning his meaning, or sounding 
 his plan, or offering the semblance of an objection, I 
 re-tied my bonnet : I was ready. 
 
 The route he took was by the boulevards : he 
 several times made me sit down on the seats stationed 
 under the lime-trees ; he did not ask if I was tired, 
 but looked, and drew his own conclusions. 
 
 " All these weary days," said he, repeating my 
 words, with a gentle, kindly mimicry of my voice 
 and foreign accent, not new from his lips, and of 
 which the playful banter never wounded, not even 
 when coupled as it often was, with the assertion, 
 that however I might write his language, I spoke 
 
FAUBOURG CLOTILDE. 325 
 
 and always should speak it imperfectly and hesi- 
 tatingly. " * All these weary days,' I have not for 
 one hour forgotten you. Faithful women err in 
 this, that they think themselves the sole faithful 
 of God's creatures. On a very fervent and living 
 truth to myself, I, too, till lately scarce dared count, 
 from any quarter ; but look at me." 
 
 I lifted my happy eyes : they were happy now, 
 or they would have been no interpreters of my 
 heart. 
 
 " Well," said he, after some seconds' scrutiny, 
 " there is no denying that signature : Constancy 
 wrote it ; her pen is of iron. Was the record 
 painful?" 
 
 " Severely painful," I said, with truth. " With- 
 draw her hand, monsieur ; I can bear its inscribing 
 force no more." 
 
 " Elle est toute pale," said he, speaking to him- 
 self; " cette figure la me fait mal." 
 
 " Ah ! I am not pleasant to look at ? " 
 
 I could not help saying this ; the words came 
 unbidden : I never remember the time when I had 
 not a haunting dread of what might be the degree 
 of my outward deficiency ; this dread pressed me 
 at the moment with special force. 
 
326 VILLETTE. 
 
 A great softness passed upon his countenance ; 
 his violet eyes grew suffused and glistening under 
 their deep Spanish lashes : he started up ; (t Let 
 us walk on." 
 
 "Do I displease your eyes much?" I took 
 courage to urge : the point had its vital import 
 for me. 
 
 He stopped, and gave me a short, strong answer 
 — an answer which silenced, subdued, yet pro- 
 foundly satisfied. Ever after that, I knew what 
 I was for him; and what I might be for the rest 
 of the world, I ceased painfully to care. Was it 
 weak to lay so much stress on an opinion about 
 appearance ? I fear it might be — I fear it was ; 
 but in that case I must avow no light share of 
 weakness. I must own a great fear of displeasing 
 — a strong wish moderately to please M. Paul. 
 
 Whither we rambled, I scarce know. Our walk 
 was long, yet seemed short ; the path was pleasant, 
 the day lovely. M. Emanuel talked of his voy- 
 age — he thought of staying away three years. On 
 his return from Guadaloupe, he looked forward 
 to release from liabilities and a clear course ; and 
 what did I purpose doing in the interval of his 
 absence ? he asked. I had talked once, he re- 
 
FAUBOURG CLOTILDE. 327 
 
 minded roe, of trying to be independent and keep- 
 ing a little school of my own : had I dropped the 
 idea? 
 
 " Indeed, I had not : I was doing my best to 
 save what would enable me to put it in practice." 
 
 " He did not like leaving me in the Rue 
 Fossette ; he feared I should miss him th jre too 
 much — I should feel desolate — I should grow 
 sad-^-?" 
 
 This was certain ; but I promised to do my best 
 to endure. 
 
 " Still," said he, speaking low, " there is another 
 objection to your present residence. I should wish 
 to write to you sometimes : it would not be well to 
 have any uncertainty about the safe transmission of 
 
 letters ; and in the Rue Fossette in short, our 
 
 Catholic discipline in certain matters — though justi- 
 fiable and expedient — might possibly, under peculiar 
 circumstances, become liable to misapplication — per- 
 haps abuse." 
 
 " But if you write," said I, " I must have your 
 letters ; and I will have them : ten directors, twenty 
 directresses, shall not keep them from me. I am a 
 Protestant : I will not bear that kind of discipline : 
 monsieur, I will not.'" 
 
328 VILLETTE. 
 
 " Doucement — doucement," rejoined he; " we will 
 contrive a plan ; we have our resources : soyez tran- 
 quille." 
 
 So speaking, he paused. 
 
 We were now returning from the long walk. 
 We had reached the middle of a clean Faubourg, 
 where the houses were small, but looked pleasant. 
 It was before the white door-step of a very neat 
 abode that M. Paul had halted. 
 
 " I call here," said he. 
 
 He did not knock, but taking from his pocket a 
 key, he opened and entered at once. Ushering me 
 in, he shut the door behind us. No servant ap- 
 peared. The vestibule was small, like the house, 
 hut freshly and tastefully painted ; its vista closed in 
 a French window with vines trained about the 
 panes, tendrils, and green leaves kissing the glass. 
 Silence reigned in this dwelling. 
 
 Opening an inner door, M. Paul disclosed a par- 
 lour, or salon — very tiny, but I thought, very 
 pretty. Its delicate walls were tinged like a blush ; 
 its floor was waxed ; a square of brilliant carpet 
 covered its centre ; its small round table shone like 
 the mirror over its hearth ; there was a little couch, 
 a little chiffoniere ; the half-open, crimson-silk door 
 
FAUBOURG CLOTILDE. 329 
 
 of which, showed porcelain on the shelves; there 
 was a French clock, a lamp ; there were ornaments 
 in biscuit china ; the recess of the single ample 
 window was filled with a green stand, bearing three 
 green flower-pots, each filled with a fine plant glow- 
 ing in bloom ; in one corner appeared a gueridon 
 with a marble top, and upon it a work-box, and a 
 glass filled with violets in water. The lattice of this 
 room was open ; the outer air breathing through, 
 gave freshness, the sweet violets lent fragrance. 
 
 "Pretty, pretty place!" said I. M. Paul smiled 
 to see me so pleased. 
 
 " Must we sit down here and wait ?" I asked in a 
 whisper, half-awed by the deep-pervading hush. 
 
 " We will first peep into one or two other nooks 
 of this nutshell," he replied. 
 
 " Dare you take the freedom of going all over the 
 house?" I inquired. 
 
 " Yes, I dare," said he, quietly. 
 
 He led the w r ay. I was shown a little kitchen 
 with a litle stove and oven, with few but bright 
 brasses, two chairs and a table. A small cupboard 
 held a diminutive but commodious set of earthen- 
 ware. 
 
 " There is a coffee service of china in the salon," 
 
330 VILLETTE. 
 
 said M. Paul, as I looked at the six green and white 
 dinner-plates ; the four dishes, the cups and jugs to 
 match. 
 
 Conducted up the narrow but clean staircase, I 
 was permitted a glimpse of two pretty cabinets of 
 sleeping rooms ; finally, I was once more led below, 
 and we halted with a certain ceremony before a 
 larger door than had yet been opened. 
 
 Producing a second key, M. Emanuel adjusted it 
 to the lock of this door. He opened, put me in 
 before him. 
 
 "Voici!" he cried. 
 
 I found myself in a good-sized apartment, scrupu- 
 lously clean, though bare, compared with those I 
 had hitherto seen. The well-scoured boards were 
 carpetless ; it contained two rows of green benches 
 and desks, with an alley down the centre, termi- 
 nating in an estrade, a teacher's chair and table; 
 behind them a tableau. On the walls hung two 
 maps ; in the windows flowered a few hardy plants ; 
 in short, here was a miniature classe — complete, 
 neat, pleasant. 
 
 "It is a school then?" said I, "Who keeps it? I 
 never heard of an establishment in this faubourg." 
 
 " Will you have the goodness to accept of a few 
 
FAUBOURG CLOTILDE. 331 
 
 prospectuses for distribution in behalf of a friend of 
 mine?" asked be, taking from his surtout-pocket 
 some quires of these documents, and putting them 
 into my hand. I looked, I read — printed in fair 
 characters : — 
 
 " Externat de demoiselles. Numero 7, Faubourg 
 Clotilde. Directrice, Mademoiselle Lucy Snowe." 
 
 And what did I say to M. Paul Emanuel? 
 
 Certain, junctures of our lives must always be 
 difficult of recall to memory. Certain points, crises, 
 certain feelings, joys, griefs, and amazements, when 
 reviewed, must strike us as things wildered and 
 whirling, dim as a wheel fast spun. 
 
 I can no more remember the thoughts or the 
 words of the ten minutes succeeding this disclosure, 
 than I can retrace the experience of my earliest 
 year of life : and yet the first thing distinct to me is 
 the consciousness that I was speaking very fast, 
 repeating over and over again : — 
 
 " Did you do this, M. Paul ? Is this your house ? 
 Did you furnish it? Did you get these papers 
 printed ? Do you mean me ? Am I the directress ? 
 
332 V1LLETTE. 
 
 Is there another Lucy Snowe ? Tell me : say some- 
 thing." 
 
 But he would not speak. His pleased silence, 
 his laughing down-look, his attitude, are visible to 
 me now. 
 
 " How is it? I must know all — all" I cried. 
 
 The packet of papers fell on the floor. He had 
 extended his hand, and I had fastened thereon, ob- 
 livious of all else. 
 
 " Ah ! you said I had forgotten you all these 
 weary days," said he. " Poor old Emanuel ! These 
 are the thanks he gets for trudging about three 
 mortal weeks from house-painter to upholsterer, 
 from cabinet-maker to charwoman. Lucy and 
 Lucy's cot, the sole thoughts in his head !" 
 
 I hardly knew what to do. I first caressed the 
 soft velvet on his cuff, and then I stroked the hand 
 it surrounded. It was his foresight, his goodness, 
 his silent, strong, effective goodness, that over- 
 powered me by their proved reality. It was the 
 assurance of his sleepless interest which broke on 
 me like a light from heaven ; it was his (I will dare 
 to say it) his fond, tender look, which now shook me 
 indescribably. In the midst of all, I forced myself 
 to look at the practical. 
 
FAUBOURG CLOTILDE. 333 
 
 "The trouble!" I cried, "and the cost!) Had 
 you money, M. Paul?" 
 
 " Plenty of money !" said lie heartily. " The dis- 
 posal of my large teaching-connection put me in 
 possession of a handsome sum : with part of it I 
 determined to give myself the richest treat that I 
 have known or shall know. I like this. I have 
 reckoned on this hour day and night lately. I 
 would not come near you, because I would not 
 forestal it. Reserve is neither my virtue nor my 
 vice. If I had put myself into your power, and you 
 had begun with your questions of look and lip — 
 Where have you been, M. Paul? What have you 
 been doing? What is your mystery? — my soli- 
 tary first and last secret would presently have un- 
 ravelled itself in your lap. Now," he pursued, 
 " you shall live here and have a school ; you 
 shall employ yourself while I am away ; you 
 shall think of me sometimes; you shall mind 
 your health and happiness for my sake, and when 
 I come back — " 
 
 There he left a blank. 
 
 I promised to do all he told me. I promised to 
 work hard and willingly. " I will be your faithful 
 steward," I said ; " I trust at your coming the ac- 
 
334 VILLETTE. 
 
 count will be ready. Monsieur, monsieur, you are 
 too good ! " 
 
 In such inadequate language my feelings struggled 
 for expression : they could not get it ; speech, brittle 
 and unmalleable, and cold as ice, dissolved or 
 shivered in the effort. He watched me still : he 
 gently raised his hand to stroke my hair ; it touched 
 my lips in passing ; I pressed it close, I paid it 
 tribute. He was my king ; royal for me had been 
 that hand's bounty; to offer homage was both a 
 joy and a duty. 
 
 The afternoon hours were over, and the stiller 
 time of evening shaded the quiet faubourg. M. Paul 
 claimed my hospitality ; occupied and afoot since 
 morning, he needed refreshment ; he said I should 
 offer him chocolate in my pretty gold and white 
 china service. He went out and ordered what was 
 needful from the restaurant ; he placed the small 
 gueridon and two chairs in the balcony outside the 
 French window under the screening vines. With 
 what shy joy I accepted my part as hostess, arranged 
 the salver, served the benefactor-guest. 
 
FAUBOURG CLOTILDE. 335 
 
 This balcony was in the rear of the house, the 
 gardens of the faubourg were round us, fields ex- 
 tended beyond. The air was still, mild, and fresh. 
 Above the poplars, the laurels, the cypresses, and 
 the roses, looked up a moon so lovely and so hal- 
 cyon, the heart trembled under her smile; a star 
 shone subject beside her, with the unemulous ray of 
 pure love. In a large garden near us, a jet rose 
 from a well, and a pale statue leaned over the play 
 of waters. 
 
 M. Paul talked to me. His voice was so modu- 
 lated that it mixed harmonious with the silver 
 whisper, the gush, the musical sigh, in which light 
 breeze, fountain, and foliage intoned their lulling 
 vesper. 
 
 Happy hour — stay one moment ! droop those 
 plumes, rest those wings ; incline to mine that brow 
 of Heaven ! White Angel ! let thy light linger J 
 leave its reflection on succeeding clouds ; bequeath 
 its cheer to that time which needs a ray in retro- 
 spect ! 
 
 Our meal was simple : the chocolate, the rolls, 
 the plate of fresh summer fruit, cherries and straw- 
 berries bedded in green leaves, formed the whole ; 
 but it was what we both liked better than a feast, 
 
336 
 
 VILLETTE. 
 
 and I took a delight inexpressible in tending M. 
 Paul. I asked him whether his friends, Pere Silas 
 and Madame Beck knew what he had done — 
 whether they had seen my house ? 
 
 " Mon amie," said he, " none knows what I have 
 done save you and myself: the pleasure is conse- 
 crated to us two, unshared and unprofaned. To 
 speak truth, there has been to me in this matter a 
 refinement of enjoyment I would not make vulgar 
 by communication. Besides" (smiling), " I wanted 
 to prove to Miss Lucy that I could keep a secret. 
 How often has she taunted me with lack of dignified 
 reserve and needful caution ! How many times has 
 she saucily insinuated that all my affairs are the 
 secret of Polichinelle ! " 
 
 This was true enough : I had not spared him on 
 this point, nor perhaps on any other that was as- 
 sailable. Magnificent-minded, grand-hearted, dear, 
 faulty little man ! You deserved candour, and from 
 me always had it. 
 
 Continuing my queries, I asked to whom the 
 house belonged, who was my landlord, the amount 
 of my rent. He instantly gave me these particulars 
 in writing ; he had foreseen and prepared all things. 
 
 The house was not M. Paul's — that I guessed ; 
 
FAUBOURG CLOTILDE. 337 
 
 he was hardly the man to become a proprietor ; I 
 more than suspected in him a lamentable absence 
 of the saving faculty ; he could get, but not keep ; 
 he needed a treasurer. The tenement, then, belonged 
 to a citizen in the Basse- Ville — a man of substance, 
 M. Paul said ; he startled me by adding : " a friend 
 of yours, Miss Lucy, a person who has a most 
 respectful regard for you." And, to my pleasant 
 surprise, I found the landlord was none other than 
 M. Miret, the short-tempered and kind-hearted 
 bookseller, who had so kindly found me a seat that 
 eventful night in the Park. It seems M. Miret 
 was in his station, rich, as well as much respected, 
 and possessed several houses in this faubourg ; the 
 rent was moderate, scarce half of what it would 
 have been, for a house of equal size, nearer the 
 centre of Villette. 
 
 " And then," observed M. Paul, " should fortune 
 not favour you, though I think she will, I have the 
 satisfaction to think you are in good hands ; M. 
 Miret will not be extortionate : the first year's rent 
 you already have in your savings ; afterwards Miss 
 Lucy must trust God, and herself. But now, what 
 will you do for pupils?" 
 
 " I must distribute my prospectuses." 
 
 VOL. III. z 
 
338 VILLETTE. 
 
 " Right ! By way of losing no time, I gave one 
 to M. Miret yesterday. Should you object to be- 
 ginning with three petite bourgeoises, the Demoi- 
 selles Miret ? They are at your service." 
 
 " Monsieur, you forget nothing ; you are wonder- 
 ful. Object? It would become me indeed to ob- 
 ject ! I suppose I hardly expect at the outset to 
 number aristocrats in my little day-school; I care 
 not if they never come. I shall be proud to receive 
 M. Miret's daughters." 
 
 " Besides these," pursued he, " another pupil 
 offers, who will come daily to take lessons in Eng- 
 lish ; and, as she is rich, she will pay handsomely. 
 I mean my god-daughter and ward, Justine Marie 
 Sauveur." 
 
 What is in a name? — what in three words? 
 Till this moment I had listened with living joy — 
 I had answered with gleeful quickness ; a name 
 froze me ; three words struck me mute. The effect 
 could not be hidden, and indeed I scarce tried to 
 hide it. 
 
 " What now ?" said M. Paul. 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
 " Nothing ! Your countenance changes ; your 
 colour and your very eyes fade. Nothing ! You 
 
FAUBOURG^ CLOTILDE. 339 
 
 must be ill ; you have some suffering ; tell me 
 what?" 
 
 I had nothing to tell. 
 
 He drew his chair nearer. He did not grow 
 vexed, though I continued silent and icy. He tried 
 to win a word ; he entreated with perseverance, he 
 waited with patience. 
 
 " Justine Marie is a good girl," said he ; " docile 
 and amiable; not quick — but you will like her." 
 
 " I think not. I think she must not come here." 
 Such was my speech. 
 
 " Do you wish to puzzle me? Do you know 
 her? But, in truth, there is something. Again you 
 are pale as that statue. Rely on Paul Carlos : tell 
 him the grief." 
 
 His chair touched mine ; his hand, quietly 
 advanced, turned me towards him. " Do you 
 know Marie Justine ? " said he again. 
 
 The name re-pronounced by his lips overcame me 
 unaccountably. It did not prostrate — no, it stirred 
 me up, running with haste and heat through my 
 veins — recalling an hour of quick pain, many days 
 and nights of heart-sickness. Near me, as he now 
 sat, strongly and closely as he had long twined his 
 life in mine — far as had progre&sea, and near as was 
 
340 VILLETTE. 
 
 achieved our minds' and affections' assimilation — the 
 very suggestion of interference, of heart-separation, 
 could be heard only with a fermenting excitement, 
 an impetuous throe, a disdainful resolve, an ire, a 
 resistance of which no human eye or cheek could 
 hide the flame, nor any truth-accustomed human 
 tongue curb the cry. 
 
 " I want to tell you something," I said ; " I want 
 to tell you all." 
 
 " Speak, Lucy ; come near; speak. Who prizes 
 you if I do not? Who is your friend, if not 
 Emanuel? Speak!" 
 
 I spoke. All leaped from my lips. I lacked not 
 words now; fast I narrated ; fluent I told my tale ; 
 it streamed on my tongue. I went back to the 
 night in the park ; I mentioned the medicated 
 draught — why it was given — its goading effect — how 
 it had torn rest from under my head, shaken me 
 from my couch, carried me abroad with the lure of 
 a vivid yet solemn fancy — a summer-night solitude 
 on turf, under trees, near a deep, cool lakelet. I 
 told the scene realized; the crowd, the masques, the 
 music, the lamps, the splendours, the guns booming 
 afar, the bells sounding on high. All I had encoun- 
 tered I detailed, all I had recognized, heard, and 
 
FAUBOURG CLOTILDE. 341 
 
 seen ; how I had beheld and watehed himself; how 
 I listened, how much heard, what conjectured ; the 
 whole history, in brief, summoned to his confidence, 
 rushed thither truthful, literal, ardent, bitter. 
 
 Still as I narrated, instead of checking, he incited 
 me to proceed ; he spurred me by the gesture, the 
 smile, the half-word. Before I had half done, he 
 held both my hands, he consulted my eyes with a 
 most piercing glance : there was something in his 
 face which tended neither to calm nor to put me 
 down ; he forgot his own doctrine, he forsook his 
 own system of repression when I most challenged 
 its exercise. I think I deserved strong reproof; 
 but when have we our deserts? I merited severity; 
 he looked indulgence. To my very self I seemed 
 imperious and unreasonable ; for I forbade Justine 
 Marie my door and roof; he smiled, betraying de- 
 light. Warm, jealous, and haughty, I knew not till 
 now that my nature had such a mood ; he gathered 
 me near his heart. I was full of faults ; he took 
 them and me all home. For the moment of utmost 
 mutiny, he reserved the one deep spell of peace. 
 These words caressed my ear : — 
 
 " Lucy, take my love. One day share my life. 
 Be my dearest, first on earth." 
 
342 VILLETTE. 
 
 We walked back to the Hue Fossette by moon- 
 light — such moonlight as fell on Eden — shining 
 through the shades of the Great Garden, and haply 
 gilding a path glorious, for a step divine — a Presence 
 nameless. Once in their lives some men and women 
 go back to these first fresh days of our great Sire 
 and Mother — taste that grand morning's dew — 
 bathe in its sunrise. 
 
 In the course of the walk I was told how Justine 
 Marie Sauveur had always been regarded with the 
 affection proper to a daughter — how, with M. Paul's 
 consent, she had been affianced for months to one 
 Heinrich Mulher, a wealthy young German mer- 
 chant, and was to be married in the course of a 
 year. Some of M. Emanuel's relations and con- 
 nections would, indeed, it seems, have liked him to 
 marry her, with a view to securing her fortune in 
 the family ; but to himself the scheme was repugnant, 
 and the idea totally inadmissible. 
 
 We reached Madame Beck's door. Jean Bap- 
 tiste's clock tolled nine. At this hour, in this 
 house, eighteen months since, had this man at 
 my side, bent before me, looked into my face 
 and eyes, and arbitered my destiny. This very 
 evening he had again stooped, gazed and decreed. 
 
FAUBOURG CLOTILDE. 343 
 
 How different the look — how far otherwise the 
 fate! 
 
 He deemed me born under his star : he seemed to 
 have spread over me its beam like a banner. Once 
 — unknown, and unloved, I held him harsh and 
 strange ; the low stature, the wiry make, the an- 
 gles, the darkness, the manner, displeased me. 
 Now, penetrated with his influence, and living by 
 his affection, having his worth by intellect, and his 
 goodness by heart — I preferred him before all hu- 
 manity. 
 
 We parted : he gave me his pledge, and then his 
 farewell. We parted : the next day — he sailed. 
 
344 VILLETTE. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
 Man cannot prophecy. Love is no oracle. Fear 
 sometimes imagines a vain thing. Those years of 
 absence! How had I sickened over their antici- 
 pation ! The woe they must bring seemed certain 
 as death. I knew the nature of their course : I 
 never had doubt how it would harrow as it went. 
 The Juggernaut on his car towered there a grim 
 load. Seeing him draw nigh, burying his broad 
 wheels in the oppressed soil — I, the prostrate vo- 
 tary — felt beforehand the annihilating craunch. 
 
 Strange to say — strange, yet true, and owning 
 many parallels in life's experience — that anticipatory 
 craunch proved all — yes — nearly all the torture. 
 The great Juggernaut, in his great chariot, drew on 
 lofty, loud, and sullen. He passed quietly, like a 
 shadow sweeping the sky, at noon. Nothing but a 
 
finis. 345 
 
 chilling dimness was seen or felt. I looked up. 
 Chariot and demon charioteer were gone by; the 
 rotary still lived. 
 
 M. Emanuel was away three years. Reader, 
 they were the three happiest years of my life. Do 
 you scout the paradox ? Listen. 
 
 I commenced my school ; I worked — I worked 
 hard. I deemed myself the steward of his pro- 
 perty, and determined, God willing, to render a 
 good account. Pupils came — burghers at first — a 
 higher class ere long. About the middle of the 
 second year an unexpected chance threw into my 
 hands an additional hundred pounds : one day I 
 received from England a letter containing that sum. 
 It came from Mr. Marchmont, the cousin and 
 heir of my dear and dead mistress. He was just 
 recovering from a dangerous illness ; the money was 
 a peace-offering to his conscience, reproaching him 
 in the matter of, I know not what, papers or memo- 
 randa found after his kinswoman's death — naming or 
 recommending Lucy Snowe. Mrs. Barrett had given 
 him my address. How far his conscience had been 
 sinned against, I never inquired. I asked no ques- 
 tions, but took the cash and made it useful. 
 
 With this hundred pounds I ventured to take the 
 
346 VILLETTE. 
 
 house adjoining mine. I would not leave that 
 which M. Paul had chosen, in which he had left, 
 and where he expected again to find me. My ex- 
 ternat became a pensionnat ; that also prospered. 
 
 The secret of my success did not lie so much in 
 myself, in any endowment, any power of mine, as 
 in a new state of circumstances, a wonderfully 
 changed life, a relieved heart. The spring which 
 moved my energies lay far away beyond seas, in an 
 Indian isle. At parting, I had been left a legacy ; 
 such a thought for the present, such a hope for the 
 future, such a motive for a persevering, a laborious, 
 an enterprising, a patient and a brave course — I 
 could not flag. Few things shook me now; few 
 things had importance to vex, intimidate, or depress 
 me : most things pleased — mere trifles had a charm. 
 
 Do not think that this genial flame sustained 
 itself, or lived wholly on a bequeathed hope or a 
 parting promise. A generous provider supplied 
 bounteous fuel. I was spared all chill, all stint ; I 
 was not suffered to fear penury; I was not tried 
 with suspense. By every vessel he wrote; he 
 wrote as he gave and as he loved, in full-handed, 
 full-hearted plenitude. He wrote because he liked 
 to write ; he did not abridge, because he cared not 
 
finis. 347 
 
 to abridge. He sat down, he took pen and paper, 
 because he loved Lucy and had much to say to her ; 
 because he was faithful and thoughtful, because he 
 was tender and true. There was no sham and no 
 cheat, and no hollow unreal in him. Apology never 
 dropped her slippery oil on his lips — never proffered, 
 by his pen, her coward feints and paltry nullities : 
 he would give neither a stone, nor an excuse — 
 neither a scorpion, nor a disappointment ; his letters 
 were real food that nourished, living water that 
 refreshed. 
 
 And was I grateful? God knows! I believe 
 that scarce a living being so remembered, so sus- 
 tained, dealt with in kind so constant, honourable 
 and noble, could be otherwise than grateful to the 
 death. 
 
 Adherent to his own religion (in him was not the 
 stuff of which is made the facile apostate), he freely 
 left me my pure faith. He did not teaze nor tempt. 
 He said : — 
 
 " Remain a Protestant. My little English Puri- 
 tan, I love Protestantism in you. I own its severe 
 charm. There is something in its ritual I cannot 
 receive myself, but it is the sole creed for 'Lucy.'" 
 
 All Home could not put into him bigotry, nor the 
 
348 VILLETTE. 
 
 Propaganda itself make him a real Jesuit. He was 
 born honest, and not false — artless, and not cunning 
 — a freeman, and not a slave. His tenderness had 
 rendered him ductile in a priest's hands, his affec- 
 tion, his devotedness, his sincere pious enthusiasm 
 blinded his kind eyes sometimes, made him abandon 
 justice to himself to do the work of craft, and serve 
 the ends of selfishness ; but these are faults so rare 
 to find, so costly to their owner to indulge, we scarce 
 know whether they will not one day be reckoned 
 amongst the jewels. 
 
 And now the three years are past : M. Emanuel's 
 return is fixed. It is Autumn ; he is to be with me 
 ere the mists of November come. My school flou- 
 rishes, my house is ready : I have made him a little 
 library, filled its shelves with the books he left in my 
 care : I have cultivated out of love for him (I was 
 naturally no florist) the plants he preferred, and 
 some of them are yet in bloom. I thought I loved 
 him when he went away ; I love him now in an- 
 other degree ; he is more my own. 
 
 The sun passes the equinox ; the days shorten, 
 the leaves grow sere ; but — he is coming. 
 
finis. 349 
 
 Frosts appear at night ; November has sent his 
 fogs in advance ; the wind takes its autumn moan ; 
 but — he is coming. 
 
 The skies hang full and dark — a rack sails from 
 the west ; the clouds cast themselves into strange 
 forms — arches and broad radiations ; there rise 
 resplendent mornings — glorious, royal, purple as 
 monarch in his state ; the heavens are one flame; 
 so wild are they, they rival battle at its thickest — 
 so bloody, they shame Victory in her pride. I know 
 some signs of the sky ; I have noted them ever 
 since childhood. God, watch that sail ! Oh ! 
 guard it ! 
 
 The wind shifts to the west. Peace, peace, 
 Banshee — " keening " at every window ! It will 
 rise — it will swell — it shrieks out long : wander as 
 I may through the house this night, I cannot lull 
 the blast. The advancing hours make it strong : 
 by midnight, all sleepless watchers hear and 
 fear a wild south-west storm. 
 
 That storm roared frenzied for seven days. It 
 did not cease till the Atlantic was strewn with 
 wrecks : it did not lull till the deeps had gorged 
 their full of sustenance. Not till the destroying angel 
 of tempest had achieved his perfect work, would he 
 
350 VILLETTE. 
 
 fold the wings whose waft was thunder — the tremor 
 of whose plumes was storm. 
 
 Peace, be still ! Oh ! a thousand weepers, praying 
 in agony on waiting shores, listened for that voice, 
 but it was not uttered — not uttered till, when the 
 hush came, some could not feel it : till, when the 
 sun returned, his light was night to some ! 
 
 Here pause : pause at once. There is enough 
 said. Trouble no quiet, kind heart; leave sunny 
 imaginations hope. Let it be theirs to conceive the 
 delight of joy born again fresh out of great terror, 
 the rapture of rescue from peril, the wondrous 
 reprieve from dread, the fruition of return. Let 
 them picture union and a happy succeeding life. 
 
 Madame Beck prospered all the days of her life ; 
 so did Pere Silas ; Madame Walravens fulfilled her 
 ninetieth year before she died. Farewell. 
 
 THE END. 
 
London: 
 
 Printed by Stewakt and Mubbat, 
 
 Old Bailey.