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the least display of temper or impatience. 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 personage 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 complexion 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 bourgeoiseas bourgeoise, indeed, she was. I know not what of harmony pervaded her whole person, and yet her face offered contrast too. Its features were by no means such as are usually seen in conjunction with a complexion 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 hardit 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. In the long run, I found she was something else in petticoats too. Her name was Modeste Maria Beck, née 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 tipsiness, disorder, and general neglect; yet Mrs. Sweeny had to go the moment her departure became convenient. 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 administrative powers. She ruled all these, together with four teachers, eight masters, six servants, and three children, managing at the same time to perfection the pupils parents and friends; and that without apparent effort, without bustle, fatigue, fever, or any symptom of undue excitement. Occupied she always wasbusy, rarely. It is true that madame 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. Surveillance, espionagethese were her watchwords. Still, madame knew what honesty was, and liked itthat 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 rooma trace of real weariness on her browand she would sit down and listen while the children said their little prayers to me in English. The Lords 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 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 consequences would ensue if any other method were tried with Continental children. They were so accustomed to restraint, that relaxation, however guarded, would be misunderstood and fatally presumed 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 keyhole, listening behind every door. |
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