regaled with gaufres and vin blanc, or new milk and pain bis, or pistolets au beurre (rolls) and coffee. All this 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. Dropping into a seat opposite mine, she remained some minutes silent. Désirée, the eldest girl, was reading 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 ascertaining that she comprehended what she read. Madame listened.

Presently, without preface or prelude, she said, almost in the tone of one making an accusation, “Meess, in England you were a governess.”

“No, madame,” said I, smiling; “you are mistaken.”

“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 esteemed 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 earshot whenever the trees of park or boulevard afforded a sufficient screen. A strict preliminary process having thus been observed, she made a move forward.

One morning, coming on me abruptly, and with the semblance of hurry, she said she found herself placed in a little dilemma. Mr. Wilson, the English 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, madame?” 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 impracticability 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 contentment 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 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, provided 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.