Villette

hen, very clean but very strange. It seemed to contain no means of cooking — neither fireplace nor oven; I di

mall 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 sauc

ate — 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 o

ously clad in a broad striped showy silk dress, and a stuff apron, sat in a chair fast asleep. To complete the pictu

ct; 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 ni

rovided for. Scarcely could I believe that not forty-eight hours had elapsed since I left London, under no other

t 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 proceeding, 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 contents, 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, d

n the heroine of the bottle, who still slept and loudly snored. Mrs. Svini (I presume this was Mrs. Svini, Anglicé or Hibernicé, Sweeny)— Mrs. Sweeny’s doom was in Madame Beck’

ct 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 a hanger-on, nurse, fosterer, or washerwoman, in some Irish family: she spoke a smothered tongue, curiously 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 proportions than those they now adorned;

ame 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 m

, and every trace of the accomplished Mrs. Sweeny — even to the fine essence and spiritual fragrance which gave token so subtle and so fatal of the head and front of her offending — was annihilated

n gouvernante and lady’s-maid.) Till noon, she haunted the house in her wrapping-gown, shaw

your own country?” And taking the brush from my hand, and setting me aside, not ungently or disrespectfully, she arranged it herself. In performing other offices of the toilet, she half-direct

l, though a little bourgeoise; as 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 an

ss 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 conveni

vants, 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 was — busy, rarely. It is true that Madame had her ow

ruples in the way of her will and interest. She had a respect for “Angleterre;” and as to “les Ang

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 wo

re was a liberty of 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,

orthy: interest was the master-key of Madame’s nature — the mainspring of her motives — 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

t legislative assembly. Nobody could have browbeaten her, none irritated her nerves, exhausted her patience, or over-reached her astuteness. In her own single person, she could have comprised the duties o

some, gaining knowledge by a marvellously easy method, without 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 masters, more stringently tasked, as all the real head-labour was to be

han 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 fête-days brought a succession of holidays all the year round; and sometimes on a bright summer morning, or soft summer e

to melt for me — when I was to be called down from my watch-tower of the nursery, whence I had hitherto made

ir 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

d, almost in the tone of one making an accusat

id I smiling, “y

ay at teaching — this a

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 wi

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; shoul

e, Madame

se: in the se

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

busily than ever over the cutting-out o

e wants it

ant it, then,

conducted down-stairs. When we reached the carré, 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 Gath, I believe I was crying. In fact, the difficulties before me were far from being wholly imaginary; some of them were real enough; and not the least sub

sternly, “vous sentez vo

e 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 a

hand, first, the small door of communication with the dwelling-hou

ant,”

rd look, from very antipathy to which I drew strength and dete

g this: nervous excitability

I said, tapping the flag with my toe: “o

ish girls you are going to encounter. Ce sont des Labassecour

speak it with far too much hesitation — too little accuracy to be able to command their respect I shall

ow over timid te

uted Miss Turner”— a poor friendless English teacher, whom Madame had emplo

ant from the kitchen would have had. She was weak and wavering; she had neither tact n

advanced to the clo

ny one,” said Madame. “That would at once s

, 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 suc

s household. As I mounted the estràde (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 u

opened up to me. Then first did I begin rightly to see the wide difference that lies betwee

ing 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

lled into murmurs and short laughs, which the remoter benches caught up and echoed more loudly. This growing revolt of sixty

timulus such as was now rife through the mutinous mass — I could, in English, have rolled out readily phrases stigmatizing their proceedings as such proceedings deserved to be stigmatized; and then with some sarcasm, flavoured with contemptuous bitterness 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 her

ng 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 pu

ien, I slightly pushed the door and found it was ajar. In an instant, and with sharpness, I had tur

e 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 e

when I came out of class, hot

and peeping through a s

cher. Madame raised my salary; but she got thrice the work out of me s