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 teacher, had failed to come at this hour, she feared he was ill; the pupils were waiting in class; 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 split. Inadventurous, unstirred by impulses of practical ambition, I was capable of sitting twenty years teaching the 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 relief 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.
"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 I want you".
And as Madame Beck did really want and was resolved to have me—as she had long been dissatisfied with the English master, with his shortcomings in punctuality, and his careless method of tuition—as, too, she did not lack resolution and practical activity, whether I 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
