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 Villette; 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
expression.

"Dites donc," 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. 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," she said, "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 schoolrooms.

"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, 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."

"They always throw over timid teachers," said she.

"I know that too, Madame; I have heard how they r