e purpose of conducting her clamour with freer
energies. I measured her stature and calculated her strength She seemed
both tall and wiry; but, so the conflict were brief and the attack
unexpected, I thought I might manage her.

Advancing up the room, looking as cool and careless as I possibly
could, in short, _ayant l'air de rien_, I slightly pushed the door and
found it was ajar. In an instant, and with sharpness, I had turned on
her. In another instant she occupied the closet, the door was shut, and
the key in my pocket.

It so happened that this girl, Dolores by name, and a Catalonian by
race, was the sort of character at once dreaded and hated by all her
associates; the act of summary justice above noted proved popular:
there 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
estrade, courteously requested silence, and commenced a dictation as if
nothing at all had happened--the pens travelled peacefully over the
pages, and the remainder of the lesson passed in order and industry.

"C'est bien," said Madame Beck, when I came out of class, hot and a
little exhausted. "Ca ira."

She had been listening and peeping through a spy-hole the whole time.

From that day I ceased to be nursery governess, and became English
teacher. Madame raised my salary; but she got thrice the work out of me
she had extracted from Mr. Wilson, at half the expense.

CHAPTER IX.

ISIDORE.

My time was now well and profitably filled up. What with teaching
others and studying closely myself, I had hardly a spare moment. It was
pleasant. I felt I was getting, on; not lying the stagnant prey of
mould and rust, but polishing my faculties and whetting them to a keen
edge with constant use. Experience of a certain kind lay before me, on
no narrow scale. Villette is a cosmopolitan city, and in this school
were girls of almost every European nation, and likewise of very varied
rank in life. Equality is much practised in Labassecour; though not
republican in form, it is nearly so in substance, and at the desks of
Madame Beck's establishment the young countess and the young bourgeoise
sat side by side. Nor could you always by outward indications decide
which was noble and which plebeian; except that, indeed, the latter had
often franker and more courteous manners, while the former bore awa