y
the bell for a delicately-balanced combination of insolence and deceit.
In the former there was often quick French blood mixed with the
marsh-phlegm: I regret to say that the effect of this vivacious fluid
chiefly appeared in the oilier glibness with which flattery and fiction
ran from the tongue, and in a manner lighter and livelier, but quite
heartless and insincere.

To do all parties justice, the honest aboriginal Labassecouriennes had
an hypocrisy of their own, too; but it was of a coarse order, such as
could deceive few. Whenever a lie was necessary for their occasions,
they brought it out with a careless ease and breadth altogether
untroubled by the rebuke of conscience. Not a soul in Madame Beck's
house, from the scullion to the directress herself, but was above being
ashamed of a lie; they thought nothing of it: to invent might not be
precisely a virtue, but it was the most venial of faults. "J'ai menti
plusieurs fois," formed an item of every girl's and woman's monthly
confession: the priest heard unshocked, and absolved unreluctant. If
they had missed going to mass, or read a chapter of a novel, that was
another thing: these were crimes whereof rebuke and penance were the
unfailing weed.

While yet but half-conscious of this state of things, and unlearned in
its results, I got on in my new sphere very well. After the first few
difficult lessons, given amidst peril and on the edge of a moral
volcano that rumbled under my feet and sent sparks and hot fumes into
my eyes, the eruptive spirit seemed to subside, as far as I was
concerned. My mind was a good deal bent on success: I could not bear
the thought of being baffled by mere undisciplined disaffection and
wanton indocility, in this first attempt to get on in life. Many hours
of the night I used to lie awake, thinking what plan I had best adopt
to get a reliable hold on these mutineers, to bring this stiff-necked
tribe under permanent influence. In, the first place, I saw plainly
that aid in no shape was to be expected from Madame: her righteous plan
was to maintain an unbroken popularity with the pupils, at any and
every cost of justice or comfort to the teachers. For a teacher to seek
her alliance in any crisis of insubordination was equivalent to
securing her own expulsion. In intercourse with her pupils, Madame only
took to herself what was pleasant, amiable, and recommendatory; rigidly
requiring of her lieutenants sufficiency for every annoying crisi