ree
clear letters--was bounty and abundance for the present. I stole from
the room, I procured the key of the great dormitory, which was kept
locked by day. I went to my bureau; with a sort of haste and trembling
lest Madame should creep up-stairs and spy me, I opened a drawer,
unlocked a box, and took out a case, and--having feasted my eyes with
one more look, and approached the seal with a mixture of awe and shame
and delight, to my lips--I folded the untasted treasure, yet all fair
and inviolate, in silver paper, committed it to the case, shut up box
and drawer, reclosed, relocked the dormitory, and returned to class,
feeling as if fairy tales were true, and fairy gifts no dream. Strange,
sweet insanity! And this letter, the source of my joy, I had not yet
read: did not yet know the number of its lines.

When I re-entered the schoolroom, behold M. Paul raging like a
pestilence! Some pupil had not spoken audibly or distinctly enough to
suit his ear and taste, and now she and others were weeping, and he was
raving from his estrade, almost livid. Curious to mention, as I
appeared, he fell on me.

"Was I the mistress of these girls? Did I profess to teach them the
conduct befitting ladies?--and did I permit and, he doubted not,
encourage them to strangle their mother-tongue in their throats, to
mince and mash it between their teeth, as if they had some base cause
to be ashamed of the words they uttered? Was this modesty? He knew
better. It was a vile pseudo sentiment--the offspring or the forerunner
of evil. Rather than submit to this mopping and mowing, this mincing
and grimacing, this, grinding of a noble tongue, this general
affectation and sickening stubbornness of the pupils of the first
class, he would throw them up for a set of insupportable petites
maitresses, and confine himself to teaching the ABC to the babies of
the third division."

What could I say to all this? Really nothing; and I hoped he would
allow me to be silent. The storm recommenced.

"Every answer to his queries was then refused? It seemed to be
considered in _that_ place--that conceited boudoir of a first classe,
with its pretentious book-cases, its green-baized desks, its rubbish of
flower-stands, its trash of framed pictures and maps, and its foreign
surveillante, forsooth!--it seemed to be the fashion to think _there_
that the Professor of Literature was not worthy of a reply! These were
new ideas; imported, he did not doubt, straight fro