briers, what flints, he
strewed in the path of feet not inured to rough travel! He watched
tearlessly--ordeals that he exacted should be passed
through--fearlessly. He followed footprints that, as they approached
the bourne, were sometimes marked in blood--followed them grimly,
holding the austerest police-watch over the pain-pressed pilgrim. And
when at last he allowed a rest, before slumber might close the eyelids,
he opened those same lids wide, with pitiless finger and thumb, and
gazed deep through the pupil and the irids into the brain, into the
heart, to search if Vanity, or Pride, or Falsehood, in any of its
subtlest forms, was discoverable in the furthest recess of existence.
If, at last, he let the neophyte sleep, it was but a moment; he woke
him suddenly up to apply new tests: he sent him on irksome errands when
he was staggering with weariness; he tried the temper, the sense, and
the health; and it was only when every severest test had been applied
and endured, when the most corrosive aquafortis had been used, and
failed to tarnish the ore, that he admitted it genuine, and, still in
clouded silence, stamped it with his deep brand of approval.

I speak not ignorant of these evils.

Till the date at which the last chapter closes, M. Paul had not been my
professor--he had not given me lessons, but about that time,
accidentally hearing me one day acknowledge an ignorance of some branch
of education (I think it was arithmetic), which would have disgraced a
charity-school boy, as he very truly remarked, he took me in hand,
examined me first, found me, I need not say, abundantly deficient, gave
me some books and appointed me some tasks.

He did this at first with pleasure, indeed with unconcealed exultation,
condescending to say that he believed I was "bonne et pas trop faible"
(i.e. well enough disposed, and not wholly destitute of parts), but,
owing he supposed to adverse circumstances, "as yet in a state of
wretchedly imperfect mental development."

The beginning of all effort has indeed with me been marked by a
preternatural imbecility. I never could, even in forming a common
acquaintance, assert or prove a claim to average quickness. A
depressing and difficult passage has prefaced every new page I have
turned in life.

So long as this passage lasted, M. Paul was very kind, very good, very
forbearing; he saw the sharp pain inflicted, and felt the weighty
humiliation imposed by my own sense of incapacity;