and words can hardly
do justice to his tenderness and helpfulness. His own eyes would
moisten, when tears of shame and effort clouded mine; burdened as he
was with work, he would steal half his brief space of recreation to
give to me.

But, strange grief! when that heavy and overcast dawn began at last to
yield to day; when my faculties began to struggle themselves, free, and
my time of energy and fulfilment came; when I voluntarily doubled,
trebled, quadrupled the tasks he set, to please him as I thought, his
kindness became sternness; the light changed in his eyes from a beam to
a spark; he fretted, he opposed, he curbed me imperiously; the more I
did, the harder I worked, the less he seemed content. Sarcasms of which
the severity amazed and puzzled me, harassed my ears; then flowed out
the bitterest inuendoes against the "pride of intellect." I was vaguely
threatened with I know not what doom, if I ever trespassed the limits
proper to my sex, and conceived a contraband appetite for unfeminine
knowledge. Alas! I had no such appetite. What I loved, it joyed me by
any effort to content; but the noble hunger for science in the
abstract--the godlike thirst after discovery--these feelings were known
to me but by briefest flashes.

Yet, when M. Paul sneered at me, I wanted to possess them more fully;
his injustice stirred in me ambitious wishes--it imparted a strong
stimulus--it gave wings to aspiration.

In the beginning, before I had penetrated to motives, that
uncomprehended sneer of his made my heart ache, but by-and-by it only
warmed the blood in my veins, and sent added action to my pulses.
Whatever my powers--feminine or the contrary--God had given them, and I
felt resolute to be ashamed of no faculty of his bestowal.

The combat was very sharp for a time. I seemed to have lost M. Paul's
affection; he treated me strangely. In his most unjust moments he would
insinuate that I had deceived him when I appeared, what he called
"faible"--that is incompetent; he said I had feigned a false
incapacity. Again, he would turn suddenly round and accuse me of the
most far-fetched imitations and impossible plagiarisms, asserting that
I had extracted the pith out of books I had not so much as heard
of--and over the perusal of which I should infallibly have fallen down
in a sleep as deep as that of Eutychus.

Once, upon his preferring such an accusation, I turned upon him--I rose
against him. Gathering an armful of his books o