onvenient; the man of pleasure likes what he calls "a fine
woman"--she suits him; the fashionable young gentleman admires the
fashionable young lady--she is of his kind; the toil-worn, fagged,
probably irritable tutor, blind almost to beauty, insensible to airs and
graces, glories chiefly in certain mental qualities: application, love
of knowledge, natural capacity, docility, truthfulness, gratefulness,
are the charms that attract his notice and win his regard. These he
seeks, but seldom meets; these, if by chance he finds, he would fain
retain for ever, and when separation deprives him of them he feels as if
some ruthless hand had snatched from him his only ewe-lamb. Such being
the case, and the case it is, my readers will agree with me that there
was nothing either very meritorious or very marvellous in the
integrity and moderation of my conduct at Mdlle. Reuter's pensionnat de
demoiselles.

My first business this afternoon consisted in reading the list of
places for the month, determined by the relative correctness of the
compositions given the preceding day. The list was headed, as usual,
by the name of Sylvie, that plain, quiet little girl I have described
before as being at once the best and ugliest pupil in the establishment;
the second place had fallen to the lot of a certain Leonie Ledru, a
diminutive, sharp-featured, and parchment-skinned creature of quick
wits, frail conscience, and indurated feelings; a lawyer-like thing, of
whom I used to say that, had she been a boy, she would have made a
model of an unprincipled, clever attorney. Then came Eulalie, the proud
beauty, the Juno of the school, whom six long years of drilling in the
simple grammar of the English language had compelled, despite the stiff
phlegm of her intellect, to acquire a mechanical acquaintance with most
of its rules. No smile, no trace of pleasure or satisfaction appeared in
Sylvie's nun-like and passive face as she heard her name read first.
I always felt saddened by the sight of that poor girl's absolute
quiescence on all occasions, and it was my custom to look at her, to
address her, as seldom as possible; her extreme docility, her assiduous
perseverance, would have recommended her warmly to my good opinion;
her modesty, her intelligence, would have induced me to feel most
kindly--most affectionately towards her, notwithstanding the almost
ghastly plainness of her features, the disproportion of her form, the
corpse-like lack of animatio