; her
progress as a pupil depended upon herself, and I saw that on herself she
could calculate with certainty; her success as a teacher rested partly,
perhaps chiefly, upon the will of others; it cost her a most painful
effort to enter into conflict with this foreign will, to endeavour
to bend it into subjection to her own; for in what regarded people in
general the action of her will was impeded by many scruples; it was as
unembarrassed as strong where her own affairs were concerned, and to it
she could at any time subject her inclination, if that inclination went
counter to her convictions of right; yet when called upon to wrestle
with the propensities, the habits, the faults of others, of children
especially, who are deaf to reason, and, for the most part, insensate to
persuasion, her will sometimes almost refused to act; then came in the
sense of duty, and forced the reluctant will into operation. A wasteful
expense of energy and labour was frequently the consequence; Frances
toiled for and with her pupils like a drudge, but it was long ere her
conscientious exertions were rewarded by anything like docility on their
part, because they saw that they had power over her, inasmuch as by
resisting her painful attempts to convince, persuade, control--by
forcing her to the employment of coercive measures--they could
inflict upon her exquisite suffering. Human beings--human children
especially--seldom deny themselves the pleasure of exercising a power
which they are conscious of possessing, even though that power consist
only in a capacity to make others wretched; a pupil whose sensations are
duller than those of his instructor, while his nerves are tougher and
his bodily strength perhaps greater, has an immense advantage over that
instructor, and he will generally use it relentlessly, because the very
young, very healthy, very thoughtless, know neither how to sympathize
nor how to spare. Frances, I fear, suffered much; a continual weight
seemed to oppress her spirits; I have said she did not live in the
house, and whether in her own abode, wherever that might be, she wore
the same preoccupied, unsmiling, sorrowfully resolved air that always
shaded her features under the roof of Mdlle. Reuter, I could not tell.

One day I gave, as a devoir, the trite little anecdote of Alfred tending
cakes in the herdsman's hut, to be related with amplifications. A
singular affair most of the pupils made of it; brevity was what they
had chi