hildren to teach, all the material cares of
a household in which the mother was lacking, the engrossing thoughts
which wake with the dawn and which the night puts to sleep, unless it
renews them in dreams--one of those instances of indefatigable but
apparently effortless devotion, very convenient for poor human
selfishness, because it dispenses with all gratitude and hardly makes
itself felt, its touch is so light. She was not one of the courageous
girls who work to support their parents, give lessons from morning to
night and forget the annoyances of the household in the excitement of
an engrossing occupation. No, she had formed a different conception of
her duty, she was a sedentary bee confining her labors to the hive,
with no buzzing around outside in the fresh air and among the flowers.
A thousand and one functions to perform: tailor, milliner, mender,
keeper of accounts as well,--for M. Joyeuse, being incapable of any
sort of responsibility, left the disposition of the family funds
absolutely in her hands,--teacher and music mistress.

As is often the case in families which were originally in comfortable
circumstances, Aline, being the eldest, had been educated in one of the
best boarding-schools in Paris, Elise had remained there two years with
her; but the two younger ones, having come too late, had been sent to
little day-schools in the quarter and had all their studies to
complete; and it was no easy matter, for the youngest laughed on every
pretext, an exuberant, healthy, youthful laugh, like the warbling of a
lark drunken on green wheat, and flew away out of sight of desk and
symbols, while Mademoiselle Henriette, always haunted by her ideas of
grandeur, her love of "the substantial," was none too eager for study.
That young person of fifteen, to whom her father had bequeathed
something of his imaginative faculty, was already arranging her life in
anticipation, and declared formally that she should marry some one of
birth and should never have more than three children: "A boy for the
name, and two little girls--so that I can dress them alike."

"Yes, that's right," Grandmamma would say, "you shall dress them alike.
Meanwhile, let us see about our participles."

But the most troublesome of all was Elise with her thrice unsuccessful
examination in history, always rejected and preparing herself anew,
subject to attacks of profound terror and self-distrust which led her
to carry that unfortunate handbook of Fr