room, with
its long rows of empty desks, with nothing before one to break the
monotony of the four walls but the great map of France and the big dusty
cross with its dingy wreath of _immortelles_. It is true, we did not
bewail the absence of our companions. In fact, it was with a tranquil
sense of security that I began my work every morning in vacation,
knowing that I should find all my books in my desk, and my pens and
pencils undisturbed; for among the _pensionnaires_ there existed a
strong tendency to communistic principles. Still, when all the noisy
crew had departed, the house seemed lonely, the dining-room with its
three bare tables looked desolate, and an unnatural stillness reigned in
the shady pathways of the garden. You might wander from room to room,
and up and down the stairs, and to and fro in the long passages, and
meet no one. Fraeulein Christine was with her "_Liebes Muetterchen_" in
Strasburg, and Mademoiselle had left her weary post in the middle of the
school-room for her quiet village-home in Normandy. Madame herself
remained almost entirely invisible, shut up in the sanctity of her own
rooms; and so the whole house had a sense of stillness that seemed only
heightened by the glory of the autumn sunshine, and the hum of bees and
rustle of leaves that filled the air outside.

The house was old; it had been a grand mansion once, before the days of
the Revolution, and had probably been the residence of some of the stiff
old worthies whose portraits hung in dreary dignity in the disused dusty
galleries of the _chateau_, which now, turned into a _citadelle_, stood
upon a high point of the cliffs commanding the town. The term _rambling_
might well be applied to this house, for in its eccentric construction
it seemed to have wandered at will half-way up the hill-side on which it
was built. It had wings and abutments, and flights of stone steps
leading from one part to another. There was "_la grande maison de
Madame_," "_la maison du jardin_," and "_la maison de Monsieur_." This
last, half hidden in trees, was _terra incognita_ to the girls; but
often in an evening, after we had seen him wending his way across the
garden with his lantern from _la grande maison_, where he had been
spending the evening with Madame, did we hear Monsieur playing on his
organ glorious "bits" of Cherubini and Bach.

We were conscious that this odd little man carried on a system of
espionage through the half-closed slats of his shu