view to making me better? Is it to operate like a sermon?"

"It is to stir you, to give you new sensations. It is to make you feel
your life strongly--not only your virtues, but your vicious, perverse
points."

"Dieu! que dit-elle?" cried Hortense, who hitherto had been counting
stitches in her knitting, and had not much attended to what was said,
but whose ear these two strong words caught with a tweak.

"Never mind her, sister; let her talk. Now just let her say anything she
pleases to-night. She likes to come down hard upon your brother
sometimes. It amuses me, so let her alone."

Caroline, who, mounted on a chair, had been rummaging the bookcase,
returned with a book.

"Here's Shakespeare," she said, "and there's 'Coriolanus.' Now, read,
and discover by the feelings the reading will give you at once how low
and how high you are."

"Come, then, sit near me, and correct when I mispronounce."

"I am to be the teacher then, and you my pupil?"

"Ainsi, soit-il!"

"And Shakespeare is our science, since we are going to study?"

"It appears so."

"And you are not going to be French, and sceptical, and sneering? You
are not going to think it a sign of wisdom to refuse to admire?"

"I don't know."

"If you do, Robert, I'll take Shakespeare away; and I'll shrivel up
within myself, and put on my bonnet and go home."

"Sit down. Here I begin."

"One minute, if you please, brother," interrupted mademoiselle. "When
the gentleman of a family reads, the ladies should always
sew.--Caroline, dear child, take your embroidery. You may get three
sprigs done to-night."

Caroline looked dismayed. "I can't see by lamp-light; my eyes are tired,
and I can't do two things well at once. If I sew, I cannot listen; if I
listen, I cannot sew."

"Fi, donc! Quel enfantillage!" began Hortense. Mr. Moore, as usual,
suavely interposed.

"Permit her to neglect the embroidery for this evening. I wish her whole
attention to be fixed on my accent; and to ensure this, she must follow
the reading with her eyes--she must look at the book."

He placed it between them, reposed his arm on the back of Caroline's
chair, and thus began to read.

The very first scene in "Coriolanus" came with smart relish to his
intellectual palate, and still as he read he warmed. He delivered the
haughty speech of Caius Marcius to the starving citizens with unction;
he did not say he thought his irrational pride right, but he seemed to
feel it so. Caroli