_ DAILY, as I continued my attendance at the seminary of Mdlle.
Reuter, did I find fresh occasions to compare the ideal with the
real. What had I known of female character previously to my
arrival at Brussels? Precious little. And what was my notion of
it? Something vague, slight, gauzy, glittering; now when I came
in contact with it I found it to be a palpable substance enough;
very hard too sometimes, and often heavy; there was metal in it,
both lead and iron.
Let the idealists, the dreamers about earthly angel and human
flowers, just look here while I open my portfolio and show them a
sketch or two, pencilled after nature. I took these sketches in
the second-class schoolroom of Mdlle. Reuter's establishment,
where about a hundred specimens of the genus "jeune fille"
collected together, offered a fertile variety of subject. A
miscellaneous assortment they were, differing both in caste and
country; as I sat on my estrade and glanced over the long range
of desks, I had under my eye French, English, Belgians,
Austrians, and Prussians. The majority belonged to the class
bourgeois; but there were many countesses, there were the
daughters of two generals and of several colonels, captains, and
government EMPLOYES; these ladies sat side by side with young
females destined to be demoiselles de magasins, and with some
Flamandes, genuine aborigines of the country. In dress all were
nearly similar, and in manners there was small difference;
exceptions there were to the general rule, but the majority gave
the tone to the establishment, and that tone was rough,
boisterous, masked by a point-blank disregard of all forbearance
towards each other or their teachers; an eager pursuit by each
individual of her own interest and convenience; and a coarse
indifference to the interest and convenience of every one else.
Most of them could lie with audacity when it appeared
advantageous to do so. All understood the art of speaking fair
when a point was to be gained, and could with consummate skill
and at a moment's notice turn the cold shoulder the instant
civility ceased to be profitable. Very little open quarrelling
ever took place amongst them; but backbiting and talebearing were
universal. Close friendships were forbidden by the rules of the
school, and no one girl seemed to cultivate more regard for
another than was just necessary to secure a companion when
solitude would have been irksome. They were each and all
supposed to have been reared in utter unconsciousness of vice.
The precautions used to keep them ignorant, if not innocent, were
innumerable. How was it, then, that scarcely one of those girls
having attained the age of fourteen could look a man in the face
with modesty and propriety? An air of bold, impudent flirtation,
or a loose, silly leer, was sure to answer the most ordinary
glance from a masculine eye. I know nothing of the arcana of the
Roman Catholic religion, and I am not a bigot in matters of
theology, but I suspect the root of this precocious impurity, so
obvious, so general in Popish countries, is to be found in the
discipline, if not the doctrines of the Church of Rome. I record
what I have seen: these girls belonged to what are called the
respectable ranks of society; they had all been carefully brought
up, yet was the mass of them mentally depraved. So much for the
general view: now for one or two selected specimens.
The first picture is a full length of Aurelia Koslow, a German
fraulein, or rather a half-breed between German and Russian. She
is eighteen years of age, and has been sent to Brussels to finish
her education; she is of middle size, stiffly made, body long,
legs short, bust much developed but not compactly moulded, waist
disproportionately compressed by an inhumanly braced corset,
dress carefully arranged, large feet tortured into small
bottines, head small, hair smoothed, braided, oiled, and gummed
to perfection; very low forehead, very diminutive and vindictive
grey eyes, somewhat Tartar features, rather flat nose, rather
high-cheek bones, yet the ensemble not positively ugly; tolerably
good complexion. So much for person. As to mind, deplorably
ignorant and ill-informed: incapable of writing or speaking
correctly even German, her native tongue, a dunce in French, and
her attempts at learning English a mere farce, yet she has been
at school twelve years; but as she invariably gets her exercises,
of every description, done by a fellow pupil, and reads her
lessons off a book; concealed in her lap, it is not wonderful
that her progress has been so snail-like. I do not know what
Aurelia's daily habits of life are, because I have not the
opportunity of observing her at all times; but from what I see of
the state of her desk, books, and papers, I should say she is
slovenly and even dirty; her outward dress, as I have said, is
well attended to, but in passing behind her bench, I have
remarked that her neck is gray for want of washing, and her hair,
so glossy with gum and grease, is not such as one feels tempted
to pass the hand over, much less to run the fingers through.
Aurelia's conduct in class, at least when I am present, is
something extraordinary, considered as an index of girlish
innocence. The moment I enter the room, she nudges her next
neighbour and indulges in a half-suppressed laugh. As I take my
seat on the estrade, she fixes her eye on me; she seems resolved
to attract, and, if possible, monopolize my notice: to this end
she launches at me all sorts of looks, languishing, provoking,
leering, laughing. As I am found quite proof against this sort
of artillery--for we scorn what, unasked, is lavishly offered
--she has recourse to the expedient of making noises; sometimes
she sighs, sometimes groans, sometimes utters inarticulate
sounds, for which language has no name. If, in walking up the
schoolroom, I pass near her, she puts out her foot that it may
touch mine; if I do not happen to observe the manoeuvre, and my
boot comes in contact with her brodequin, she affects to fall
into convulsions of suppressed laughter; if I notice the snare
and avoid it, she expresses her mortification in sullen
muttering, where I hear myself abused in bad French, pronounced
with an intolerable Low German accent.
Not far from Mdlle. Koslow sits another young lady by name Adele
Dronsart: this is a Belgian, rather low of stature, in form
heavy, with broad waist, short neck and limbs, good red and white
complexion, features well chiselled and regular, well-cut eyes of
a clear brown colour, light brown hair, good teeth, age not much
above fifteen, but as full-grown as a stout young Englishwoman of
twenty. This portrait gives the idea of a somewhat dumpy but
good-looking damsel, does it not? Well, when I looked along the
row of young heads, my eye generally stopped at this of Adele's;
her gaze was ever waiting for mine, and it frequently succeeded
in arresting it. She was an unnatural-looking being--so young,
fresh, blooming, yet so Gorgon-like. Suspicion, sullen
ill-temper were on her forehead, vicious propensities in her eye,
envy and panther-like deceit about her mouth. In general she sat
very still; her massive shape looked as if it could not bend
much, nor did her large head--so broad at the base, so narrow
towards the top--seem made to turn readily on her short neck.
She had but two varieties of expression; the prevalent one a
forbidding, dissatisfied scowl, varied sometimes by a most
pernicious and perfidious smile. She was shunned by her
fellow-pupils, for, bad as many of them were, few were as bad as
she.
Aurelia and Adele were in the first division of the second class;
the second division was headed by a pensionnaire named Juanna
Trista. This girl was of mixed Belgian and Spanish origin; her
Flemish mother was dead, her Catalonian father was a merchant
residing in the ---- Isles, where Juanna had been born and whence
she was sent to Europe to be educated. I wonder that any one,
looking at that girl's head and countenance, would have received
her under their roof. She had precisely the same shape of skull
as Pope Alexander the Sixth; her organs of benevolence,
veneration, conscientiousness, adhesiveness, were singularly
small, those of self-esteem, firmness, destructiveness,
combativeness, preposterously large; her head sloped up in the
penthouse shape, was contracted about the forehead, and prominent
behind; she had rather good, though large and marked features;
her temperament was fibrous and bilious, her complexion pale and
dark, hair and eyes black, form angular and rigid but
proportionate, age fifteen.
Juanna was not very thin, but she had a gaunt visage, and her
"regard" was fierce and hungry; narrow as was her brow, it
presented space enough for the legible graving of two words,
Mutiny and Hate; in some one of her other lineaments I think the
eye--cowardice had also its distinct cipher. Mdlle. Trista
thought fit to trouble my first lessons with a coarse work-day
sort of turbulence; she made noises with her mouth like a horse,
she ejected her saliva, she uttered brutal expressions; behind
and below her were seated a band of very vulgar, inferior-looking
Flamandes, including two or three examples of that deformity of
person and imbecility of intellect whose frequency in the Low
Countries would seem to furnish proof that the climate is such as
to induce degeneracy of the human mind and body; these, I soon
found, were completely under her influence, and with their aid
she got up and sustained a swinish tumult, which I was
constrained at last to quell by ordering her and two of her tools
to rise from their seats, and, having kept them standing five
minutes, turning them bodily out of the schoolroom: the
accomplices into a large place adjoining called the grands salle;
the principal into a cabinet, of which I closed the door and
pocketed the key. This judgment I executed in the presence of
Mdlle. Reuter, who looked much aghast at beholding so decided a
proceeding--the most severe that had ever been ventured on in her
establishment. Her look of affright I answered with one of
composure, and finally with a smile, which perhaps flattered, and
certainly soothed her. Juanna Trista remained in Europe long
enough to repay, by malevolence and ingratitude, all who had ever
done her a good turn; and she then went to join her father in the
---- Isles, exulting in the thought that she should there have
slaves, whom, as she said, she could kick and strike at will.
These three pictures are from the life. I possess others, as
marked and as little agreeable, but I will spare my reader the
exhibition of them.
Doubtless it will be thought that I ought now, by way of
contrast, to show something charming; some gentle virgin head,
circled with a halo, some sweet personification of innocence,
clasping the dove of peace to her bosom. No: I saw nothing of
the sort, and therefore cannot portray it. The pupil in the
school possessing the happiest disposition was a young girl from
the country, Louise Path; she was sufficiently benevolent and
obliging, but not well taught nor well mannered; moreover, the
plague-spot of dissimulation was in her also; honour and
principle were unknown to her, she had scarcely heard their
names. The least exceptionable pupil was the poor little Sylvie
I have mentioned once before. Sylvie was gentle in manners,
intelligent in mind; she was even sincere, as far as her religion
would permit her to be so, but her physical organization was
defective; weak health stunted her growth and chilled her
spirits, and then, destined as she was for the cloister, her
whole soul was warped to a conventual bias, and in the tame,
trained subjection of her manner, one read that she had already
prepared herself for her future course of life, by giving up her
independence of thought and action into the hands of some
despotic confessor. She permitted herself no original opinion,
no preference of companion or employment; in everything she was
guided by another. With a pale, passive, automaton air, she went
about all day long doing what she was bid; never what she liked,
or what, from innate conviction, she thought it right to do. The
poor little future religieuse had been early taught to make the
dictates of her own reason and conscience quite subordinate to
the will of her spiritual director. She was the model pupil of
Mdlle. Reuter's establishment; pale, blighted image, where life
lingered feebly, but whence the soul had been conjured by Romish
wizard-craft!
A few English pupils there were in this school, and these might
be divided into two classes. 1st. The continental English--the
daughters chiefly of broken adventurers, whom debt or dishonour
had driven from their own country. These poor girls had never
known the advantages of settled homes, decorous example, or
honest Protestant education; resident a few months now in one
Catholic school, now in another, as their parents wandered from
land to land--from France to Germany, from Germany to Belgium
--they had picked up some scanty instruction, many bad habits,
losing every notion even of the first elements of religion and
morals, and acquiring an imbecile indifference to every sentiment
that can elevate humanity; they were distinguishable by an
habitual look of sullen dejection, the result of crushed
self-respect and constant browbeating from their Popish
fellow-pupils, who hated them as English, and scorned them as
heretics.
The second class were British English. Of these I did not
encounter half a dozen during the whole time of my attendance at
the seminary; their characteristics were clean but careless
dress, ill-arranged hair (compared with the tight and trim
foreigners), erect carriage, flexible figures, white and taper
hands, features more irregular, but also more intellectual than
those of the Belgians, grave and modest countenances, a general
air of native propriety and decency; by this last circumstance
alone I could at a glance distinguish the daughter of Albion and
nursling of Protestantism from the foster-child of Rome, the
PROTEGEE of Jesuistry: proud, too, was the aspect of these
British girls; at once envied and ridiculed by their continental
associates, they warded off insult with austere civility, and met
hate with mute disdain; they eschewed company-keeping, and in the
midst of numbers seemed to dwell isolated.
The teachers presiding over this mixed multitude were three in
number, all French--their names Mdlles. Zephyrine, Pelagie, and
Suzette; the two last were commonplace personages enough; their
look was ordinary, their manner was ordinary, their temper was
ordinary, their thoughts, feelings, and views were all ordinary
--were I to write a chapter on the subject I could not elucidate
it further. Zephyrine was somewhat more distinguished in
appearance and deportment than Pelagie and Suzette, but in
character genuine Parisian coquette, perfidious, mercenary, and
dry-hearted. A fourth maitresse I sometimes saw who seemed to
come daily to teach needlework, or netting, or lace-mending, or
some such flimsy art; but of her I never had more than a passing
glimpse, as she sat in the CARRE, with her frames and some dozen
of the elder pupils about her, consequently I had no opportunity
of studying her character, or even of observing her person much;
the latter, I remarked, had a very English air for a maitresse,
otherwise it was not striking; of character I should think; she
possessed but little, as her pupils seemed constantly "en
revolte" against her authority. She did not reside in the house;
her name, I think, was Mdlle. Henri.
Amidst this assemblage of all that was insignificant and
defective, much that was vicious and repulsive (by that last
epithet many would have described the two or three stiff, silent,
decently behaved, ill-dressed British girls), the sensible,
sagacious, affable directress shone like a steady star over a
marsh full of Jack-o'-lanthorns; profoundly aware of her
superiority, she derived an inward bliss from that consciousness
which sustained her under all the care and responsibility
inseparable from her position; it kept her temper calm, her brow
smooth, her manner tranquil. She liked--as who would not?--on
entering the school-room, to feel that her sole presence sufficed
to diffuse that order and quiet which all the remonstrances, and
even commands, of her underlings frequently failed to enforce;
she liked to stand in comparison, or rather--contrast, with those
who surrounded her, and to know that in personal as well as
mental advantages, she bore away the undisputed palm of
preference--(the three teachers were all plain.) Her pupils she
managed with such indulgence and address, taking always on
herself the office of recompenser and eulogist, and abandoning to
her subalterns every invidious task of blame and punishment, that
they all regarded her with deference, if not with affection; her
teachers did not love her, but they submitted because they were
her inferiors in everything; the various masters who attended her
school were each and all in some way or other under her
influence; over one she had acquired power by her skilful
management of his bad temper; over another by little attentions
to his petty caprices; a third she had subdued by flattery; a
fourth--a timid man--she kept in awe by a sort of austere
decision of mien; me, she still watched, still tried by the most
ingenious tests--she roved round me, baffled, yet persevering; I
believe she thought I was like a smooth and bare precipice, which
offered neither jutting stone nor tree-root, nor tuft of grass to
aid the climber. Now she flattered with exquisite tact, now she
moralized, now she tried how far I was accessible to mercenary
motives, then she disported on the brink of affection--knowing
that some men are won by weakness--anon, she talked excellent
sense, aware that others have the folly to admire judgment. I
found it at once pleasant and easy to evade all these efforts; it
was sweet, when she thought me nearly won, to turn round and to
smile in her very eyes, half scornfully, and then to witness her
scarcely veiled, though mute mortification. Still she
persevered, and at last, I am bound to confess it, her finger,
essaying, proving every atom of the casket, touched its secret
spring, and for a moment the lid sprung open; she laid her hand
on the jewel within; whether she stole and broke it, or whether
the lid shut again with a snap on her fingers, read on, and you
shall know.
It happened that I came one day to give a lesson when I was
indisposed; I had a bad cold and a cough; two hours' incessant
talking left me very hoarse and tired; as I quitted the
schoolroom, and was passing along the corridor, I met Mdlle.
Reuter; she remarked, with an anxious air, that I looked very
pale and tired. "Yes," I said, "I was fatigued;" and then, with
increased interest, she rejoined, "You shall not go away till you
have had some refreshment." She persuaded me to step into the
parlour, and was very kind and gentle while I stayed. The next
day she was kinder still; she came herself into the class to see
that the windows were closed, and that there was no draught; she
exhorted me with friendly earnestness not to over-exert myself;
when I went away, she gave me her hand unasked, and I could not
but mark, by a respectful and gentle pressure, that I was
sensible of the favour, and grateful for it. My modest
demonstration kindled a little merry smile on her countenance; I
thought her almost charming. During the remainder of the
evening, my mind was full of impatience for the afternoon of the
next day to arrive, that I might see her again.
I was not disappointed, for she sat in the class during the whole
of my subsequent lesson, and often looked at me almost with
affection. At four o'clock she accompanied me out of the
schoolroom, asking with solicitude after my health, then scolding
me sweetly because I spoke too loud and gave myself too much
trouble; I stopped at the glass-door which led into the garden,
to hear her lecture to the end; the door was open, it was a very
fine day, and while I listened to the soothing reprimand, I
looked at the sunshine and flowers, and felt very happy. The
day-scholars began to pour from the schoolrooms into the passage.
"Will you go into the garden a minute or two," asked she, "till
they are gone?"
I descended the steps without answering, but I looked back as
much as to say--
"You will come with me?"
In another minute I and the directress were walking side by side
down the alley bordered with fruit-trees, whose white blossoms
were then in full blow as well as their tender green leaves. The
sky was blue, the air still, the May afternoon was full of
brightness and fragrance. Released from the stifling class,
surrounded with flowers and foliage, with a pleasing, smiling,
affable woman at my side--how did I feel? Why, very enviably.
It seemed as if the romantic visions my imagination had suggested
of this garden, while it was yet hidden from me by the jealous
boards, were more than realized; and, when a turn in the alley
shut out the view of the house, and some tall shrubs excluded M.
Pelet's mansion, and screened us momentarily from the other
houses, rising amphitheatre-like round this green spot, I gave my
arm to Mdlle. Reuter, and led her to a garden-chair, nestled
under some lilacs near. She sat down; I took my place at her
side. She went on talking to me with that ease which
communicates ease, and, as I listened, a revelation dawned in my
mind that I was on the brink of falling in love. The dinner-bell
rang, both at her house and M. Pelet's; we were obliged to part;
I detained her a moment as she was moving away.
"I want something," said I.
"What?" asked Zoraide naively.
"Only a flower."
"Gather it then--or two, or twenty, if you like."
"No--one will do-but you must gather it, and give it to me."
"What a caprice!" she exclaimed, but she raised herself on her
tip-toes, and, plucking a beautiful branch of lilac, offered it
to me with grace. I took it, and went away, satisfied for the
present, and hopeful for the future.
Certainly that May day was a lovely one, and it closed in
moonlight night of summer warmth and serenity. I remember this
well; for, having sat up late that evening, correcting devoirs,
and feeling weary and a little oppressed with the closeness of my
small room, I opened the often-mentioned boarded window, whose
boards, however, I had persuaded old Madame Pelet to have removed
since I had filled the post of professor in the pensionnat de
demoiselles, as, from that time, it was no longer "inconvenient"
for me to overlook my own pupils at their sports. I sat down in
the window-seat, rested my arm on the sill, and leaned out:
above me was the clear-obscure of a cloudless night sky
--splendid moonlight subdued the tremulous sparkle of the stars
--below lay the garden, varied with silvery lustre and deep
shade, and all fresh with dew--a grateful perfume exhaled from
the closed blossoms of the fruit-trees--not a leaf stirred, the
night was breezeless. My window looked directly down upon a
certain walk of Mdlle. Reuter's garden, called "l'allee
defendue," so named because the pupils were forbidden to enter it
on account of its proximity to the boys' school. It was here
that the lilacs and laburnums grew especially thick; this was the
most sheltered nook in the enclosure, its shrubs screened the
garden-chair where that afternoon I had sat with the young
directress. I need not say that my thoughts were chiefly with her
as I leaned from the lattice, and let my; eye roam, now over the
walks and borders of the garden, now along the many-windowed
front of the house which rose white beyond the masses of foliage.
I wondered in what part of the building was situated her
apartment; and a single light, shining through the persiennes of
one croisee, seemed to direct me to it.
"She watches late," thought I, "for it must be now near midnight.
She is a fascinating little woman," I continued in voiceless
soliloquy; "her image forms a pleasant picture in memory; I know
she is not what the world calls pretty--no matter, there is
harmony in her aspect, and I like it; her brown hair, her blue
eye, the freshness of her cheek, the whiteness of her neck, all
suit my taste. Then I respect her talent; the idea of marrying a
doll or a fool was always abhorrent to me: I know that a pretty
doll, a fair fool, might do well enough for the honeymoon; but
when passion cooled, how dreadful to find a lump of wax and wood
laid in my bosom, a half idiot clasped in my arms, and to
remember that I had made of this my equal--nay, my idol--to know
that I must pass the rest of my dreary life with a creature
incapable of understanding what I said, of appreciating what I
thought, or of sympathizing with what I felt! "Now, Zoraide
Reuter," thought I, "has tact, CARACTERE, judgment, discretion;
has she heart? What a good, simple little smile played about her
lips when she gave me the branch of lilacs! I have thought her
crafty, dissembling, interested sometimes, it is true; but may
not much that looks like cunning and dissimulation in her conduct
be only the efforts made by a bland temper to traverse quietly
perplexing difficulties? And as to interest, she wishes to make
her way in the world, no doubt, and who can blame her? Even if
she be truly deficient in sound principle, is it not rather her
misfortune than her fault? She has been brought up a Catholic:
had she been born an Englishwoman, and reared a Protestant, might
she not have added straight integrity to all her other
excellences? Supposing she were to marry an English and
Protestant husband, would she not, rational, sensible as she is,
quickly acknowledge the superiority of right over expediency,
honesty over policy? It would be worth a man's while to try the
experiment; to-morrow I will renew my observations. She knows
that I watch her: how calm she is under scrutiny! it seems rather
to gratify than annoy her." Here a strain of music stole in upon
my monologue, and suspended it; it was a bugle, very skilfully
played, in the neighbourhood of the park, I thought, or on the
Place Royale. So sweet were the tones, so subduing their effect
at that hour, in the midst of silence and under the quiet reign
of moonlight, I ceased to think, that I might listen more
intently. The strain retreated, its sound waxed fainter and was
soon gone; my ear prepared to repose on the absolute hush of
midnight once more. No. What murmur was that which, low, and
yet near and approaching nearer, frustrated the expectation of
total silence? It was some one conversing--yes, evidently, an
audible, though subdued voice spoke in the garden immediately
below me. Another answered; the first voice was that of a man,
the second that of a woman; and a man and a woman I saw coming
slowly down the alley. Their forms were at first in shade, I
could but discern a dusk outline of each, but a ray of moonlight
met them at the termination of the walk, when they were under my
very nose, and revealed very plainly, very unequivocally, Mdlle.
Zoraide Reuter, arm-in-arm, or hand-in-hand (I forget which) with
my principal, confidant, and counsellor, M. Francois Pelet. And
M. Pelet was saying--
"A quand donc le jour des noces, ma bien-aimee?"
And Mdlle. Reuter answered--
"Mais, Francois, tu sais bien qu'il me serait impossible de me
marier avant les vacances."
"June, July, August, a whole quarter!" exclaimed the director.
"How can I wait so long?--I who am ready, even now, to expire at
your feet with impatience!"
"Ah! if you die, the whole affair will be settled without any
trouble about notaries and contracts; I shall only have to order
a slight mourning dress, which will be much sooner prepared than
the nuptial trousseau."
"Cruel Zoraide! you laugh at the distress of one who loves you so
devotedly as I do: my torment is your sport; you scruple not to
stretch my soul on the rack of jealousy; for, deny it as you
will, I am certain you have cast encouraging glances on that
school-boy, Crimsworth; he has presumed to fall in love, which he
dared not have done unless you had given him room to hope."
"What do you say, Francois? Do you say Crimsworth is in love
with me?"
"Over head and ears."
"Has he told you so?"
"No--but I see it in his face: he blushes whenever your name is
mentioned." A little laugh of exulting coquetry announced Mdlle.
Reuter's gratification at this piece of intelligence (which was a
lie, by-the-by--I had never been so far gone as that, after all).
M. Pelet proceeded to ask what she intended to do with me,
intimating pretty plainly, and not very gallantly, that it was
nonsense for her to think of taking such a "blanc-bec" as a
husband, since she must be at least ten years older than I (was
she then thirty-two? I should not have thought it). I heard her
disclaim any intentions on the subject--the director, however,
still pressed her to give a definite answer.
"Francois," said she, "you are jealous," and still she laughed;
then, as if suddenly recollecting that this coquetry was not
consistent with the character for modest dignity she wished to
establish, she proceeded, in a demure voice: "Truly, my dear
Francois, I will not deny that this young Englishman may have
made some attempts to ingratiate himself with me; but, so far
from giving him any encouragement, I have always treated him
with as much reserve as it was possible to combine with civility;
affianced as I am to you, I would give no man false hopes;
believe me, dear friend." Still Pelet uttered murmurs of
distrust--so I judged, at least, from her reply.
"What folly! How could I prefer an unknown foreigner to you?
And then--not to flatter your vanity--Crimsworth could not bear
comparison with you either physically or mentally; he is not a
handsome man at all; some may call him gentleman-like and
intelligent-looking, but for my part--"
The rest of the sentence was lost in the distance, as the pair,
rising from the chair in which they had been seated, moved away.
I waited their return, but soon the opening and shutting of a
door informed me that they had re-entered the house; I listened
a little longer, all was perfectly still; I listened more than an
hour--at last I heard M. Pelet come in and ascend to his chamber.
Glancing once more towards the long front of the garden-house, I
perceived that its solitary light was at length extinguished; so,
for a time, was my faith is love and friendship. I went to bed,
but something feverish and fiery had got into my veins which
prevented me from sleeping much that night. _