Villette

that, when the last bouquet was laid on the desk, it formed the apex to a blooming pyramid – a pyramid blooming, spreading, and towering with such exuberance as, in the end, to eclipse the hero behind it. This ceremony over, seats were resumed, and we sat in dead silence, expectant of a speech.
    I suppose five minutes might have elapsed, and the hush remained unbroken; ten – and there was no sound.
    Many present began, doubtless, to wonder for what Monsieur waited: as well they might. Voiceless and viewless, stirless and wordless, he kept his station behind the pile of flowers.
    At last there issued forth a voice, rather deep, as if it spoke out of a hollow: –
    »Est-ce là tout?«
    Mademoiselle Zélie looked round.
    »You have all presented your bouquets?« inquired she of the pupils.
    Yes; they had all given their nosegays from the eldest to the youngest, from the tallest to the most diminutive. The senior mistress signified as much.
    »Est-ce là tout?« was reiterated in an intonation which, deep before, had now descended some notes lower.
    »Monsieur,« said Mademoiselle St Pierre, rising, and this time speaking with her own sweet smile, »I have the honour to tell you that, with a single exception, every person in classe has offered her bouquet. For Meess Lucie, Monsieur will kindly make allowance; as a foreigner, she probably did not know our customs, or did not appreciate their significance. Meess Lucie has regarded this ceremony as too frivolous to be honoured by her observance.«
    »Famous!« I muttered between my teeth; »you are no bad speaker, Zélie, when you begin.«
    The answer vouchsafed to Mademoiselle St Pierre from the estrade, was given in the gesticulation of a hand from behind the pyramid. This manual action seemed to deprecate words, to enjoin silence.
    A form, ere long, followed the hand. Monsieur emerged from his eclipse; and producing himself upon the front of his estrade, and gazing straight and fixedly before him at a vast ›mappe-monde‹ covering the wall opposite, he demanded a third time, and now in really tragic tones –
    »Est-ce là tout?«
    I might yet have made all right, by stepping forwards and slipping into his hand the ruddy little shell-box I, at that moment, held tight in my own. It was what I had fully purposed to do; but, first, the comic side of Monsieur's behaviour had tempted me to delay, and now, Mademoiselle St Pierre's affected interference provoked contumacity. The reader not having hitherto had any cause to ascribe to Miss Snowe's character the most distant pretension to perfection, will be scarcely surprised to learn that she felt too perverse to defend herself from any imputation the Parisienne might choose to insinuate: and besides, M. Paul was so tragic, and took my defection so seriously, he deserved to be vexed. I kept, then, both my box and my countenance, and sat insensate as any stone.
    »It is well!« dropped at length from the lips of M. Paul; and having uttered this phrase, the shadow of some great paroxysm – the swell of wrath, scorn, resolve – passed over his brow, rippled his lips, and lined his cheeks. Gulping down all further comment, he launched into his customary ›discours.‹ I can't at all remember what this ›discours‹ was; I did not listen to it: the gulping-down process, the abrupt dismissal of his mortification or vexation, had given me a sensation which half-counteracted the ludicrous effect of the reiterated »Est-ce là tout?«
    Towards the close of the speech there came a pleasing diversion; my attention was again amusingly arrested.
    Owing to some little accidental movement – I think I dropped my thimble on the floor, and in stooping to regain it, hit the crown of my head against the sharp corner of my desk; which casualties (exasperating to me, by rights, if to anybody) naturally made a slight bustle – M. Paul became irritated, and dismissing his forced equanimity, and casting to the winds that dignity and self-control with which he never cared long to encumber himself, he broke forth into the strain best calculated to give him ease.
    I don't know how, in the progress of his ›discours,‹ he had contrived to cross the channel, and land on British ground; but there I found him when I began to listen.
    Casting a quick, cynical glance round the room – a glance which scathed, or was intended to scathe, as it crossed me – he fell with fury upon ›les Anglaises.‹
    Never have I heard English women handled as M.