Villette

alleged incapacity and impracticability as a pretext to escape action. If left to myself, I should infallibly have let this chance slip. Inadventurous, unstirred by impulses of practical ambition, I was capable of sitting twenty years teaching infants the hornbook, turning silk dresses, and making children's frocks. Not that true contentment dignified this infatuated resignation: my work had neither charm for my taste, nor hold on my interest; but it seemed to me a great thing to be without heavy anxiety, and relieved from intimate trial; the negation of severe suffering was the nearest approach to happiness I expected to know. Besides, I seemed to hold two lives – the life of thought, and that of reality; and, provided the former was nourished with a sufficiency of the strange necromantic joys of fancy, the privileges of the latter might remain limited to daily bread, hourly work, and a roof of shelter.
    »Come,« said madame, as I stooped more busily than ever over the cutting out of a child's pinafore, »leave that work.«
    »But Fifine wants it, madame.«
    »Fifine must want it, then, for
I
want
you.
«
    And as Madame Beck did really want and was resolved to have me – as she had long been dissatisfied with the English master, with his shortcomings in punctuality, and his careless method of tuition – as, too,
she
did not lack resolution and practical activity, whether
I
lacked them or not – she, without more ado, made me relinquish thimble and needle; my hand was taken into hers, and I was conducted down stairs. When we reached the carré, a large square hall between the dwelling-house and the pensionnat, she paused, dropped my hand, faced, and scrutinized me. I was flushed, and tremulous from head to foot; tell it not in Gath, I believe I was crying. In fact, the difficulties before me were far from being wholly imaginary; some of them were real enough; and not the least substantial lay in my want of mastery over the medium through which I should be obliged to teach. I had, indeed, studied French closely since my arrival in Villette; learning its practice by day, and its theory in every leisure moment at night, to as late an hour as the rule of the house would allow candle-light, but I was far from yet being able to trust my powers of correct oral expression.
    »Dîtes donc,« said madame sternly, »vous sentez vous réellement trop faible?«
    I might have said »Yes,« and gone back to nursery obscurity, and there, perhaps, mouldered for the rest of my life; but, looking up at madame, I saw in her countenance a something that made me think twice ere I decided. At that instant, she did not wear a woman's aspect, but rather a man's. Power of a particular kind strongly limned itself in all her traits, and that power was not
my
kind of power: neither sympathy, nor congeniality, nor submission, were the emotions it awakened. I stood – not soothed, nor won, nor overwhelmed. It seemed as if a challenge of strength between opposing gifts was given, and I suddenly felt all the dishonour of my diffidence – all the pusillanimity of my slackness to aspire.
    »Will you,« said she, »go backward or forward?« indicating with her hand, first, the small door of communication with the dwelling-house, and then the great double portals of the classes or schoolrooms.
    »En avant,« I said.
    »But,« pursued she, cooling as I warmed, and continuing the hard look, from very antipathy to which I drew strength and determination, »can you face the classes, or are you over-excited?«
    She sneered slightly in saying this – nervous excitability was not much to madame's taste.
    »I am no more excited than this stone,« I said, tapping the flag with my toe: »or than you,« I added, returning her look.
    »Bon! But let me tell you these are not quiet, decorous English girls you are going to encounter. Ce sont des Labassecouriennes, rondes, franches, brusques, et tant soit peu rebelles.«
    I said: »I know; and I know, too, that though I have studied French hard since I came here, yet I still speak it with far too much hesitation – too little accuracy to be able to command their respect: I shall make blunders that will lay me open to the scorn of the most ignorant. Still I mean to give the lesson.«
    »They always throw over timid teachers,« said she.
    »I know that, too, madame; I have heard how they rebelled against and persecuted Miss Turner« – a poor, friendless English teacher, whom madame had employed, and lightly