In the course of another fortnight I had seen sufficient ofFrances Evans Henri, to enable me to form a more definite opinionof her character. I found her possessed in a somewhat remarkabledegree of at least two good points, viz., perseverance and asense of duty; I found she was really capable of applying tostudy, of contending with difficulties. At first I offered herthe same help which I had always found it necessary to confer onthe others; I began with unloosing for her each knotty point, butI soon discovered that such help was regarded by my new pupil asdegrading; she recoiled from it with a certain proud impatience.Hereupon I appointed her long lessons, and left her to solvealone any perplexities they might present. She set to the taskwith serious ardour, and having quickly accomplished one labour,eagerly demanded more. So much for her perseverance; as to hersense of duty, it evinced itself thus: she liked to learn, buthated to teach; her progress as a pupil depended upon herself,and I saw that on herself she could calculate with certainty; hersuccess as a teacher rested partly, perhaps chiefly, upon thewill of others; it cost her a most painful effort to enter intoconflict with this foreign will, to endeavour to bend it intosubjection to her own; for in what regarded people in general theaction of her will was impeded by many scruples; it was asunembarrassed as strong where her own affairs were concerned, andto it she could at any time subject her inclination, if thatinclination went counter to her convictions of right; yet whencalled upon to wrestle with the propensities, the habits, thefaults of others, of children especially, who are deaf to reason,and, for the most part, insensate to persuasion, her willsometimes almost refused to act; then came in the sense of duty,and forced the reluctant will into operation. A wasteful expenseof energy and labour was frequently the consequence; Francestoiled for and with her pupils like a drudge, but it was long ereher conscientious exertions were rewarded by anything likedocility on their part, because they saw that they had power overher, inasmuch as by resisting her painful attempts to convince,persuade, control--by forcing her to the employment of coercivemeasures--they could inflict upon her exquisite suffering.Human beings--human children especially--seldom deny themselvesthe pleasure of exercising a power which they are conscious ofpossessing, even though that power consist only in a capacity tomake others wretched; a pupil whose sensations are duller thanthose of his instructor, while his nerves are tougher and hisbodily strength perhaps greater, has an immense advantage overthat instructor, and he will generally use it relentlessly,because the very young, very healthy, very thoughtless, knowneither how to sympathize nor how to spare. Frances, I fear,suffered much; a continual weight seemed to oppress her spirits;I have said she did not live in the house, and whether in her ownabode, wherever that might be, she wore the same preoccupied,unsmiling, sorrowfully resolved air that always shaded herfeatures under the roof of Mdlle. Reuter, I could not tell.

One day I gave, as a devoir, the trite little anecdote of Alfredtending cakes in the herdsman's hut, to be related withamplifications. A singular affair most of the pupils made of it;brevity was what they had chiefly studied; the majority of thenarratives were perfectly unintelligible; those of Sylvie andLeonie Ledru alone pretended to anything like sense andconnection. Eulalie, indeed, had hit, upon a clever expedientfor at once ensuring accuracy and saving trouble; she hadobtained access somehow to an abridged history of England, andhad copied the anecdote out fair. I wrote on the margin of herproduction "Stupid and deceitful," and then tore it down themiddle.

Last in the pile of single-leaved devoirs, I found one of severalsheets, neatly written out and stitched together; I knew thehand, and scarcely needed the evidence of the signature "FrancesEvans Henri" to confirm my conjecture as to the writer'sidentity.

Night was my usual time for correcting devoirs, and my own roomthe usual scene of such task--task most onerous hitherto; and itseemed strange to me to feel rising within me an incipient senseof interest, as I snuffed the candle and addressed myself to theperusal of the poor teacher's manuscript.

"Now," thought I, "I shall see a glimpse of what she really is; Ishall get an idea of the nature and extent of her powers; notthat she can be expected to express herself well in a foreigntongue, but still, if she has any mind, here will be a reflectionof it."

The narrative commenced by a description of a Saxon peasant'shut, situated within the confines of a great, leafless, winterforest; it represented an evening in December; flakes of snowwere falling, and the herdsman foretold a heavy storm; hesummoned his wife to aid him in collecting their flock, roamingfar away on the pastoral banks of the Thone; he warns her that itwill be late ere they return. The good woman is reluctant toquit her occupation of baking cakes for the evening meal; butacknowledging the primary importance of securing the herds andflocks, she puts on her sheep-skin mantle; and, addressing astranger who rests half reclined on a bed of rushes near thehearth, bids him mind the bread till her return.

"Take care, young man," she continues, "that you fasten the doorwell after us; and, above all, open to none in our absence;whatever sound you hear, stir not, and look not out. The nightwill soon fall; this forest is most wild and lonely; strangenoises are often heard therein after sunset; wolves haunt theseglades, and Danish warriors infest the country; worse things aretalked of; you might chance to hear, as it were, a child cry, andon opening the door to afford it succour, a greet black bull, ora shadowy goblin dog, might rush over the threshold; or, moreawful still, if something flapped, as with wings, against thelattice, and then a raven or a white dove flew in and settled onthe hearth, such a visitor would be a sure sign of misfortune tothe house; therefore, heed my advice, and lift the latchet fornothing.

Her husband calls her away, both depart. The stranger, leftalone, listens awhile to the muffled snow-wind, the remote,swollen sound of the river, and then he speaks.

"It is Christmas Eve," says he, "I mark the date; here I sitalone on a rude couch of rushes, sheltered by the thatch of aherdsman's hut; I, whose inheritance was a kingdom, owe mynight's harbourage to a poor serf; my throne is usurped, my crownpresses the brow of an invader; I have no friends; my troopswander broken in the hills of Wales; reckless robbers spoil mycountry; my subjects lie prostrate, their breasts crushed by theheel of the brutal Dane. Fate! thou hast done thy worst, and nowthou standest before me resting thy hand on thy blunted blade.Ay; I see thine eye confront mine and demand why I still live,why I still hope. Pagan demon, I credit not thine omnipotence,and so cannot succumb to thy power. My God, whose Son, as onthis night, took on Him the form of man, and for man vouchsafedto suffer and bleed, controls thy hand, and without His behestthou canst not strike a stroke. My God is sinless, eternal,all-wise--in Him is my trust; and though stripped and crushed bythee--though naked, desolate, void of resource--I do notdespair, I cannot despair: were the lance of Guthrum now wetwith my blood, I should not despair. I watch, I toil, I hope, Ipray; Jehovah, in his own time, will aid."

I need not continue the quotation; the whole devoir was in thesame strain. There were errors of orthography, there wereforeign idioms, there were some faults of construction, therewere verbs irregular transformed into verbs regular; it wasmostly made up, as the above example shows, of short and somewhatrude sentences, and the style stood in great need of polish andsustained dignity; yet such as it was, I had hitherto seennothing like it in the course of my professorial experience. Thegirl's mind had conceived a picture of the hut, of the twopeasants, of the crownless king; she had imagined the wintryforest, she had recalled the old Saxon ghost-legends, she hadappreciated Alfred's courage under calamity, she had rememberedhis Christian education, and had shown him, with the rootedconfidence of those primitive days, relying on the scripturalJehovah for aid against the mythological Destiny. This she haddone without a hint from me: I had given the subject, but notsaid a word about the manner of treating it.

"I will find, or make, an opportunity of speaking to her," I saidto myself as I rolled the devoir up; "I will learn what she hasof English in her besides the name of Frances Evans; she is nonovice in the language, that is evident, yet she told me she hadneither been in England, nor taken lessons in English, nor livedin English families."

In the course of my next lesson, I made a report of the otherdevoirs, dealing out praise and blame in very small retailparcels, according to my custom, for there was no use in blamingseverely, and high encomiums were rarely merited. I said nothingof Mdlle. Henri's exercise, and, spectacles on nose, Iendeavoured to decipher in her countenance her sentiments at theomission. I wanted to find out whether in her existed aconsciousness of her own talents. "If she thinks she did aclever thing in composing that devoir, she will now lookmortified," thought I. Grave as usual, almost sombre, was herface; as usual, her eyes were fastened on the cahier open beforeher; there was something, I thought, of expectation in herattitude, as I concluded a brief review of the last devoir, andwhen, casting it from me and rubbing my hands, I bade them taketheir grammars, some slight change did pass over her air andmien, as though she now relinquished a faint prospect of pleasantexcitement; she had been waiting for something to be discussed inwhich she had a degree of interest; the discussion was not tocome on, so expectation sank back, shrunk and sad, but attention,promptly filling up the void, repaired in a moment the transientcollapse of feature; still, I felt, rather than saw, during thewhole course of the lesson, that a hope had been wrenched fromher, and that if she did not show distress, it was because shewould not.

At four o'clock, when the bell rang and the room was in immediatetumult, instead of taking my hat and starting from the estrade, Isat still a moment. I looked at Frances, she was putting herbooks into her cabas; having fastened the button, she raised herhead; encountering my eye, she made a quiet, respectfulobeisance, as bidding good afternoon, and was turning todepart:--

"Come here," said I, lifting my finger at the same time. Shehesitated; she could not hear the words amidst the uproar nowpervading both school-rooms; I repeated the sign; she approached;again she paused within half a yard of the estrade, and lookedshy, and still doubtful whether she had mistaken my meaning.

"Step up," I said, speaking with decision. It is the only way ofdealing with diffident, easily embarrassed characters, and withsome slight manual aid I presently got her placed just wherewanted her to be, that is, between my desk and the window, whereshe was screened from the rush of the second division, and whereno one could sneak behind her to listen.

"Take a seat," I said, placing a tabouret; and I made her sitdown. I knew what I was doing would be considered a very strangething, and, what was more, I did not care. Frances knew it also,and, I fear, by an appearance of agitation and trembling, thatshe cared much. I drew from my pocket the rolled-up devoir.

"This it, yours, I suppose?" said I, addressing her in English,for I now felt sure she could speak English.

"Yes," she answered distinctly; and as I unrolled it and laid itout flat on the desk before her with my hand upon it, and apencil in that hand, I saw her moved, and, as it were, kindled;her depression beamed as a cloud might behind which the sun isburning.

"This devoir has numerous faults," said I. "It will take yousome years of careful study before you are in a condition towrite English with absolute correctness. Attend: I will pointout some principal defects." And I went through it carefully,noting every error, and demonstrating why they were errors, andhow the words or phrases ought to have been written. In thecourse of this sobering process she became calm. I now went on:-

"As to the substance of your devoir, Mdlle. Henri, it hassurprised me; I perused it with pleasure, because I saw in itsome proofs of taste and fancy. Taste and fancy are not thehighest gifts of the human mind, but such as they are you possessthem--not probably in a paramount degree, but in a degree beyondwhat the majority can boast. You may then take courage;cultivate the faculties that God and nature have bestowed on you,and do not fear in any crisis of suffering, under any pressure ofinjustice, to derive free and full consolation from theconsciousness of their strength and rarity."

"Strength and rarity!" I repeated to myself; "ay, the words areprobably true," for on looking up, I saw the sun had disseveredits screening cloud, her countenance was transfigured, a smileshone in her eyes--a smile almost triumphant; it seemed to say--

"I am glad you have been forced to discover so much of my nature;you need not so carefully moderate your language. Do you think Iam myself a stranger to myself? What you tell me in terms soqualified, I have known fully from a child."

She did say this as plainly as a frank and flashing glance could,but in a moment the glow of her complexion, the radiance of heraspect, had subsided; if strongly conscious of her talents, shewas equally conscious of her harassing defects, and theremembrance of these obliterated for a single second, nowreviving with sudden force, at once subdued the too vividcharacters in which her sense of her powers had been expressed.So quick was the revulsion of feeling, I had not time to cheekher triumph by reproof; ere I could contract my brows to a frownshe had become serious and almost mournful-looking.

"Thank you, sir," said she, rising. There was gratitude both inher voice and in the look with which she accompanied it. It wastime, indeed, for our conference to terminate; for, when Iglanced around, behold all the boarders (the day-scholars haddeparted) were congregated within a yard or two of my desk, andstood staring with eyes and mouths wide open; the threemaitresses formed a whispering knot in one corner, and, close atmy elbow, was the directress, sitting on a low chair, calmlyclipping the tassels of her finished purse.