第 二十九 章 · 第29章

next morning an hour before daybreak, and finished my

guard, kneeling on the dormitory floor beside the centre stand, for the

benefit of such expiring glimmer as the night-lamp afforded in its last

watch.

All my materials—my whole stock of beads and silk—were used up before

the chain assumed the length and richness I wished; I had wrought it

double, as I knew, by the rule of contraries, that to, suit the

particular taste whose gratification was in view, an effective

appearance was quite indispensable. As a finish to the ornament, a

little gold clasp was needed; fortunately I possessed it in the

fastening of my sole necklace; I duly detached and re-attached it, then

coiled compactly the completed guard; and enclosed it in a small box I

had bought for its brilliancy, made of some tropic shell of the colour

called “nacarat,” and decked with a little coronal of sparkling blue

stones. Within the lid of the box, I carefully graved with my scissors’

point certain initials.

The reader will, perhaps, remember the description of Madame Beck’s

fête; nor will he have forgotten that at each anniversary, a handsome

present was subscribed for and offered by the school. The observance of

this day was a distinction accorded to none but Madame, and, in a

modified form, to her kinsman and counsellor, M. Emanuel. In the latter

case it was an honour spontaneously awarded, not plotted and contrived

beforehand, and offered an additional proof, amongst many others, of

the estimation in which—despite his partialities, prejudices, and

irritabilities—the professor of literature was held by his pupils. No

article of value was offered to him: he distinctly gave it to be

understood, that he would accept neither plate nor jewellery. Yet he

liked a slight tribute; the cost, the money-value, did not touch him: a

diamond ring, a gold snuff-box, presented, with pomp, would have

pleased him less than a flower, or a drawing, offered simply and with

sincere feelings. Such was his nature. He was a man, not wise in his

generation, yet could he claim a filial sympathy with “the dayspring on

high.”

M. Paul’s fête fell on the first of March and a Thursday. It proved a

fine sunny day; and being likewise the morning on which it was

customary to attend mass; being also otherwise distinguished by the

half-holiday which permitted the privilege of walking out, shopping, or

paying visits in the afternoon: these combined considerations induced a

general smartness and freshness of dress. Clean collars were in vogue;

the ordinary dingy woollen classe-dress was exchanged for something

lighter and clearer. Mademoiselle Zélie St. Pierre, on this particular

Thursday, even assumed a “robe de soie,” deemed in economical

Labassecour an article of hazardous splendour and luxury; nay, it was

remarked that she sent for a “coiffeur” to dress her hair that morning;

there were pupils acute enough to discover that she had bedewed her

handkerchief and her hands with a new and fashionable perfume. Poor

Zélie! It was much her wont to declare about this time, that she was

tired to death of a life of seclusion and labour; that she longed to

have the means and leisure for relaxation; to have some one to work for

her—a husband who would pay her debts (she was woefully encumbered with

debt), supply her wardrobe, and leave her at liberty, as she said, to

“goûter un peu les plaisirs.” It had long been rumoured, that her eye

was upon M. Emanuel. Monsieur Emanuel’s eye was certainly often upon

her. He would sit and watch her perseveringly for minutes together. I

have seen him give her a quarter-of-an-hour’s gaze, while the class was

silently composing, and he sat throned on his estrade, unoccupied.

Conscious always of this basilisk attention, she would writhe under it,

half-flattered, half-puzzled, and Monsieur would follow her sensations,

sometimes looking appallingly acute; for in some cases, he had the

terrible unerring penetration of instinct, and pierced in its

hiding-place the last lurking thought of the heart, and discerned under

florid veilings the bare; barren places of the spirit: yes, and its

perverted tendencies, and its hidden false curves—all that men and

women would not have known—the twisted spine, the malformed limb that

was born with them, and far worse, the stain or disfigurement they have

perhaps brought on themselves. No calamity so accursed but M. Emanuel

could pity and forgive, if it were acknowledged candidly; but where his

questioning eyes met dishonest denial—where his ruthless researches

found deceitful concealment—oh, then, he could be cruel, and I thought

wicked! he would exultantly snatch the screen from poor shrinking

wretches, passionately hurry them to the summit of the mount of

exposure, and there show them all naked, all false—poor living lies—the

spawn of that horrid Truth which cannot be looked on unveiled. He

thought he did justice; for my part I doubt whether man has a right to

do such justice on man: more than once in these his visitations, I have

felt compelled to give tears to his victims, and not spared ire and

keen reproach to himself. He deserved it; but it was difficult to shake

him in his firm conviction that the work was righteous and needed.

Breakfast being over and mass attended, the school-bell rang and the

rooms filled: a very pretty spectacle was presented in classe. Pupils

and teachers sat neatly arrayed, orderly and expectant, each bearing in

her hand the bouquet of felicitation—the prettiest spring-flowers all

fresh, and filling the air with their fragrance: I only had no bouquet.

I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease

to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their

likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love; I

never wish to receive them from hands dear to me. Mademoiselle St.

Pierre marked my empty hands—she could not believe I had been so

remiss; with avidity her eye roved over and round me: surely I must

have some solitary symbolic flower somewhere: some small knot of

violets, something to win myself praise for taste, commendation for

ingenuity. The unimaginative “Anglaise” proved better than the

Parisienne’s fears: she sat literally unprovided, as bare of bloom or

leaf as the winter tree. This ascertained, Zélie smiled, well pleased.

“How wisely you have acted to keep your money, Miss Lucie,” she said:

“silly I have gone and thrown away two francs on a bouquet of hot-house

flowers!”

And she showed with pride her splendid nosegay.

But hush! a step: _the_ step. It came prompt, as usual, but with a

promptitude, we felt disposed to flatter ourselves, inspired by other

feelings than mere excitability of nerve and vehemence of intent. We

thought our Professor’s “foot-fall” (to speak romantically) had in it a

friendly promise this morning; and so it had.

He entered in a mood which made him as good as a new sunbeam to the

already well-lit first classe. The morning light playing amongst our

plants and laughing on our walls, caught an added lustre from M. Paul’s

all-benignant salute. Like a true Frenchman (though I don’t know why I

should say so, for he was of strain neither French nor Labassecourien),

he had dressed for the “situation” and the occasion. Not by the vague

folds, sinister and conspirator-like, of his soot-dark paletôt were the

outlines of his person obscured; on the contrary, his figure (such as

it was, I don’t boast of it) was well set off by a civilized coat and a

silken vest quite pretty to behold. The defiant and pagan bonnet-grec

had vanished: bare-headed, he came upon us, carrying a Christian hat in

his gloved hand. The little man looked well, very well; there was a

clearness of amity in his blue eye, and a glow of good feeling on his

dark complexion, which passed perfectly in the place of beauty: one

really did not care to observe that his nose, though far from small,

was of no particular shape, his cheek thin, his brow marked and square,

his mouth no rose-bud: one accepted him as he was, and felt his

presence the reverse of damping or insignificant.

He passed to his desk; he placed on the same his hat and gloves. “Bon

jour, mes amies,” said he, in a tone that somehow made amends to some

amongst us for many a sharp snap and savage snarl: not a jocund,

good-fellow tone, still less an unctuous priestly, accent, but a voice

he had belonging to himself—a voice used when his heart passed the

words to his lips. That same heart did speak sometimes; though an

irritable, it was not an ossified organ: in its core was a place,

tender beyond a man’s tenderness; a place that humbled him to little

children, that bound him to girls and women to whom, rebel as he would,

he could not disown his affinity, nor quite deny that, on the whole, he

was better with them than with his own sex.

“We all wish Monsieur a good day, and present to him our

congratulations on the anniversary of his fête,” said Mademoiselle

Zélie, constituting herself spokeswoman of the assembly; and advancing

with no more twists of affectation than were with her indispensable to

the achievement of motion, she laid her costly bouquet before him. He

bowed over it.

The long train of offerings followed: all the pupils, sweeping past

with the gliding step foreigners practise, left their tributes as they

went by. Each girl so dexterously adjusted her separate gift, 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 on 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 pretensions 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. Paul that morning

handled them: he spared nothing—neither their minds, morals, manners,

nor personal appearance. I specially remember his abuse of their tall

stature, their long necks, their thin arms, their slovenly dress, their

pedantic education, their impious scepticism(!), their insufferable

pride, their pretentious virtue: over which he ground his teeth

malignantly, and looked as if, had he dared, he would have said

singular things. Oh! he was spiteful, acrid, savage; and, as a natural

consequence, detestably ugly.

“Little wicked venomous man!” thought I; “am I going to harass myself

with fears of displeasing you, or hurting your feelings? No, indeed;

you shall be indifferent to me, as the shabbiest bouquet in your

pyramid.”

I grieve to say I could not quite carry out this resolution. For some

time the abuse of England and the English found and left me stolid: I

bore it some fifteen minutes stoically enough; but this hissing

cockatrice was determined to sting, and he said such things at

last—fastening not only upon our women, but upon our greatest names and

best men; sullying, the shield of Britannia, and dabbling the union

jack in mud—that I was stung. With vicious relish he brought up the

most spicy current continental historical falsehoods—than which nothing

can be conceived more offensive. Zélie, and the whole class, became one

grin of vindictive delight; for it is curious to discover how these

clowns of Labassecour secretly hate England. At last, I struck a sharp

stroke on my desk, opened my lips, and let loose this cry:—

“Vive l’Angleterre, l’Histoire et les Héros! A bas la France, la

Fiction et les Faquins!”

The class was struck of a heap. I suppose they thought me mad. The

Professor put up his handkerchief, and fiendishly smiled into its

folds. Little monster of malice! He now thought he had got the victory,

since he had made me angry. In a second he became good-humoured. With

great blandness he resumed the subject of his flowers; talked

poetically and symbolically of their sweetness, perfume, purity,

etcetera; made Frenchified comparisons between the “jeunes filles” and

the sweet blossoms before him; paid Mademoiselle St. Pierre a very

full-blown compliment on the superiority of her bouquet; and ended by

announcing that the first really fine, mild, and balmy morning in

spring, he intended to take the whole class out to breakfast in the

country. “Such of the class, at least,” he added, with emphasis, “as he

could count amongst the number of his friends.”

“Donc je n’y serai pas,” declared I, involuntarily.

“Soit!” was his response; and, gathering his flowers in his arms, he

flashed out of classe; while I, consigning my work, scissors, thimble,

and the neglected little box, to my desk, swept up-stairs. I don’t know

whether _he_ felt hot and angry, but I am free to confess that _I_ did.

Yet with a strange evanescent anger, I had not sat an hour on the edge

of my bed, picturing and repicturing his look, manner, words ere I

smiled at the whole scene. A little pang of regret I underwent that the

box had not been offered. I had meant to gratify him. Fate would not

have it so.

In the course of the afternoon, remembering that desks in classe were

by no means inviolate repositories, and thinking that it was as well to

secure the box, on account of the initials in the lid, P. C. D. E., for

Paul Carl (or Carlos) David Emanuel—such was his full name—these

foreigners must always have a string of baptismals—I descended to the

schoolroom.

It slept in holiday repose. The day pupils were all gone home, the

boarders were out walking, the teachers, except the surveillante of the

week, were in town, visiting or shopping; the suite of divisions was

vacant; so was the grande salle, with its huge solemn globe hanging in

the midst, its pair of many-branched chandeliers, and its horizontal

grand piano closed, silent, enjoying its mid-week Sabbath. I rather

wondered to find the first classe door ajar; this room being usually

locked when empty, and being then inaccessible to any save Madame Beck

and myself, who possessed a duplicate key. I wondered still more, on

approaching, to hear a vague movement as of life—a step, a chair

stirred, a sound like the opening of a desk.

“It is only Madame Beck doing inspection duty,” was the conclusion

following a moment’s reflection. The partially-opened door gave

opportunity for assurance on this point. I looked. Behold! not the

inspecting garb of Madame Beck—the shawl and the clean cap—but the

coat, and the close-shorn, dark head of a man. This person occupied my

chair; his olive hand held my desk open, his nose was lost to view

amongst my papers. His back was towards me, but there could not be a

moment’s question about identity. Already was the attire of ceremony

discarded: the cherished and ink-stained paletôt was resumed; the

perverse bonnet-grec lay on the floor, as if just dropped from the

hand, culpably busy.

Now I knew, and I had long known, that that hand of M. Emanuel’s was on

the most intimate terms with my desk; that it raised and lowered the

lid, ransacked and arranged the contents, almost as familiarly as my

own. The fact was not dubious, nor did he wish it to be so: he left

signs of each visit palpable and unmistakable; hitherto, however, I had

never caught him in the act: watch as I would, I could not detect the

hours and moments of his coming. I saw the brownie’s work in exercises

left overnight full of faults, and found next morning carefully

corrected: I profited by his capricious good-will in loans full welcome

and refreshing. Between a sallow dictionary and worn-out grammar would

magically grow a fresh interesting new work, or a classic, mellow and

sweet in its ripe age. Out of my work-basket would laughingly peep a

romance, under it would lurk the pamphlet, the magazine, whence last

evening’s reading had been extracted. Impossible to doubt the source

whence these treasures flowed: had there been no other indication, one

condemning and traitor peculiarity, common to them all, settled the

question—_they smelt of cigars_. This was very shocking, of course: _I_

thought so at first, and used to open the window with some bustle, to

air my desk, and with fastidious finger and thumb, to hold the peccant

brochures forth to the purifying breeze. I was cured of that formality

suddenly. Monsieur caught me at it one day, understood the inference,

instantly relieved my hand of its burden, and, in another moment, would

have thrust the same into the glowing stove. It chanced to be a book,

on the perusal of which I was bent; so for once I proved as decided and

quicker than himself; recaptured the spoil, and—having saved this

volume—never hazarded a second. With all this, I had never yet been

able to arrest in his visits the freakish, friendly, cigar-loving

phantom.

But now at last I had him: there he was—the very brownie himself; and

there, curling from his lips, was the pale blue breath of his Indian

darling: he was smoking into my desk: it might well betray him.

Provoked at this particular, and yet pleased to surprise him—pleased,

that is, with the mixed feeling of the housewife who discovers at last

her strange elfin ally busy in the dairy at the untimely churn—I softly

stole forward, stood behind him, bent with precaution over his

shoulder.

My heart smote me to see that—after this morning’s hostility, after my

seeming remissness, after the puncture experienced by his feelings, and

the ruffling undergone by his temper—he, all willing to forget and

forgive, had brought me a couple of handsome volumes, of which the

title and authorship were guarantees for interest. Now, as he sat

bending above the desk, he was stirring up its contents; but with

gentle and careful hand; disarranging indeed, but not harming. My heart

smote me: as I bent over him, as he sat unconscious, doing me what good

he could, and I daresay not feeling towards me unkindly, my morning’s

anger quite melted: I did not dislike Professor Emanuel.

I think he heard me breathe. He turned suddenly: his temperament was

nervous, yet he never started, and seldom changed colour: there was

something hardy about him.

“I thought you were gone into town with the other teachers,” said he,

taking a grim gripe of his self-possession, which half-escaped him—“It

is as well you are not. Do you think I care for being caught? Not I. I

often visit your desk.”

“Monsieur, I know it.”

“You find a brochure or tome now and then; but you don’t read them,

because they have passed under this?”—touching his cigar.

“They have, and are no better for the process; but I read them.”

“Without pleasure?”

“Monsieur must not be contradicted.”

“Do you like them, or any of them?—are they acceptable?” “Monsieur has

seen me reading them a hundred times, and knows I have not so many

recreations as to undervalue those he provides.”

“I mean well; and, if you see that I mean well, and derive some little

amusement from my efforts, why can we not be friends?”

“A fatalist would say—because we cannot.”

“This morning,” he continued, “I awoke in a bright mood, and came into

classe happy; you spoiled my day.”

“No, Monsieur, only an hour or two of it, and that unintentionally.”

“Unintentionally! No. It was my fête-day; everybody wished me happiness

but you. The little children of the third division gave each her knot

of violets, lisped each her congratulation:—you—nothing. Not a bud,

leaf, whisper—not a glance. Was this unintentional?”

“I meant no harm.”

“Then you really did not know our custom? You were unprepared? You

would willingly have laid out a few centimes on a flower to give me

pleasure, had you been aware that it was expected? Say so, and all is

forgotten, and the pain soothed.”

“I did know that it was expected: I _was_ prepared; yet I laid out no

centimes on flowers.”

“It is well—you do right to be honest. I should almost have hated you

had you flattered and lied. Better declare at once ‘Paul Carl

Emanuel—je te déteste, mon garçon!’—than smile an interest, look an

affection, and be false and cold at heart. False and cold I don’t think

you are; but you have made a great mistake in life, that I believe; I

think your judgment is warped—that you are indifferent where you ought

to be grateful—and perhaps devoted and infatuated, where you ought to

be cool as your name. Don’t suppose that I wish you to have a passion

for me, Mademoiselle; Dieu vous en garde! What do you start for?

Because I said passion? Well, I say it again. There is such a word, and

there is such a thing—though not within these walls, thank heaven! You

are no child that one should not speak of what exists; but I only

uttered the word—the thing, I assure you, is alien to my whole life and

views. It died in the past—in the present it lies buried—its grave is

deep-dug, well-heaped, and many winters old: in the future there will

be a resurrection, as I believe to my souls consolation; but all will

then be changed—form and feeling: the mortal will have put on

immortality—it will rise, not for earth, but heaven. All I say to

_you_, Miss Lucy Snowe, is—that you ought to treat Professor Paul

Emanuel decently.”

I could not, and did not contradict such a sentiment.

“Tell me,” he pursued, “when it is _your_ fête-day, and I will not

grudge a few centimes for a small offering.”

“You will be like me, Monsieur: this cost more than a few centimes, and

I did not grudge its price.”

And taking from the open desk the little box, I put it into his hand.

“It lay ready in my lap this morning,” I continued; “and if Monsieur

had been rather more patient, and Mademoiselle St. Pierre less

interfering—perhaps I should say, too, if _I_ had been calmer and

wiser—I should have given it then.”

He looked at the box: I saw its clear warm tint and bright azure

circlet pleased his eyes. I told him to open it.

“My initials!” said he, indicating the letters in the lid. “Who told

you I was called Carl David?”

“A little bird, Monsieur.”

“Does it fly from me to you? Then one can tie a message under its wing

when needful.”

He took out the chain—a trifle indeed as to value, but glossy with silk

and sparkling with beads. He liked that too—admired it artlessly, like

a child.

“For me?”

“Yes, for you.”

“This is the thing you were working at last night?”

“The same.”

“You finished it this morning?”

“I did.”

“You commenced it with the intention that it should be mine?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“And offered on my fête-day?”

“Yes.”

“This purpose continued as you wove it?”

Again I assented.

“Then it is not necessary that I should cut out any portion—saying,

this part is not mine: it was plaited under the idea and for the

adornment of another?”

“By no means. It is neither necessary, nor would it be just.”

“This object is _all_ mine?”

“That object is yours entirely.”

Straightway Monsieur opened his paletôt, arranged the guard splendidly

across his chest, displaying as much and suppressing as little as he

could: for he had no notion of concealing what he admired and thought

decorative. As to the box, he pronounced it a superb bonbonnière—he was

fond of bonbons, by the way—and as he always liked to share with others

what pleased himself, he would give his “dragées” as freely as he lent

his books. Amongst the kind brownie’s gifts left in my desk, I forgot

to enumerate many a paper of chocolate comfits. His tastes in these

matters were southern, and what we think infantine. His simple lunch

consisted frequently of a “brioche,” which, as often as not, he shared

with some child of the third division.

“A présent c’est un fait accompli,” said he, re-adjusting his paletôt;

and we had no more words on the subject. After looking over the two

volumes he had brought, and cutting away some pages with his penknife

(he generally pruned before lending his books, especially if they were

novels, and sometimes I was a little provoked at the severity of his

censorship, the retrenchments interrupting the narrative), he rose,

politely touched his bonnet-grec, and bade me a civil good-day.

“We are friends now,” thought I, “till the next time we quarrel.”

We _might_ have quarrelled again that very same evening, but, wonderful

to relate, failed, for once, to make the most of our opportunity.

Contrary to all expectation, M. Paul arrived at the study-hour. Having

seen so much of him in the morning, we did not look for his presence at

night. No sooner were we seated at lessons, however, than he appeared.

I own I was glad to see him, so glad that I could not help greeting his

arrival with a smile; and when he made his way to the same seat about

which so serious a misunderstanding had formerly arisen, I took good

care not to make too much room for him; he watched with a jealous,

side-long look, to see whether I shrank away, but I did not, though the

bench was a little crowded. I was losing the early impulse to recoil

from M. Paul. Habituated to the paletôt and bonnet-grec, the

neighbourhood of these garments seemed no longer uncomfortable or very

formidable. I did not now sit restrained, “asphyxiée” (as he used to

say) at his side; I stirred when I wished to stir, coughed when it was

necessary, even yawned when I was tired—did, in short, what I pleased,

blindly reliant upon his indulgence. Nor did my temerity, this evening

at least, meet the punishment it perhaps merited; he was both indulgent

and good-natured; not a cross glance shot from his eyes, not a hasty

word left his lips. Till the very close of the evening, he did not

indeed address me at all, yet I felt, somehow, that he was full of

friendliness. Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different

meanings; no words could inspire a pleasanter content than did M.

Paul’s worldless presence. When the tray came in, and the bustle of

supper commenced, he just said, as he retired, that he wished me a good

night and sweet dreams; and a good night and sweet dreams I had.

CHAPTER 30

M. PAUL.

Yet the r