Still, madame knew what honesty was, and liked it—­that is, when it did not obtrude its clumsy scruples in the way of her will and interest.  She had a respect for “Angleterre”; and as to “les Anglaises,” she would have the women of no other country about her own children, if she could help it.

Often in the evening, after she had been plotting and counter-plotting, spying and receiving the reports of spies all day, she would come up to my room, a trace of real weariness on her brow, and she would sit down and listen while the children said their little prayers to me in English:  the Lord’s Prayer and the hymn beginning “Gentle Jesus,” these little Catholics were permitted to repeat at my knee; and when I had put them to bed, she would talk to me (I soon gained enough French to be able to understand and even answer her) about England and Englishwomen, and the reason for what she was pleased to term their superior intelligence, and, more real and reliable probity.  Very good sense she often showed; very sound opinions she often broached:  she seemed to know that keeping girls in distrustful restraint, in blind ignorance, and under a surveillance that left them no moment and no corner for retirement, was not the best way to make them grow up honest and modest women; but she averred that ruinous consequences would ensue if any other method were tried with Continental children—­they were so accustomed to restraint that relaxation, however guarded, would be misunderstood and fatally presumed on:  she was sick, she would declare, of the means she had to use, but use them she must; and after discoursing, often with dignity and delicacy, to me, she would move away on her “souliers de silence,” and glide ghost-like through the house, watching and spying everywhere, peering through every key-hole, listening behind every door.

After all, madame’s system was not bad—­let me do her justice.  Nothing could be better than all her arrangements for the physical well-being of her scholars.  No minds were overtasked; the lessons were well distributed and made incomparably easy to the learner; there was a liberty of amusement and a provision for exercise which kept the girls healthy; the food was abundant and good:  neither pale nor puny faces were anywhere to be seen in the Rue Fossette.  She never grudged a holiday; she allowed plenty of time for sleeping, dressing, washing, eating:  her method in all these matters was easy, liberal, salutary, and rational; many an austere English schoolmistress would do vastly well to imitate it—­and I believe many would be glad to do so, if exacting English parents would let them.