“Je chante ce heros qui regna sur la France,
     Et par droit de conquete, et par droit de naissance.”

More exciting reading was Madame Cottin’s “Mathilde,” of which I now got hold for the first time, and devoured with delight, finishing it one evening just before we were called to prayers, so that I wept bitterly during my devotions, partly for the Norman princess and her Saracen lover, and partly from remorse at my own sinfulness in not being able to banish them from my thoughts while on my knees and saying my prayers.

But, to be sure, that baptism in the desert, with the only drop of water they had to drink, seemed to me the very acme of religious fervor and sacred self-sacrifice.  I wonder what I should think of the book were I to read it now, which Heaven forefend!  The really powerful impression made upon my imagination and feelings at this period, however, was by my first reading of Lord Byron’s poetry.  The day on which I received that revelation of the power of thought and language remained memorable to me for many a day after.

I had occasionally received invitations from Mrs. Rowden to take tea in the drawing-room with the lady parlor boarders, when my week’s report for “bonne conduite” had been tolerably satisfactory.  One evening when I had received this honorable distinction, and was sitting in sleepy solemnity on the sofa, opposite my uncle John’s black figure in “Coriolanus,” which seemed to grow alternately smaller and larger as my eyelids slowly drew themselves together and suddenly opened wide, with a startled consciousness of unworthy drowsiness, Miss H——­, who was sitting beside me, reading, leaned back and put her book before my face, pointing with her finger to the lines—­

    “It is the hour when from the boughs
     The nightingale’s high note is heard.”

It would be impossible to describe the emotion I experienced.  I was instantly wide awake, and, quivering with excitement, fastened a grip like steel upon the book, imploring to be allowed to read on.  The fear, probably, of some altercation loud enough to excite attention to the subject of her studies (which I rather think would not have been approved of, even for a “parlor boarder”) prevented Miss H——­ from making the resistance she should have made to my entreaties, and I was allowed to leave the room, carrying with me the dangerous prize, which, however, I did not profit by.

It was bedtime, and the dormitory light burned but while we performed our night toilet, under supervision.  The under teacher and the lamp departed together, and I confided to the companion whose bed was next to mine that I had a volume of Lord Byron under my pillow.  The emphatic whispered warnings of terror and dismay with which she received this information, her horror at the wickedness of the book (of which of course she knew nothing), her dread of the result of detection for me, and her entreaties, enforced