declaring that no sacrifice should hinder her
from retaining so remarkable a teacher, carried
off the prize by saying to her competitors:
"Mesdames, I mean to give Mademoiselle
Eugénie ten francs a month. I know it is a
great deal; but Mademoiselle is no ordinary
person, and I believe she will give me no reason
to repent of my liberality in her favour."

Eugénie, in consequence of this generous
decision, entered the establishment conducted by
the ten-franc lady, and it was there that Philibert
went with his mother to see her every fortnight.
Eugénie, without knowing it, was growing
to be the prettiest girl in Lure. She was
seventeen the very Sunday when the event of
the Gospel in Greek occurred. In spite of its
lord's and master's severity, Uncle Philibert's
family was not altogether destitute of elements
which constitute happiness on earth; but a
time of trial was about to begin. The school-
master's wife was attacked by a sudden illness, a
violent general inflammation, and died in the
beginning of the year 1802. Before breathing
her last sigh, she made Eugénie promise never
to abandon her little brother. In the immensity
of her grief, Eugénie made no attempt to
comprehend, to guess even, her dying parent's sad
presentiments; she gave the promise, and her
poor mother's last words were, "Thank you, my
child; may Heaven give you strength to fulfil
the mission I bequeath to you!"

Philibert wept long and bitterly; but he was
too young to appreciate the full extent of his
loss. The schoolmaster restrained his sorrow
within the bounds of decency and propriety.
It was not his habit to give way either to joy or
to grief, an excess of which he always blamed;
perhaps, also, he wished to set his pupils and his
children an example of stoicism.

The fears expressed on her death-bed by
Philibert's mother were too well founded. Once
sure of meeting with no obstacle in his wife's
remonstrances—whose gentleness would have
changed into just indignation at witnessing
any ill-treatment of her son—the schoolmaster
wanted Philibert, although a pattern to his
schoolfellows, to do still better than he had
done.

"If I push you on in your studies now," the
severe teacher said, " you will thank me for it
by-and-by. I have already explained to you that
the principal's son ought not only to be at the
head of everything, but ought to be so far ahead
that none of the others can have the least chance
of getting up to him."

This speech may appear exaggerated, but it
is the truth. Just as there exist in the French
army (which no one will accuse M. Gandon of
disliking) a very limited number of commanding
officers who seem to have been sent into the
world for no other purpose than to torment
without rhyme or reason, without truce or
mercy, their most devoted and their best
educated inferiors—the latter especially—so, in
public instruction, is there more than one
schoolmaster who is the counterpart of
Philibert's father.

By urging his child to get on according to his
own notions—that is, to do impossibilities—the
schoolmaster of Lure was very near causing the
death of his wonderful pupil. Philibert, then
ten years of age, was trained to gymnastic
exercises by a special professor, whose favour he
soon gained by his aptitude. The father, on
hearing his progress praised, promised to be
present at the next training lesson, where his
only observation was the sneering remark,
"Are these all the wonders you promised me,
Monsieur le Professeur?" In his ordinary
studies, in Latin and Greek, the poor boy, when
he was conscious of having fulfilled his duties,
could only reply to the terrible " You might
have done better than this," with "Father, I
have done my best." But here the case was
different. He bounded like an Arab horse
unjustly stricken with the spur; and in executing
the well-known manoeuvre of passing a stream,
by means of a rope, he fell heavily to the ground,
and was picked up senseless.

Fortunately, there was no fracture. His first
glance, when he opened his eyes, fell on his
father, who was offering him smelling-salts. He
stretched out his hands before him, tried to
utter a cry, and fainted again. A week after
the fall, Philibert was quite recovered—physically,
that is to say, no internal lesion having
declared itself; but the poor boy's moral faculties
had received a shock, a thousand times more
dangerous than a broken limb. Philibert was
afraid of his father, and his fear soon changed
into actual terror.

For a month or two after his terrible fall,
Philibert's father appeared to relax his habitual
severity; but the schoolmaster's unhappy nature
soon resumed its sway, in spite of the supplications
of his daughter Eugénie, who had obtained with
difficulty a short leave of absence to
nurse her brother. A single lucky chance
appeared to present itself. Eugenie, now one of
the handsomest women for miles around, was
sought in marriage by the son of an honourable
and wealthy family at Vesoul. She would promise
nothing until she obtained permission to
take her poor brother away with her. The
schoolmaster probably yielded through the
apprehension that his daughter might miss so
desirable a match. The wedding was duly
celebrated, and the one important condition relating
to Philibert fulfilled. Pupils, ushers, the very
servants, were delighted to see the lad depart
with his sister, for they were all too well aware
of what the head of the establishment did not
even suspect. Philibert, when he heard his
father's name pronounced, trembled as if he had
been struck by one of the electric eels of Surinam,
whose contact causes giddiness, ending in
the death of the creature attacked. Now, he
would be able to forget the system of never-
satisfied exaction; now, he would lay aside
Latin and Greek for a while, and indulge his
taste for painting and music.

At Vesoul, Philibert began to believe in the
possibility of lasting happiness, when a letter
from his father abruptly reminded him that his