which Mademoiselle Marcassin imagined, with
many other French ladies of that period, to be
tea. He yielded to friendly compulsion, and
partook of another modicum of the colonial liqueur.
Then he had to find his umbrella and his shovelhat,
and to press Madame's hand, and to bow
over it, and to accept some jujubes for his poor
cough, and to suffer Madame with her own fair
hands—literally fair, but not cruel, to him—to
tie a woollen scarf round his neck, as a defence
against the night air.

It was all as innocent, I speak without mental
reservation, as sheep–shearing in Arcadia.
Nothing could come of it. Both were stricken in
years. On both, the doom of perpetual celibacy
weighed: he, enforced to it by vows: she,
sentenced to it by circumstances and by
temperament. Yet I have heard that the sun shines
sometimes at the North Pole; and I believe that
a little flirtation is a little flirtation all the world
over. Believe me, had the fiend who tempted the
good St. Anthony come to him, not in the guise
of a ballet–girl, but as a cozy comfortable spinster
of a certain age—a spinster who would have
knitted muffatees, and made wine possets, and
warmed his slippers, and cut the leaves of his
Tablet for him—the hermit would earlier have
turned his eyes upward from his tome.

One sigh—one among a thousand frowns—is
not many. Mademoiselle Marcassin gave one
sigh, and put away the backgammon–board and
the rhum of the colonies.

"Pauvre cher homme," sighed the Marcassin;
and then she froze up again in one block, and
proceeded to make her nightly tour of her
dormitories, scattering bad marks about her on all
the pupils who could be proved to be awake.
For wakefulness was considered presumptive
evidence of the offender having been indulging
in prohibited converse.

"A worthy lady, the Dame Marcassin," the
Abbé Chatain mused as he sped homeward.
"She errs a little, perhaps, on the side of strictness,
but those young persons are difficult, very
difficult, to manage. I remember at the seminary
what trouble I used to give the proviseur and
the régisseur, and what stripes of the discipline
these shoulders have suffered. Hi! But it
must be admitted that Mademoiselle Marcassin
is a woman who has a character. Oh! her force
of character is immense. And she is conscientious,
highly conscientious. We must see whether
we can persuade Madame de Kergolay to shelter
this poor little shorn lamb."

And the abbé went home to bed. He was a
worthy soul;—although he did sometimes read
Béranger's poems on the sly.

"If he had only been on our side, Monsieur de
Béranger," the abbé was wont to say, "what an
ally he would have been! What a colossus! But
it has always been thus. From the days of M. de
Pascal, we have never been able to keep the drolls
who have wit and humour, on our side. And yet
we have educated them all in our seminaries.
They have bitten the hand that fed them. If M.
de Molière, now, had only written Tartufe against
the Huguenots! History of fatality. It is true
that we have M. de Chateaubriand—mais il radote
—he drivels. That rhum of the colonies was
very toothsome. To–morrow is a fat day, and
Madame Blaise" (his housekeeper) "has promised
me a turkey stuffed with chesnuts. C'est
énivrant, that turkey stuffed. A little glass of that
rhum of the colonies would make an excellent
pousse–café. Ah! here we are at home. Let
us enter."

It has been found, not unfrequently, that
enforced celibacy leads to a partiality for roast
turkey stuffed with chesnuts. Cut a man off
from the flesh, and he clings to the flesh–pots.

CHAPTER XXVIII. MORE OF THE ABBÉ.

A VERY few days after the interview recorded
in the last chapter, the Abbé Chatain had
another conversation with Mademoiselle
Marcassin. On his departure he met Lily (who had,
indeed, tremblingly, but purposely, thrown her
self in his way), and, patting her on the head
again, told her to be of good cheer, for that a
change in her condition was imminent. Lily
went, that day, to her needlework, and her knife–
cleaning, and her bed–making, quite radiant;
and at night, nestling in her shabby pallet, she
peopled the Imaginary Land with all kinds
of benevolent ecclesiastics and philanthropic
protectors.

Her deliverance came upon her with delightful
suddenness. According to the abbé, it might
be a week or a fortnight before the arrangements
that were being made in her behalf could be
carried out; but, as her good fortune would
have it, the very morning after she had received
this hopeful announcement, and as she was
sitting, in her usual Cinderella position at the
bottom of the class, the Marcassin herself
entered the schoolroom in full state, and
proclaimed to Mademoiselle Espréménil that
Mademoiselle Floris, no longer "la fille Pauline," or
"la petite Anglaise," had been "called to other
functions."

"Circumstances," the Marcassin took occasion
to say, "which did not perhaps imply deliberate
culpability on the part of Mademoiselle Floris,
had rendered her position one of somewhat a
painful nature." Goodness knows, it had, and
of the painfullest! "Indeed, she might say that
her education and sustenance, her very
vestments, in fact, had been provided by a person
whom it was unnecessary to name." Here the
governesses looked admiringly at the Marcassin;
the pupils all stared at Lily; and the poor child
herself blushed a deep crimson. "However,
this equivocal state of affairs had now come to
an end. Thanks to the efforts of a worthy
clergyman (digne ecclesiastique), an asylum had
been found elsewhere for Mademoiselle Floris.
In the new sphere to which she was about to be
removed, she would doubtless preserve a lively
recollection of the favours and bounty which