had attended her sojourn in the Pension
Marcassin."

There were murmurs (rumeurs) of approbation
among the scholars; and the head governess
remarked, in a low tone:

''If she does not preserve that lively recollection,
she is a monster of ingratitude."

"The conduct of Mademoiselle Floris,"
concluded her benefactress, "had not been entirely
free from matter for animadversion. The veil
of the past, however, might now be thrown
over the anxieties—she might say, the sorrows
—she had caused her instructresses.
Mademoiselle Floris left that establishment full of
the best sentiments; and she, Mademoiselle
Marcassin, was glad to recognise that this young
person was calculated in every way to do honour
to the Pensionnat where she had been sheltered."

The young ladies, most of whom had been for
years spectatresses of the daily tasks and
punishments inflicted on the scapegoat of the
school, and had grown perfectly accustomed to
hear her called worthless, insupportable, and
incorrigible, by the schoolmistress and her
assistants, were not in the least surprised to hear
this virtual eulogium pronounced on Lily. It
was the Marcassin's way. Nil nisi bonum was
her invariable maxim, as applied, not to defunct,
but to departing scholars. It was a remarkable
fact that no young lady, however refractory or
stupid she might have been, ever quitted the
academy without a glowing panegyric on her
conduct and proficiency. The supreme punishment
in the Marcassin's code of pains and
penalties was expulsion; but she had only been
known to expel one single pupil. The dismission
of this culprit took place on the eve of
the summer vacation; and it was quite notorious
that her parents designed to remove her to
another school.

The Abbé Chatain did not come himself as the
messenger of Lily's deliverance. The welcome
emissary was his housekeeper, Madame Prudence.
She was a rosy apple-cheeked old dame, the best
cook, and, moreover, the possessor of the
best temper, in the quarter. She loved her abbé
very dearly, tended him very assiduously, and
scolded him sometimes; but that, like the
cunning dishes she cooked for him, was all for
his good. Madame Prudence was not an admirer
of the Pension Marcassin, nor of its energetic
proprietor. She spoke of Madame as "cette
Mégère." She alluded pointedly to the
governesses as "myrmidons of the tyrant." Her
opinion regarding the pupils was, that they were
oppressed slaves. She had been known to snap
her fingers at the entire establishment, in the
open playground, and in the light of day.
There was an old feud between her and the
Marcassin; and she did not, perhaps, altogether
approve of ecclesiastics, bound to bachelorhood,
being regaled by scholastic spinsters with tea,
with backgammon, and with the rhum of the
colonies.

The priest's housekeeper, like the schoolmistress
was unmarried; but, both were called
"Madame,'' probably from the reason that to a
people who had always retained an infinite,
veneration and deference towards age there seemed
something unduly familiar and flighty in the
appellation "Mademoiselle." When we were a less
civilised, but a better behaved people, we too
used to address our spinsters as "Mistress."

On the way from the Pension to her new home
—when, to Lily's infinite delight, they traversed
on foot the streets of the only city in the world
worth living in, with which she had made
but ten minutes' acquaintance in the course of
seven years—Madame Prudence was pleasantly
loquacious, and made no secret of her impression
that she had been the immediate means of rescuing
Lily from the jaws of a roaring dragon.

"They would have devoured you there, my
child," she remarked, patting Lily's arm
affectionately as she trotted along by her side. "I
know her well, that stiff and starched piece of
affected tyranny. Ah! it is I who have given her a
bit of my mind. It is not I who am afraid of her.
A woman with an ascertained position, quoi!"
The last part of these observations Madame
Prudence evidently applied to herself; and she
as evidently considered the "position" of a
priest's housekeeper to be, so far as respectability
went, a much better "ascertained" one than
that of a schoolmistress.

"And you were very unhappy, eh, my child,"
she continued, "down in that hole?"

"Oh! dreadfully unhappy," replied Lily.
"Many and many a time I could have wished to
die, only I knew the wish to be wicked."

"And no wonder. And they were cruel to
you?"

"Madame was certainly very strict—almost
harsh; but I dare say I was stupid and disagreeable
and gave her much trouble."

"You? I won't believe it for an instant. M.
l'Abbé says that you are a little lamb for meekness
and resignation. To me you shall be a little
angel. The good Madame de Kergolay, whither
you are going, has already made up her mind to
treat you like a little kitten. Ah! it is there you
will dine well, and when you come to dine with the
abbé and me, you shall have a taste of my cookery;
you shall taste la vraie cuisine bourgeoise my
cherished. Are you fond of good dinners?"

"It is so long ago," answered Lily, with a
smile, and in involuntary disparagement of the
culinary dispensation enjoyed by the inmates of
the Pension Marcassin.

'I should think so. I know what those
crocodiles feed you poor little innocents upon,
Haricots, haricots, haricots, all the year round,
as if yon were mules, and only deserved to be fed
upon beans. And the lentils! And the chicory!
I would not mind if they knew how to cook them;
but they don't, the Cosaques!" A Cossack was
Madame Prudence's synonyme for everything
that was mean, base, and cruel. "And the wine, or
rather the water blushing at, being so villanously
adulterated! Ah! the good Madame de