Breakfast over, I must again move⁠—in what direction? “Go to Villette,” said an inward voice; prompted doubtless by the recollection of this slight sentence uttered carelessly and at random by Miss Fanshawe, as she bid me goodbye: “I wish you would come to Madame Beck’s; she has some marmots whom you might look after; she wants an English gouvernante , or was wanting one two months ago.”

Who Madame Beck was, where she lived, I knew not; I had asked, but the question passed unheard; Miss Fanshawe, hurried away by her friends, left it unanswered. I presumed Villette to be her residence⁠—to Villette I would go. The distance was forty miles. I knew I was catching at straws; but in the wide and weltering deep where I found myself, I would have caught at cobwebs. Having inquired about the means of travelling to Villette, and secured a seat in the diligence, I departed on the strength of this outline⁠—this shadow of a project. Before you pronounce on the rashness of the proceeding, reader, look back to the point whence I started; consider the desert I had left, note how little I perilled: mine was the game where the player cannot lose and may win.