The examination-day arrived. Awful day! Prepared for with anxious care, dressed for with silent despatch⁠—nothing vaporous or fluttering now⁠—no white gauze or azure streamers; the grave, close, compact was the order of the toilette. It seemed to me that I was this day especially doomed⁠—the main burden and trial falling on me alone of all the female teachers. The others were not expected to examine in the studies they taught; the professor of literature, M. Paul, taking upon himself this duty. He, this school autocrat, gathered all and sundry reins into the hollow of his one hand; he irefully rejected any colleague; he would not have help. Madame herself, who evidently rather wished to undertake the examination in geography⁠—her favourite study, which she taught well⁠—was forced to succumb, and be subordinate to her despotic kinsman’s direction. The whole staff of instructors, male and female, he set aside, and stood on the examiner’s estrade alone. It irked him that he was forced to make one exception to this rule. He could not manage English: he was obliged to leave that branch of education in the English teacher’s hands; which he did, not without a flash of naive jealousy.