“Where there are sixty pupils,” said I; for I knew the number, and with my usual base habit of cowardice, I shrank into my sloth like a snail into its shell, and alleged incapacity and impracticability as a pretext to escape action. If left to myself, I should infallibly have let this chance slip. Inadventurous, unstirred by impulses of practical ambition, I was capable of sitting twenty years teaching infants the hornbook, turning silk dresses and making children’s frocks. Not that true contentment dignified this infatuated resignation: my work had neither charm for my taste, nor hold on my interest; but it seemed to me a great thing to be without heavy anxiety, and relieved from intimate trial; the negation of severe suffering was the nearest approach to happiness I expected to know. Besides, I seemed to hold two lives⁠—the life of thought, and that of reality; and, provided the former was nourished with a sufficiency of the strange necromantic joys of fancy, the privileges of the latter might remain limited to daily bread, hourly work, and a roof of shelter.

“Come,” said Madame, as I stooped more busily than ever over the cutting-out of a child’s pinafore, “leave that work.”

“But Fifine wants it, Madame.”

“Fifine must want it, then, for I want you .”

And as Madame Beck did really want and was resolved to have me⁠—as she had long been dissatisfied with the English master, with his shortcomings in punctuality, and his careless method of tuition⁠—as, too, she did not lack resolution and practical activity, whether I lacked them or not⁠—she, without more ado, made me relinquish thimble and needle; my hand was taken into hers, and I was conducted downstairs. When we reached the carré , a large square hall between the dwelling-house and the pensionnat