, who had not numbered more than sixteen or seventeen years, boasted contours as robust and solid as those of a stout Englishwoman of five-and-twenty)⁠—fair forms robed in white, or pale rose, or placid blue, suggested thoughts of heaven and angels. I knew a couple, at least, of these rose et blanche specimens of humanity. Here was a pair of Madame Beck’s late pupils⁠—Mesdemoiselles Mathilde and Angélique: pupils who, during their last year at school, ought to have been in the first class, but whose brains never got them beyond the second division. In English, they had been under my own charge, and hard work it was to get them to translate rationally a page of The Vicar of Wakefield . Also during three months I had one of them for my vis-à-vis at table, and the quantity of household bread, butter, and stewed fruit, she would habitually consume at “second déjeuner ” was a real world’s wonder⁠—to be exceeded only by the fact of her actually pocketing slices she could not eat. Here be truths⁠—wholesome truths, too.