,
but was above being ashamed of a lie; they thought nothing of it: to invent
might not be precisely a virtue, but it was the most venial of faults. »J'ai
menti plusieurs fois« formed an item of every girl's and woman's monthly
confession: the priest heard unshocked, and absolved unreluctant. If they had
missed going to mass, or read a chapter of a novel, that was another thing:
these were crimes whereof rebuke and penance were the unfailing meed.
    While yet but half-conscious of this state of things, and unlearned in its
results, I got on in my new sphere very well. After the first few difficult
lessons, given amidst peril and on the edge of a moral volcano, that rumbled
under my feet and sent sparks and hot fumes into my eyes, the eruptive spirit
seemed to subside, as far as I was concerned. My mind was a good deal bent on
success: I could not bear the thought of being baffled by mere undisciplined
disaffection and wanton indocility, in this first attempt to get on in life.
Many hours of the night I used to lie awake, thinking what plan I had best adopt
to get a reliable hold on these mutineers, to bring this stiff-necked tribe
under permanent influence. In the first place, I saw plainly that aid in no
shape was to be expected from Madame: her righteous plan was to maintain an
unbroken popularity with the pupils, at any and every cost of justice or comfort
to the teachers. For a teacher to seek her alliance in any crisis of
insubordination was equivalent to securing her own expulsion. In intercourse
with her pupils, Madame only took to herself what was pleasant, amiable, and
recommendatory; rigidly requiring of her lieutenants sufficiency for every
annoying crisis, where to act with adequate promptitude was to be unpopular.
Thus, I must look only to myself.
    Imprimis - it was clear as the day that this swinish multitude were not to
be driven by force. They were to be humoured, borne with very patiently: a
courteous though sedate manner impressed them; a very rare flash of raillery did
good. Severe or continuous mental application they could not, or would not,
bear: heavy demand on the memory, the reason, the attention, they rejected
point-blank. Where an English girl of not more than average capacity and
docility, would quietly take a theme and bind herself to the task of
comprehension and mastery, a Labassecourienne would laugh in your face, and
throw it back to you with the phrase, - »Dieu que c
