it perfectly met his approbation that Madame
Minerva Gravity should associate a portion of her leisure with that of his fair
and dear child.
    That other self-elected judge of mine, the professor in the Rue Fossette,
discovering by some surreptitious, spying means, that I was no longer so
stationary as hitherto, but went out regularly at certain hours of certain days,
took it upon himself to place me under surveillance. People said M. Emanuel had
been brought up amongst Jesuits. I should more readily have accredited this
report had his manoeuvres been better masked. As it was I doubted it. Never was
a more undisguised schemer, a franker, looser intriguer. He would analyze his
own machinations: elaborately contrive plots, and forthwith indulge in
explanatory boasts of their skill. I know not whether I was more amused or
provoked, by his stepping up to me one morning and whispering solemnly that he
»had his eye on me: he at least would discharge the duty of a friend and not
leave me entirely to my own devices. My proceedings seemed at present very
unsettled: he did not know what to make of them: he thought his cousin Beck very
much to blame in suffering this sort of fluttering inconsistency in a teacher
attached to her house. What had a person devoted to a serious calling, that of
education, to do with Counts and Countesses, hotels and châteaux? To him, I
seemed altogether en l'air. On his faith, he believed I went out six days in the
seven.«
    I said, »Monsieur exaggerated. I certainly had enjoyed the advantage of a
little change lately, but not before it had become necessary; and the privilege
was by no means exercised in excess.«
    »Necessary! How was it necessary? I was well enough, he supposed? Change
necessary! He would recommend me to look at the Catholic réligieuses, and study
their lives. They asked no change.«
    I am no judge of what expression crossed my face when he thus spoke, but it
was one which provoked him: he accused me of being reckless, worldly, and
epicurean; ambitious of greatness and feverishly athirst for the pomps and
vanities of life. It seems I had no dévouement, no recueillement in my
character; no spirit of grace, faith, sacrifice, or self-abasement. Feeling the
inutility of answering these charges, I mutely continued the correction of a
pile of English exercises.
    »He could see in me nothing Christian: like many other Protestants, I
revelled in the pride and self-will of paganism.«
    I slightly turned from