proper to my sex, and conceived a contraband appetite for unfeminine knowledge.
Alas! I had no such appetite. What I loved, it joyed me by any effort to
content; but the noble hunger for science in the abstract - the godlike thirst
after discovery - these feelings were known to me but by briefest flashes.
    Yet, when M. Paul sneered at me, I wanted to possess them more fully; his
injustice stirred in me ambitious wishes - it imparted a strong stimulus - it
gave wings to aspiration.
    In the beginning, before I had penetrated to motives, that uncomprehended
sneer of his made my heart ache, but by-and-by it only warmed the blood in my
veins, and sent added action to my pulses. Whatever my powers - feminine or the
contrary - God had given them, and I felt resolute to be ashamed of no faculty
of His bestowal.
    The combat was very sharp for a time. I seemed to have lost M. Paul's
affection; he treated me strangely. In his most unjust moments he would
insinuate that I had deceived him when I appeared, what he called faible - that
is, incompetent; he said I had feigned a false incapacity. Again, he would turn
suddenly round and accuse me of the most far-fetched imitations and impossible
plagiarisms, asserting that I had extracted the pith out of books I had not so
much as heard of - and over the perusal of which I should infallibly have fallen
down in a sleep as deep as that of Eutychus.
    Once, upon his preferring such an accusation, I turned upon him - I rose
against him. Gathering an armful of his books out of my desk, I filled my apron
and poured them in a heap upon his estrade, at his feet.
    »Take them away, M. Paul,« I said, »and teach me no more. I never asked to
be made learned, and you compel me to feel very profoundly that learning is not
happiness.«
    And returning to my desk, I laid my head on my arms, nor would I speak to
him for two days afterwards. He pained and chagrined me. His affection had been
very sweet and dear - a pleasure new and incomparable: now that this seemed
withdrawn, I cared not for his lessons.
    The books, however, were not taken away; they were all restored with careful
hand to their places, and he came as usual to teach me. He made his peace
somehow - too readily, perhaps; I ought to have stood out longer, but when he
looked kind