not one present but,
in her heart, liked to see it done. They were stilled for a moment; then a smile
- not a laugh - passed from desk to desk: then - when I had gravely and
tranquilly returned to the estrade, courteously requested silence, and commenced
a dictation as if nothing at all had happened - the pens travelled peacefully
over the pages, and the remainder of the lesson passed in order and industry.
    »C'est bien,« said Madame Beck, when I came out of class, hot and a little
exhausted. »Ça ira.«
    She had been listening and peeping through a spy-hole the whole time.
    From that day I ceased to be nursery-governess, and became English teacher.
Madame raised my salary; but she got thrice the work out of me she had extracted
from Mr. Wilson, at half the expense.
 

                                   Chapter IX

                                    Isidore

My time was now well and profitably filled up. What with teaching others and
studying closely myself, I had hardly a spare moment. It was pleasant. I felt I
was getting on; not lying the stagnant prey of mould and rust, but polishing my
faculties and whetting them to a keen edge with constant use. Experience of a
certain kind lay before me, on no narrow scale. Villette is a cosmopolitan city,
and in this school were girls of almost every European nation, and likewise of
very varied rank in life. Equality is much practised in Labassecour; though not
republican in form, it is nearly so in substance, and at the desks of Madame
Beck's establishment the young countess and the young bourgeoise sat side by
side: nor could you always by outward indications decide which was noble and
which plebeian; except that, indeed, the latter had often franker and more
courteous manners, while the former bore away the bell for a delicately balanced
combination of insolence and deceit. In the former there was often quick French
blood mixed with their marsh-phlegm: I regret to say that the effect of this
vivacious fluid chiefly appeared in the oilier glibness with which flattery and
fiction ran from the tongue, and in a manner lighter and livelier, but quite
heartless and insincere.
    To do all parties justice, the honest aboriginal Labassecouriennes had an
hypocrisy of their own too; but it was of a coarse order, such as could deceive
few. Whenever a lie was necessary for their occasions, they brought it out with
a careless ease and breadth altogether untroubled by the rebuke of conscience.
Not a soul in Madame Beck's house, from the scullion to the directress herself