, M. Paul, taking upon
himself this duty. He, this school autocrat, gathered all and sundry
reins into the hollow of his one hand; he irefully rejected any
colleague; he would not have help. Madame herself, who evidently rather
wished to undertake the examination in geography--her favourite study,
which she taught well--was forced to succumb, and be subordinate to her
despotic kinsman's direction. The whole staff of instructors, male and
female, he set aside, and stood on the examiner's estrade alone. It
irked him that he was forced to make one exception to this rule. He
could not manage English: he was obliged to leave that branch of
education in the English teacher's hands; which he did, not without a
flash of naive jealousy.

A constant crusade against the "amour-propre" of every human being but
himself, was the crotchet of this able, but fiery and grasping little
man. He had a strong relish for public representation in his own
person, but an extreme abhorrence of the like display in any other. He
quelled, he kept down when he could; and when he could not, he fumed
like a bottled storm.

On the evening preceding the examination-day, I was walking in the
garden, as were the other teachers and all the boarders. M. Emanuel
joined me in the "allee defendue;" his cigar was at his lips; his
paletot--a most characteristic garment of no particular shape--hung
dark and menacing; the tassel of his bonnet grec sternly shadowed his
left temple; his black whiskers curled like those of a wrathful cat;
his blue eye had a cloud in its glitter.

"Ainsi," he began, abruptly fronting and arresting me, "vous allez
troner comme une reine; demain--troner a mes cotes? Sans doute vous
savourez d'avance les delices de l'autorite. Je crois voir en je ne
sais quoi de rayonnante, petite ambitieuse!"

Now the fact was, he happened to be entirely mistaken. I did not--could
not--estimate the admiration or the good opinion of tomorrow's audience
at the same rate he did. Had that audience numbered as many personal
friends and acquaintance for me as for him, I know not how it might
have been: I speak of the case as it stood. On me school-triumphs shed
but a cold lustre. I had wondered--and I wondered now--how it was that
for him they seemed to shine as with hearth-warmth and hearth-glow.
_He_ cared for them perhaps too much; _I_, probably, too little.
However, I had my own fancies as well as he. I liked, for instance, to
see M. Emanuel jealous;