omewhere,
doubtless, in the 'basse ville.'"

"I'll not lose sight of my best pupil yet," said I, "though she were
born of beggars and lodged in a cellar; for the rest, it is absurd to
make a bugbear of her origin to me--I happen to know that she was a
Swiss pastor's daughter, neither more nor less; and, as to her narrow
means, I care nothing for the poverty of her purse so long as her heart
overflows with affluence."

"Your sentiments are perfectly noble, monsieur," said the directress,
affecting to suppress a yawn; her sprightliness was now extinct, her
temporary candour shut up; the little, red-coloured, piratical-looking
pennon of audacity she had allowed to float a minute in the air, was
furled, and the broad, sober-hued flag of dissimulation again hung
low over the citadel. I did not like her thus, so I cut short the
TETE-A-TETE and departed.

CHAPTER XIX.

NOVELISTS should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real
life. If they observed this duty conscientiously, they would give us
fewer pictures chequered with vivid contrasts of light and shade;
they would seldom elevate their heroes and heroines to the heights of
rapture--still seldomer sink them to the depths of despair; for if we
rarely taste the fulness of joy in this life, we yet more rarely savour
the acrid bitterness of hopeless anguish; unless, indeed, we have
plunged like beasts into sensual indulgence, abused, strained,
stimulated, again overstrained, and, at last, destroyed our faculties
for enjoyment; then, truly, we may find ourselves without support,
robbed of hope. Our agony is great, and how can it end? We have broken
the spring of our powers; life must be all suffering--too feeble to
conceive faith--death must be darkness--God, spirits, religion can have
no place in our collapsed minds, where linger only hideous and polluting
recollections of vice; and time brings us on to the brink of the grave,
and dissolution flings us in--a rag eaten through and through with
disease, wrung together with pain, stamped into the churchyard sod by
the inexorable heel of despair.

But the man of regular life and rational mind never despairs. He loses
his property--it is a blow--he staggers a moment; then, his energies,
roused by the smart, are at work to seek a remedy; activity soon
mitigates regret. Sickness affects him; he takes patience--endures what
he cannot cure. Acute pain racks him; his writhing limbs know not where
to find rest; he