every plant of a more wholesome influence. Doubtless,
long, long ago the world and the world's trials, prosperity with the
weariness and the bitterness it brings, adversity with the joys it takes
away, have tamed those proud hearts! But, at the time of which I speak, no
committee of countesses deciding upon petitions for vouchers for a
subscription ball; no chapter of noble canonesses examining into the
sixteen quarters required for their candidate; could by possibility
inquire more seriously into the nice questions of station, position, and
alliance than the unfledged younglings who constituted our first class.
They were merely gentlemen's daughters, and had no earthly right to give
themselves airs; but I suspect that we may sometimes see in elder
gentlewomen the same disproportion, and that those who might, from birth,
fortune, and position assume such a right, will be the very last to exert
their privilege. Luckily for me I was a little girl, protected by my youth
and insignificance from the danger of a contagion which it requires a good
deal of moral courage to resist. I remember wondering how Mdlle. Rose,
with her incessant industry, her open desire to sell her bonnets, and her
shabby cotton gown, would escape from our censors. Happily she was spared,
avowedly because her birth was noble--perhaps because, with all their
vulgar denunciations of vulgarity, their fineries, and their vanities, the
young girls were better than they knew, and respected in their hearts the
very humility which they denounced.

If, however, there was something about the fair Frenchwoman that held in
awe the spirit of girlish impertinence, chance soon bestowed upon them, in
the shape of a new pupil, an object which called forth all their worst
qualities, without stint and without impediment.

The poor child who was destined to become their victim, was a short, squat
figure, somewhere about nine or ten years of age; awkward in her carriage,
plain in her features, ill-dressed and over-dressed. She happened to
arrive at the same time with the French dancing-master, a marquis of the
_ancien regime_, of whom I am sorry to say, that he seemed so at home in
his Terpsichorean vocation, that no one could hardly fancy him fit for any
other. (Were not _les marquis_ of the old French comedy very much like
dancing-masters? I am sure Moliere thought so.) At the same time with the
French dancing-master did our new fellow-pupil arrive, led into the room
by