Awful day! Prepared for with anxious care, dressed for with silent despatch--nothing vaporous or fluttering now--no white gauze or azure streamers; the grave, close, compact was the order of the toilette.

It seemed to me that I was this day, especially doomed--the main burden and trial falling on me alone of all the female teachers.

The others were not expected to examine in the studies they taught; the professor of literature, 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.