Now this school of ours was no worse than other schools; indeed it was reckoned among the best conducted, but some way or other the foul weed called exclusiveness had sprung up among the half dozen great girls who, fifty years ago, “gave our little senate laws,” to a point that threatened to choke and destroy 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.