Isidore Guillet lost wife and fortune in the same year, and, after a vain effort to recoup his finances at the North, removed to Richmond with his three sons, and became a fashionable French teacher. He was fierce in class, and suave outside of the recitation-room. Our late and now-more-than-ever-lamented tutor had laid a fair foundation for us in the French language. We were “up” in the verbs to an extent that excited the rude applause of our classmates. We read French as fluently as English, and were tolerably conversant with such French classics as were current in young ladies’ seminaries. These things were less than vanity when M. Guillet and Manesca took the field. We were required to copy daily seven or eight foolscap pages-full of that detestable “System.” Beginning with “_Avez vous le clou?_” and running the gamut of “_le bon clou_,” “_le mauvais clou_,” and “_le bon clou de votre père_,” “_le mauvais clou de votre grandmère_,” up to the maddening discords of “_l’interrogatif et le negatif_”—we were rushed breathlessly along the lines ordained by the merciless “System” and more merciless master, until it was a marvel that nerves and health were not wrecked. I said just now that the lion roared him soft in general society. Throughout a series of Spanish lessons given to us two girls through the medium of French, he was the mildest-mannered monster I ever beheld. One day he went out of his way to account for the unlikeness to the language-master of the class. The explanation was a refined version of Mr. Bagnet’s code—“Discipline must be maintained.” To the pair of girls who read and recited to him in their private sitting-room, he was the finished gentleman in demeanor, and in talk delightfully instructive. His family in Paris had known the present generation of Lafayettes. Lamartine—at that epoch of French Revolutionary history, the popular idol—was his personal friend. He brought and read to us letters from the author-statesman, thrilling with interest, and kept us advised, through his family correspondence, of the stirring changes going on in his native land. All this was in the uncovenanted conversational exercise that succeeded the Spanish lesson. The latter over, he would toss aside the books used in it with an airy “_Eh, bien donc! pour la conversation!_” and plunge into the matter uppermost in his mind, chatting brilliantly and gayly in the most elegant French imaginable, bringing into our commonplace, provincial lives the flavor and sparkle of the Parisian salon.