And they both laughed heartily at the joke. There was, however, this much of truth in the speech, that I lived almost entirely in her society. We sang together; she called me Cherubino, and taught me all the page's songs in Mozart or Rossini; and we rode out together, or read or walked in company. Nor was her influence over me such as might effeminate me. On the contrary, it was ever her aim to give me manly tastes and ambitions. She laid great stress on my being a perfect swordsman and a pistol-shot, over and over telling me that a conscious skill in arms gives a man immense coolness in every question of difference with other men; and she would add, “Don't fall into that John Bull blunder of believing that duelling is gone out because they dislike the practice in England. The world is happily larger than the British Islands.” Little sneers like this at England, sarcasms on English prudery, English reserve, or English distrustfulness, were constantly dropping from her, and I grew up to believe that while genuine sentiment and unselfish devotion lived on one side of the Channel, a decorous hypocrisy had its home on the other. Now she would contrast the women 'of Balzac's novels with the colder nonentities of English fiction; and now she would dwell on traits of fascination in the sex which our writers either did not know of or were afraid to touch on. “It is entirely the fault of your Englishwomen,” she would say, “that the men invariably fall victims to foreign seductions. Circe always sings with a bronchitis in the North;” and though I but dimly saw what she pointed at then, I lived to perceive her meaning more fully. As for my father, I saw little of him, but in that little he was always kind and good-natured with me. He would quiz me about my lessons, as though I were the tutor, and Ecoles the pupil; and ask me how he got on with his Aristophanes or his Homer? He talked to me freely about the people who came to the house, and treated me almost as an equal. All this time he behaved to Madame with a reserve that was perfectly chilling, so that it was the rarest thing in the world for the three of us to be together. “I don't think you like papa,” said I once to her, in an effusion of confidence. “I am sure you don't like him!” “And why do you think so?” asked she, with the faintest imaginable flush on her pale cheek. While I was puzzling myself what to answer, she said,-- “Come now, Cherubino, what you really meant to say was, I don't think papa likes _you!_” Though I never could have made so rude a speech, its truth and force struck me so palpably that I could not answer.