"The French are a polite people," answered Mr. Hummel. "If you are so anxious to train your daughter for the market, the Turkish language would be better than the French. The Turk pays money if you dispose of your child to him; the others wish to have something into the bargain." "Do not speak so inconsiderately, Henry!" exclaimed the wife. "Be off with you and your cursed French letters, else I promise you I will teach the child all the French phrases I know; they are not many, but they are strong. _Baisez-moi, Madame Hummel!_" Saying this, he left the room with an air of defiance. The result, however, of this consultation was that Laura went to school. It was very difficult for her to listen and be silent, and for a longtime her progress was not satisfactory. But at last her little soul was fired with ambition; she climbed the lower steps of learning with Miss Johanne, and then she was promoted to the renowned Institute of Miss Jeannette, where the daughters of families of pretension received education in higher branches. There she learned the tributaries of the Amazon, and much Egyptian history; she could touch the cover of the electrophorus, speak of the weather in French, and read English so ingeniously that even true-born Britons were obliged to acknowledge that a new language had been discovered; lastly, she was accomplished in all the elegancies of German composition. She wrote small treatises on the difference between walking and sleeping, on the feelings of the famed Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, on the terrors of a shipwreck, and of the desert island on which she had been saved. Finally, she gained some knowledge of the composition of strophes and sonnets. It soon became clear that Laura's strong point was German, not French; her style was the delight of the Institute; nay, she began to write poems in honor of her teachers and favorite companions, in which she very happily imitated the difficult rhymes of the great Schiller's "Song of the Bell." She was now eighteen, a pretty, rosy, young lady, still plump and merry, still the ruling power of the house, and still loved by all the people on the street. The mother, proud of the accomplishments of her daughter, after her confirmation, prepared an upper room for her, looking out upon the trees of the park; and Laura fitted up her little home like a fairy castle, with ivy-vines, a little flower-table, and a beautiful ink-stand of china on which shepherds and shepherdesses were sitting side by side. There she passed her pleasantest hours with her pen and paper, writing her diary in secret.