I might have said “Yes,” and gone back to nursery obscurity, and there, perhaps, mouldered for the rest of my life; but looking up at Madame, I saw in her countenance a something that made me think twice ere I decided. At that instant she did not wear a woman’s aspect, but rather a man’s. Power of a particular kind strongly limned itself in all her traits, and that power was not my kind of power: neither sympathy, nor congeniality, nor submission, were the emotions it awakened. I stood—not soothed, nor won, nor overwhelmed. It seemed as if a challenge of strength between opposing gifts was given, and I suddenly felt all the dishonour of my diffidence—all the pusillanimity of my slackness to aspire. “Will you,” she said, “go backward or forward?” indicating with her hand, first, the small door of communication with the dwelling-house, and then the great double portals of the classes or schoolrooms. “En avant,” I said. “But,” pursued she, cooling as I warmed, and continuing the hard look, from very antipathy to which I drew strength and determination, “can you face the classes, or are you over-excited?” She sneered slightly in saying this: nervous excitability was not much to Madame’s taste. “I am no more excited than this stone,” I said, tapping the flag with my toe: “or than you,” I added, returning her look. “Bon! But let me tell you these are not quiet, decorous, English girls you are going to encounter. Ce sont des Labassecouriennes, rondes, franches, brusques, et tant soit peu rebelles.” I said: “I know; and I know, too, that though I have studied French hard since I came here, yet I still speak it with far too much hesitation—too little accuracy to be able to command their respect I shall make blunders that will lay me open to the scorn of the most ignorant. Still I mean to give the lesson.” “They always throw over timid teachers,” said she. “I know that too, Madame; I have heard how they rebelled against and persecuted Miss Turner”—a poor friendless English teacher, whom Madame had employed, and lightly discarded; and to whose piteous history I was no stranger. “C’est vrai,” said she, coolly. “Miss Turner had no more command over them than a servant from the kitchen would have had. She was weak and wavering; she had neither tact nor intelligence, decision nor dignity. Miss Turner would not do for these girls at all.” I made no reply, but advanced to the closed schoolroom door. “You will not expect aid from me, or from any one,” said Madame. “That would at once set you down as incompetent for your office.”