Where there is one grain of perseverance or wilfulness in the composition, trifling obstacles are ever known rather to stimulate than discourage. Mdlle. Reuter might as well have spared herself the trouble of giving that intimation about the weather (by-the-by her prediction was falsified by the event—it did not rain that evening). At the close of the next lesson I was again at Mdlle. Henri’s desk. Thus did I accost her:—
“What is your idea of England, mademoiselle? Why do you wish to go there?”
Accustomed by this time to the calculated abruptness of my manner, it no longer discomposed or surprised her, and she answered with only so much of hesitation as was rendered inevitable by the difficulty she experienced in improvising the translation of her thoughts from French to English.
“England is something unique, as I have heard and read; my idea of it is vague, and I want to go there to render my idea clear, definite.”
“Hum! How much of England do you suppose you could see if you went there in the capacity of a teacher? A strange notion you must have of getting a clear and definite idea of a country! All you could see of Great Britain would be the interior of a school, or at most of one or two private dwellings.”
“It would be an English school; they would be English dwellings.”
“Indisputably; but what then? What would be the value of observations made on a scale so narrow?”
“Monsieur, might not one learn something by analogy? An—échantillon—a—a sample often serves to give an idea of the whole; besides, narrow and wide are words comparative, are they not? All my life would perhaps seem narrow in your eyes—all the life of a—that little animal subterranean—une taupe—comment dit-on?”
“Mole.”
“Yes—a mole, which lives underground would seem narrow even to me.”