and sweetness. Providence has protected and cultured
you, not only for your own sake, but I believe for
Graham’s. His star, too, was fortunate:
to develop fully the best of his nature, a companion
like you was needed: there you are, ready.
You must be united. I knew it the first day I
saw you together at La Terrasse. In all that
mutually concerns you and Graham there seems to me
promise, plan, harmony. I do not think the sunny
youth of either will prove the forerunner of stormy
age. I think it is deemed good that you two should
live in peace and be happy—not as angels,
but as few are happy amongst mortals. Some lives
are thus blessed: it is God’s will:
it is the attesting trace and lingering evidence of
Eden. Other lives run from the first another
course. Other travellers encounter weather fitful
and gusty, wild and variable—breast adverse
winds, are belated and overtaken by the early closing
winter night. Neither can this happen without
the sanction of God; and I know that, amidst His boundless
works, is somewhere stored the secret of this last
fate’s justice: I know that His treasures
contain the proof as the promise of its mercy.”
CHAPTER XXXIII.
M. PAUL KEEPS HIS PROMISE.
On the first of May, we had all—i.e. the
twenty boarders and the four teachers—notice
to rise at five o’clock of the morning, to be
dressed and ready by six, to put ourselves under the
command of M. le Professeur Emanuel, who was to head
our march forth from Villette, for it was on this
day he proposed to fulfil his promise of taking us
to breakfast in the country. I, indeed, as the
reader may perhaps remember, had not had the honour
of an invitation when this excursion was first projected—rather
the contrary; but on my now making allusion to this
fact, and wishing to know how it was to be, my ear
received a pull, of which I did not venture to challenge
the repetition by raising, further difficulties.
“Je vous conseille de vous faire prier,”
said M. Emanuel, imperially menacing the other ear.
One Napoleonic compliment, however, was enough, so
I made up my mind to be of the party.
The morning broke calm as summer, with singing of
birds in the garden, and a light dew-mist that promised
heat. We all said it would be warm, and we all
felt pleasure in folding away heavy garments, and in
assuming the attire suiting a sunny season. The
clean fresh print dress, and the light straw bonnet,
each made and trimmed as the French workwoman alone
can make and trim, so as to unite the utterly unpretending
with the perfectly becoming, was the rule of costume.
Nobody flaunted in faded silk; nobody wore a second-hand
best article.
At six the bell rang merrily, and we poured down the
staircase, through the carre, along the corridor,
into the vestibule. There stood our Professor,
wearing, not his savage-looking paletot and severe
bonnet-grec, but a young-looking belted blouse and
cheerful straw hat. He had for us all the kindest
good-morrow, and most of us for him had a thanksgiving
smile. We were marshalled in order and soon started.
