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Then I hear Dellie's and Morgan's lessons, after which I open my desk and am lost in the mysteries of Arithmetic, Geography, Blair's Lectures, Noël et Chapsal, Ollendorff, and reading aloud in French and English, besides writing occasionally in each, and sometimes a peep at Lavoisne, until very nearly dinner. The day is not half long enough for me.
Is it just that MM. Noel and Chapsal, overseers of the University, should use their influence in selling their selections from literature to the youth whose studies they are instructed to superintend in consideration of a salary? And, if that is not just, is it not proper to refuse literary property to every author holding public offices, and receiving pensions or sinecures?
One would be worse than foolish to expect style and cultivation in a grisette; and had I not had enough to disgust me with both in Madame de Marignan? What more charming, after all, than youth, beauty, and lightheartedness? Were Noel and Chapsal of any importance to a mouth that could not speak without such a smile as Hebe might have envied?
They admit principles of which they reject the consequences, announce consequences of which they repudiate the principles, lean on tradition, throw over the masters, and adopt whimsical refinements. Ménage, instead of lentilles and cassonade, approves of nentilles and castonade; Bonhours, jérarchie and not hiérarchie and M. Chapsal speaks of les oeils de la soupe.
And how dreary "Noel and Chapsal" used to grow all of a sudden when that invitation came, and with what relentless slowness the hands of the old clock dragged through the lesson-hour still to run. But the quaint old window has the shutters on it now, and the eager face that used to seek his caged playmate through its bars is looking out on new lands from his wandering home at sea.
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