Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 12, 2025
I walked a few steps further, and asked for the school-house of my happiest days and one pointed out to me a brawling ale-house. It was a bitter change. I asked of another where was now my old light-hearted, deep-learned, French schoolmaster, Monsieur Cherfeuil. He had gone back to France. The emigres had been recalled by Napoleon.
Mr Cherfeuil would have thought any man a fool that did not perceive at once that he, Cherfeuil, was born a great poet. Shall I carry, after the manner of Plutarch, the comparison any further?
From that evening, excepting when employed in my studies, we were almost inseparable. I told him my strange story; and he seemed to love me for it a hundred-fold more. He laid all the nobility, and even the princes of the blood, under contribution, to procure me a father. He came to the conclusion firmly, and at once, that Mrs Cherfeuil was my mother. Oh! this mystery made him superlatively happy.
But I was soon aware that this lady, whom I now, for the first time, heard named, as Mrs Cherfeuil, was as little disposed to grant me the honour of calling her mother, as I was to bestow it.
When Mrs Causand came to Stickenham, she made universal jubilee. The orderly routine of scholastic life had no longer place. She almost ruined Riprapton in clean linen, perfumes, and Windsor soap. Cards and music enlivened every evening; and the games she played were those of the fashion of the day, and she always played high, and always won. Her ascendancy over Mrs Cherfeuil was complete.
My good old friend was present, betraying a curious mixture of fear and admiration; big as I then was, he almost carried me in his arms home, that is, to the school-house, and there we found all in confusion: Mrs Cherfeuil had just arrived, and hearing that one of the boys was drowned, had given one painful shriek and fainted.
"Well said, my little man!" said Mrs to me, smiling kindly. "You see, sir, with all submission, I've gained the verdict of the lady; and that's a great deal." "But I think you lost your hide. Was your back very sore?" said my host, encouragingly. "O dear very sore indeed, sir! Mrs Cherfeuil said that it looked quite like a newly-cut steak."
The usual quantity of hopes and wishes were expressed, and my final leave was taken of all my village friends. Mr R enjoined me to correspond with him on every opportunity, gave me his blessing, and some urgent advice to eschew poetry, and prophesied that he should live to see me posted. There was nothing outwardly very remarkable in the manner of Mrs Cherfeuil on the eve of my departure.
When she had married this Cherfeuil, who was the French assistant at a large school, she found out the agents to whom you were entrusted, and soon arranged with them that you should be domesticated under her own roof you were removed to Stickenham, and she and you were happy." "Oh, how happy!"
Indeed, this deservedly great man was, in some sense, my schoolfellow, for he came in the evening to learn French of Monsieur Cherfeuil. He was then engaged to translate an epic, written by one of the Buonapartes, into English verse. I believe that engagement never was carried into effect, notwithstanding the erudite pains Mr took to qualify himself to perform it successfully.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking