things simply worried and tortured me. Never from the first could
I sleep, but used to weep many a chill, weary night away. In the
evenings everyone would have to repeat or to learn her lessons.
As I crouched over a dialogue or a vocabulary, without daring
even to stir, how my thoughts would turn to the chimney-corner at
home, to my father, to my mother, to my old nurse, to the tales
which the latter had been used to tell! How sad it all was! The
memory of the merest trifle at home would please me, and I would
think and think how nice things used to be at home. Once more I
would be sitting in our little parlour at tea with my parents--in
the familiar little parlour where everything was snug and warm!
How ardently, how convulsively I would seem to be embracing my
mother! Thus I would ponder, until at length tears of sorrow
would softly gush forth and choke my bosom, and drive the lessons
out of my head. For I never could master the tasks of the morrow;
no matter how much my mistress and fellow-pupils might gird at
me, no matter how much I might repeat my lessons over and over to
myself, knowledge never came with the morning. Consequently, I
used to be ordered the kneeling punishment, and given only one
meal in the day. How dull and dispirited I used to feel! From the
first my fellow-pupils used to tease and deride and mock me
whenever I was saying my lessons. Also, they used to pinch me as
we were on our way to dinner or tea, and to make groundless
complaints of me to the head mistress. On the other hand, how
heavenly it seemed when, on Saturday evening, my old nurse
arrived to fetch me! How I would embrace the old woman in
transports of joy! After dressing me, and wrapping me up, she
would find that she could scarcely keep pace with me on the way
home, so full was I of chatter and tales about one thing and
another. Then, when I had arrived home merry and lighthearted,