I do not know how to express in words all that I felt at that moment; my
pen seems too clumsy to write my sensations, and, besides, did I really
see deep into my heart?

Do men comprehend all this? Do they understand that the heart requires
gradual changes, and that if a half-light awakens, a noon-day blaze
dazzles and burns? It is not that the poor child, who is trembling in
a corner, refuses to learn; far from that, she has aptitude, good-will,
and a quick and ready intelligence; she knows she has reached the age at
which it is necessary to know how to read; she rejects neither the
science nor even the teacher. It is the method of instruction that makes
her uneasy. She is afraid lest this young professor, whose knowledge is
so extensive, should turn over the pages of the book too quickly and
neglect the A B C.

A few hours back he was the submissive, humble lover, ready to kneel down
before her, hiding his knowledge as one hides a sin, speaking his own
language with a thousand circumspections. At any moment it might have
been thought that he was going to blush. She was a queen, he a child;
and now all at once the roles are changed; it is the submissive subject
who arrives in the college cap of a professor, hiding under his arm an
unknown and mysterious book. Is the man in the college cap about to
command, to smile, to obtrude himself and his books, to speak Latin, to
deliver a lecture?

She does not know that this learned individual is trembling, too; that he
is greatly embarrassed over his opening lesson, that emotion has caused
him to forget his Latin, that his throat is parched and his legs are
trembling beneath him. She does not know this, and I tell you between
ourselves, it is not her self-esteem that suffers least at this