gentle as a woman, and manifested angelic patience in again and again
repeating the same instructions. She no longer considered him at all
plain, but even felt somewhat jealous of beautiful Lisa. And then she
drew her chair still nearer, and gazed at Florent with an embarrassing
smile.

"But you are jogging my elbow, mother, and I can't write," Muche
exclaimed angrily. "There! see what a blot you've made me make! Get
further away, do!"

La Normande now gradually began to say a good many unpleasant things
about beautiful Lisa. She pretended that the latter concealed her real
age, that she laced her stays so tightly that she nearly suffocated
herself, and that if she came down of a morning looking so trim and
neat, without a single hair out of place, it must be because she looked
perfectly hideous when in dishabille. Then La Normande would raise her
arm a little, and say that there was no need for her to wear any stays
to cramp and deform her figure. At these times the lessons would be
interrupted, and Muche gazed with interest at his mother as she raised
her arms. Florent listened to her, and even laughed, thinking to himself
that women were very odd creatures. The rivalry between the beautiful
Norman and beautiful Lisa amused him.

Muche, however, managed to finish his page of writing. Florent, who was
a good penman, set him copies in large hand and round hand on slips of
paper. The words he chose were very long and took up the whole line, and
he evinced a marked partiality for such expressions as "tyrannically,"
"liberticide," "unconstitutional," and "revolutionary." At times also
he made the boy copy such sentences as these: "The day of justice will
surely come"; "The suffering of the just man is the condemnation of the