doubts respecting a purely conventional education, made inquiries on this
subject, the mother-superior, feeling very wicked and worldly, usually
made mention of the mathematical mistress, Denise Lange, daughter of the
great and good general who was killed at Solferino. And no other word of
identification was needed. For some keen-witted artist had painted a
great salon picture of, not a young paladin, but a fat old soldier,
eighteen stone, on his huge charger, with shaking red cheeks and blazing
eyes, standing in his stirrups, bursting out of his tight tunic, and
roaring to his _enfants_ to follow him to their death.

It was after the battle of Solferino that Mademoiselle Brun had come into
Denise Lange's life, taking her from her convent school to live in a dull
little apartment in the Rue des Saints Peres, educating her, dressing
her, caring for her with a grim affection which never wasted itself in
words. How she pinched and saved, and taught herself that she might teach
others; how she triumphantly made both ends meet,--are secrets which,
like Mademoiselle Brun's romance, she would not tell. For French women
are not only cleverer and more capable than French men, but they are
cleverer and more capable than any other women in the world. History,
moreover, will prove this; for nearly all the great women that the world
has seen have been produced by France.

Denise and Mademoiselle Brun still lived in the dull little apartment
in the Rue des Saints Peres--that narrow street which runs southward
from the Quai Voltaire to the Boulevard St. Germain, where the cheap
frame-makers, the artists' colourmen, and the dealers in old prints have
their shops. To the convent school, the old woman and the young girl,
walking daily through the streets to their work, brought with them that
breath of worldliness which the advance of civilization seemed to render
desirable to the curriculum of a girls' school.