comfort, but for the security of her old age. She is circumspect and formal in all her attitudes, absolutely self-respecting, of a cordial coldness, and there is something impersonal, something claustral in her selfishness. I have remarked that nuns resemble her astonishingly in all their material relations with the world: the same implacable hardness, the same smiling austerity, the same lack of honesty or of consideration for others, the same resolute determination to get the best of outsiders in the matter of labour or bargains, to give as little and obtain as much as possible in all transactions, to underfeed, under-*pay, and overwork,—and all with the same high air of self-approval and righteousness.
Religious communities will cheerfully, singing, as it were, hymns of thanks, do for the glory of God things modest pagans would shrink from in honour of the devil, and the little French bourgeoise has much of this inexplicable complacency in dishonesty. Like the nuns, she is active and virtuous, and she is most pleasant as long as you are pliant and uncomplaining,—the ideal art student! But she is essentially a despot, the unyielding mistress of her own house; and she is cynically indifferent to your dissatisfaction should you think fit to make it visible. She has no hesitation whatever in letting you understand, with a sincerity that does her honour, that she did not take you as a boarder
