During the greater part of this harangue my hand was on the lock
of the outer door; I now turned it.
"Au revoir, mademoiselle," said I, and I escaped. I saw the
directress's stock of words was yet far from exhausted. She
looked after me, she would fain have detained me longer. Her
manner towards me had been altered ever since I had begun to
treat her with hardness and indifference: she almost cringed to
me on every occasion; she consulted my countenance incessantly,
and beset me with innumerable little officious attentions.
Servility creates despotism. This slavish homage, instead of
softening my heart, only pampered whatever was stern and exacting
in its mood. The very circumstance of her hovering round me like
a fascinated bird, seemed to transform me into a rigid pillar of
stone; her flatteries irritated my scorn, her blandishments
confirmed my reserve. At times I wondered what she meant by
giving herself such trouble to win me, when the more profitable
Pelet was already in her nets, and when, too, she was aware that
I possessed her secret, for I had not scrupled to tell her as
much: but the fact is that as it was her nature to doubt the
reality and under-value the worth of modesty, affection,
disinterestedness--to regard these qualities as foibles of
character--so it was equally her tendency to consider pride,
hardness, selfishness, as proofs of strength. She would trample
on the neck of humility, she would kneel at the feet of disdain;
she would meet tenderness with secret contempt, indifference she
would woo with ceaseless assiduities. Benevolence, devotedness,
enthusiasm, were her antipathies; for dissimulation and
self-interest she had a preference--they were real wisdom in her
eyes; moral and physical degradation, mental and bodily
inferiority, she regarded with indulgence; they were foils
capable of being turned to good account as set-offs for her own
endowments. To violence, injustice, tyranny, she succumbed--they
were her natural masters; she had no propensity to hate, no
impulse to resist them; the indignation their behests awake in
some hearts was unknown in hers. From all this it resulted that
the false and selfish called her wise, the vulgar and debased
termed her charitable, the insolent and unjust dubbed her
amiable, the conscientious and benevolent generally at first
accepted as valid her claim to be considered one of themselves;
but ere long the plating of pretension wore off, the real
material appeared below, and they laid her aside as a deception.
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