Had they not all prophesied a failure? When wearied with
the dull routine, I gave an oral lesson in poetry. If the rhymes were
of the chiming, rhythmic kind, Jeannette learned rapidly, catching the
verses as one catches a tune, and repeating them with a spirit and
dramatic gesture all her own. Her favorite was Macaulay's 'Ivry.'
Beautiful she looked, as, standing in the centre of the room, she
rolled out the sonorous lines, her French accent giving a charming
foreign coloring to the well-known verses:--
'Now by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of France,
Charge for the golden lilies,--upon them with the lance!
A thousand spears are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest,
A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white crest;
And in they burst, and on they rushed, while, like a guiding star,
Amidst the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre.'
And yet, after all my explanations, she only half understood it; the
'knights' were always 'nights' in her mind, and the 'thickest carnage'
was always the 'thickest carriage.'
One March day she came at the appointed hour, soon after our noon
dinner. The usual clear winter sky was clouded, and a wind blew the
snow from the trees where it had lain quietly month after month.
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