"But, Madame Joubert--"

"Will you be silent!"

"Yes, Madame Joubert; only--"

"Pupasse, one more word--and--" Madame Joubert was forgetting her
comedy--"Listen, Pupasse, and obey! You go home and learn that lesson.
When you know it, you can reënter your class. That is the punishment I
have thought of to correct your 'want of attention.'"

That was the way Madame Joubert put it--"want of attention."

Pupasse looked at her--at madame, a silent but potent spectator. To
be sent from home because she did not know the rule of the irregular
verbs! To be sent from home, family, friends!--for that was the
way Pupasse put it. She had been in that school--it may only be
whispered--fifteen years. Madame Joubert knew it; so did madame,
although they accounted for only four or five years in each class.
That school was her home; Madame Joubert--God help her!--her mother;
madame, her divinity; fools' caps and turned-up skirts, her life.
The old grandmother--she it was who had done everything for her (a
_ci-devant_ rag-picker, they say); she it was who was nothing to her.

Madame must have felt something of it besides the loss of the
handsome salary for years from the little old withered woman.
But conventionality is inexorable; and the St. Denis's great
recommendation was its conventionality. Madame Joubert must have felt
something of it,--she must have felt something of it,--for why should
she volunteer? Certainly madame could not have imposed _that_ upon