They knew they had succeeded in expelling obnoxious teachers before now; they knew that Madame would at any time throw overboard a professeur or maitresse who became unpopular with the school--that she never assisted a weak official to retain his place--that if he had not strength to fight, or tact to win his way, down he went: looking at "Miss Snowe," they promised themselves an easy victory.
Mesdemoiselles Blanche, Virginie, and Angelique opened the campaign by a series of titterings and whisperings; these soon swelled into murmurs and short laughs, which the remoter benches caught up and echoed more loudly.

This growing revolt of sixty against one, soon became oppressive enough; my command of French being so limited, and exercised under such cruel constraint.
Could I but have spoken in my own tongue, I felt as if I might have gained a hearing; for, in the first place, though I knew I looked a poor creature, and in many respects actually was so, yet nature had given me a voice that could make itself heard, if lifted in excitement or deepened by emotion.

In the second place, while I had no flow, only a hesitating trickle of language, in ordinary circumstances, yet--under stimulus such as was now rife through the mutinous mass--I could, in English, have rolled out readily phrases stigmatizing their proceedings as such proceedings deserved to be stigmatized; and then with some sarcasm, flavoured with contemptuous bitterness for the ringleaders, and relieved with easy banter for the weaker but less knavish followers, it seemed to me that one might possibly get command over this wild herd, and bring them into training, at least.

All I could now do was to walk up to Blanche--Mademoiselle de Melcy, a young baronne--the eldest, tallest, handsomest, and most vicious--stand before her desk, take from under her hand her exercise-book, remount the estrade, deliberately read the composition, which I found very stupid, and, as deliberately, and in the face of the whole school, tear the blotted page in two.
This action availed to draw attention and check noise.

One girl alone, quite in the background, persevered in the riot with undiminished energy.