This tardy success was manifested by steel buckles to his shoes, which were lined with horse-hair soles, and by a more frequent change of linen.

His artless gaiety, long suppressed by noble and decent poverty, reappeared.
He gave vent to witty little remarks and flowery speeches in his German-Gallic patois, very observing and very quaint and said with an air which disarmed ridicule.

But he was so pleased to bring a laugh to the lips of his two pupils, whose dismal life his sympathy had penetrated, that he would gladly have made himself wilfully ridiculous had he failed in being so by nature.
According to one of the nobler ideas of religious education, the young girls always accompanied their master respectfully to the door.

There they would make him a few kind speeches, glad to do anything to give him pleasure.

Poor things! all they could do was to show him their womanhood.