The Secret of Charlotte Bront?

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er, c'est semer'-Speech ma

ere staying at Ostend, where my mother had taken my brother and myself for a long summer holiday, because she believed we had been previously overworked at our former schools, from which she had removed us. She was convinced tha

to be done with us.' What was done with us was the result of circumstances that I cannot but regard as fortunate, in my own case at any rate. They brought into my life, a

after Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bront?, it did not occur to my mother to identify this particular Brussels school with the one where the Director was the fiery and perilously attractive 'Professor Paul Emanuel' and where the Directress was painted as the crafty and treacherous 'Madame Beck,' I really cannot say; but, so it was. There can be no doubt that it was solely because the account rendered by her delightful young kinswoman of the school where she had spent three years was thoroughly satisfactory to my mother, and because the unaffected and accomplished girl herself was a

ruling spirit in the Pensionnat; that he was rather a terrible personage; and that if he took a dislike to one,-well, he could be very disagreeable. I had received so much advice upon this particular subject from my cousin that I had talked the matter over very ser

r to recognise that he was in any way different to ordinary mortals! And I must say, looking back to that September afternoon to-day, and realising our attitude of mind, my mother's and mine, towards this interesting personage to us, but interesting solely in his character of my future teacher, there does seem to me something amazing-so amazing as to be almost amusing-in our total unconsciousness of his already well-established real, or rather ideal

anuel; I loathe Madame Beck; I shall never make friends with these horrid Lesbassecouriennes?' Well, really, I don't think I should have done anything of the sort! At fourteen one adores an adventure. It seems to me probable that the excitement of going to the same school, and learning my lessons in the same class-rooms, and treading the paths of the same garden, and being instructed by the same teachers as a writer of genius, who had left these scenes haunted by romance, would have made me hold under all apprehensions of t

ecouriennes pupils, was it equally certain that, if I had read Villette, I should not have recognised and been justified in recognising in Monsieur Heger the ori

about M. Heger is chiefly this: that it expresses observations made from a purely personal standpoint; out of sight of any literary views about 'Paul Emanuel,' or historical judgments upon his relations with Charlotte Bront?. T

made the heading of this chapter. Here was how he contrived to introduce it. After discussing the plan of my studies, and the arrangements for my being taken to the English church by my brother every Sunday, and allowed to take walks with him upon half-holidays (to all of which of course I listened with passionate attention), they passed on to discuss the terms asked by the tutor whom the Hegers had recommended. My mother had been told by her Dutch cousin that they were exorbitant terms; and, as a matter of fact, I believe they were exactly twice the amount charged by the Hegers themselves: 'I am not a rich woman,' my mother had said, apologetically, 'and I have put aside a fixed sum for my children's education; I doubt if I can give this.' ... Then did the Professor see, and seize, his opportunity: 'Madame,' he said, with a gesture, 'quelquefois, donner, c'est semer.' My mother, dazzled with this prophetic utterance, remained speechless and vanquished. In the evening of the same day I heard her quote to the Dutch cousin, who did not approve of her consent to these charges, 'what that clever man, Professor Heger) said so well,' as though it had been unanswerable. In the course of the next two years I often heard the same luminous phrase used, with equal a

was all my own fault; or rather,

mother. And this is how I had heard myself described to my future Professor. My mother had wished to say that I was more fond of study and of reading than was good for the health of a girl of my age; but what she actually said was that I was fond of reading things that were not healthy or suitable (convenable) for a young girl. Again, she had meant to say that as I had worked too hard, she had let me run wild a little; and that consequently I might find it difficult to get into working habits again; but that as I had a capital head of my own, and plenty of courage, I should, no doubt, soon get into good ways again. But instead of all these flattering things (that might have been rather irritating too, only a Professor of experience knows how to forgive a parent's partiality), I had heard this fond mother of mine say that her

had made the natural reply, the one obviously expected from me-the one any girl in my position would have made, and which I myself should have made if I hadn't been addressed as 'a little savage,' and if I hadn't been smarting under the sense that he must have the worst possible opinion of me, and that I ought to vindicate my honour in some way,-if only, in short, I had remembered my brother's wholesome advice, 'Don't show off,' that is to say, if only I had said, amiably and nicely, with a timid little smile, 'Trop indulgent, s'il vous plait, Monsieur,' THEN all would have been well with me; M. Heger would have continued to smile; we should have exchanged amiable glances and parted the best of friends..

eally was not quite

m the Cornhill by the kind permiss