g speedily rescued him. {109b}

Madame Heger did indeed hate Charlotte Bronte in her later years. This
is not unnatural when we remember how that unfortunate woman has been
gibbeted for all time in the characters of Mlle. Zoraide Reuter and
Madame Beck. But in justice to the creator of these scathing portraits,
it may be mentioned that Charlotte Bronte took every precaution to
prevent _Villette_ from obtaining currency in the city which inspired it.
She told Miss Wheelwright, with whom naturally, on her visits to London,
she often discussed the Brussels life, that she had received a promise
that there should be no translation, and that the book would never appear
in the French language. One cannot therefore fix upon Charlotte Bronte
any responsibility for the circumstance that immediately after her death
the novel appeared in the only tongue understood by Madame Heger.

Miss Wheelwright informs me that Charlotte Bronte did certainly admire M.
Heger, as did all his pupils, very heartily. Charlotte's first
impression, indeed, was not flattering: 'He is professor of rhetoric, a
man of power as to mind, but very choleric and irritable in temperament;
a little black being, with a face that varies in expression. Sometimes
he borrows the lineaments of an insane tom-cat, sometimes those of a
delirious hyena; occasionally, but very seldom, he discards these
perilous attractions and assumes an air not above 100 degrees removed
from mild and gentleman-like.' But he was particularly attentive to
Charlotte; and as he was the first really intelligent man she had met,
the first man, that is to say, with intellectual interests--for we know
how much she despised the curates of her neighbourhood--she rejoiced at
every opportunity of doing verbal battle with him, for Charlotte
inherited, it may be said, the Irish love of debate. Some time after
Charlotte had returned to England, and when in the height of her fame,
she met her Brussels school-fellow in London. Miss Wheelwright asked her
whether she still corresponded with M. Heger. Charlotte replied that she
had discontinued to do so. M. Heger had mentioned in one letter that his
wife did not like the correspondence, and he asked her therefore to
address her letters to the Royal Athenee, where, as I have mentioned, he
gave lessons to the boys. 'I stopped writing at once,' Charlotte told
her friend. 'I would not have dreamt of writing to him when I found it
was disagreeable to h