observed our
surroundings. Facing us, at the extremity of the park, was the
unpretentious palace of the king, in the small square across the Rue
Royale at our right was the statue of General Beliard, and we knew that
just behind it we should find the Rue Fossette and Charlotte Bronte's
_pensionnat_, for Crimsworth, "The Professor," standing by the statue,
had "looked down a great staircase" to the door-way of the school, and
poor Lucy, on that forlorn first night in "Villette," to avoid the
insolence of a pair of ruffians, had hastened down a flight of steps from
the Rue Royale, and had come, not to the inn she sought, but to the
_pensionnat_ of Madame Beck.

From the statue we descended, by a quadruple series of wide stone
stairs, into a narrow street, old-fashioned and clean, quiet and
secluded in the very heart of the great city,--the Rue d'Isabelle,--and
just opposite the foot of the steps we came to the wide door of a
spacious, quadrangular, stuccoed old mansion, with a bit of foliage
showing over a high wall at one side. A bright plate embellishes the
door and bears the inscription,

PENSIONNAT DE DEMOISELLES
HEGER-PARENT.

A Latin inscription in the wall of the house shows it to have been given
to the Guild of Royal Archers by the Infanta Isabelle early in the
seventeenth century. Long before that the garden had been the orchard
and herbary of a convent and the Hospital for the Poor.

We were detained at the door long enough to remember Lucy standing
there, trembling and anxious, awaiting admission, and then we too were
"let in by a _bonne_ in a smart cap,"--apparently a fit successor to the
Rosine of forty years ago,--and entered the corridor. This is paved with
blocks of black and white marble and has painted walls. It extends
through the entire depth of the house, and at its farther extremity an
open door afforded us a glimpse of the garden.

We were ushered into the little _salon_ at the left of the passage,--the
one often mentioned in "Villette,"--and here we made known our wish to
see the garden and class-rooms, and met with a prompt refusal from the
neat _portresse_. We tried diplomacy (also lucre) with her, without
avail: it was the _grandes vacances_, the ladies were out, M. Heger was
engaged, we could not be gratified,--unless, indeed, we were patrons of
the school. At this juncture a portly, ruddy-faced lady of middle age
and most courteous of speech and manner appeared, and, addressing us in
fa