r consacre encore les soirees. Apres des journees
absorbees tout entieres par les devoirs que sa place lui impose, il
reunit les pauvres, les ouvriers, leur donne des cours gratuits, et
trouve encore le moyen de les amuser en les instruisant. Ce devouement
te dira assez que M. Heger est profondement et ouvertement religieux. Il
a des manieres franches et avenantes; il se fait aimer de tous ceux qui
l'approchent, et surtout des enfants. Il a la parole facile, et possde a
un haut degre l'eloquence du bon sens et du coeur. Il n'est point
auteur. Homme de zele et de conscience, il vient de se demettre des
fonctions elevees et lucratives qu'il exercait a l'Athenee, celles de
Prefet des Etudes, parce qu'il ne peut y realiser le bien qu'il avait
espere, introduire l'enseignement religieux dans le programme des etudes.
J'ai vu une fois Madame Heger, qui a quelque chose de froid et de
compasse dans son maintien, et qui previent peu en sa faveur. Je la
crois pourtant aimee et appreciee par ses eleves."

There were from eighty to a hundred pupils in the pensionnat, when
Charlotte and Emily Bronte entered in February 1842.

M. Heger's account is that they knew nothing of French. I suspect they
knew as much (or as little), for all conversational purposes, as any
English girls do, who have never been abroad, and have only learnt the
idioms and pronunciation from an Englishwoman. The two sisters clung
together, and kept apart from the herd of happy, boisterous,
well-befriended Belgian girls, who, in their turn, thought the new
English pupils wild and scared-looking, with strange, odd, insular ideas
about dress; for Emily had taken a fancy to the fashion, ugly and
preposterous even during its reign, of gigot sleves, and persisted in
wearing them long after they were "gone out." Her petticoats, too, had
not a curve or a wave in them, but hung down straight and long, clinging
to her lank figure. The sisters spoke to no one but from necessity. They
were too full of earnest thought, and of the exile's sick yearning, to be
ready for careless conversation or merry game. M. Heger, who had done
little but observe, during the few first weeks of their residence in the
Rue d'Isabelle, perceived that with their unusual characters, and
extraordinary talents, a different mode must be adopted from that in
which he generally taught French to English girls. He seems to have
rated Emily's genius as something even higher than Charlotte's; a