material sweetheart, Fanshawe, in the great garret beneath yonder skylight,—­the garret where Lucy retired to read Dr. John’s letter, and wherein M. Paul confined her to learn her part in the vaudeville for Madame Beck’s fete-day.  In this nook where we sat, Crimsworth, “The Professor,” had walked and talked with and almost made love to Mademoiselle Reuter, and from yonder window overlooking the alley had seen that perfidious fair one in dalliance with his employer, M. Pelet, beneath these pear-trees.  From that window M. Paul watched Lucy as she sat or walked in the allee defendue, dogged by Madame Beck; from the same window were thrown the love-letters which fell at Lucy’s feet sitting here.

Leaves from the overhanging boughs were plucked for us as souvenirs of the place; then, reverently traversing once more the narrow alley so often traced in weariness by Charlotte Bronte, we turned away.  From the garden we entered the long and spacious class-room of the first and second divisions.  A movable partition divides it across the middle when the classes are in session; the floor is of bare boards cleanly scoured.  There are long ranges of desks and benches upon either side, and a lane through the middle leads up to a raised platform at the end of the room, where the instructor’s chair and desk are placed.

How quickly our fancy peopled the place!  On these front seats sat the gay and indocile Belgian girls.  There, “in the last row, in the quietest corner, sat Emily and Charlotte side by side, so absorbed in their studies as to be insensible to anything about them;” and at the same desk, “in the farthest seat of the farthest row,” sat Mademoiselle Henri during Crimsworth’s English lessons.  Here Lucy’s desk was rummaged by M. Paul and the tell-tale odor of cigars left behind.  Here, after school-hours, Miss Bronte taught M. Heger English, he taught her French, and M. Paul taught Lucy arithmetic and (incidentally) love.  This was the scene of their tete-a-tetes, of his earnest efforts to persuade her into his faith in the Church of Rome, of their ludicrous supper of biscuit and baked apples, and of his final violent outbreak with Madame Beck, when she literally thrust herself between him and his love.  From this platform Crimsworth and Lucy Snowe and Charlotte Bronte herself had given instruction to pupils whose insubordination had first to be confronted and overcome.  Here M. Paul and M. Heger gave lectures upon literature, and Paul delivered his spiteful tirade against the English on the morning of his fete-day.  Upon this desk were heaped his bouquets that morning; from its smooth surface poor Lucy dislodged and fractured his cherished spectacles; and here, now, seated in Paul’s chair, at Paul’s desk, we saw and were presented to Paul Emanuel himself,—­M.  Heger.