This lady was assisted in the work of instruction by her husband—­a kindly, wise, good, and religious man—­whose acquaintance I am glad to have made, and who has furnished me with some interesting details, from his wife’s recollections and his own, of the two Miss Brontes during their residence in Brussels.  He had the better opportunities of watching them, from his giving lessons in the French language and literature in the school.  A short extract from a letter, written to me by a French lady resident in Brussels, and well qualified to judge, will help to show the estimation in which he is held.

“Je ne connais pas personnellement M. Heger, mais je sais qu’il est peu de caracteres aussi nobles, aussi admirables que le sien.  Il est un des membres les plus zeles de cette Societe de S. Vincent de Paul dont je t’ai deja parle, et ne se contente pas de servir les pauvres et les malades, mais leur 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