In that mansion were held all the splendid feasts of the Grand Serment des Arbaletriers. The master-archer lived there constantly, in order to be ever at hand to render his services to the guild. The great saloon was also used for the court balls and festivals, when the archers were not admitted. The Infanta caused other and smaller houses to be built in her new street, to serve as residences for her "garde noble;" and for her "garde bourgeoise," a small habitation each, some of which still remain, to remind us of English almshouses. The "great mansion," with its quadrangular form; the spacious saloon--once used for the archducal balls, where the dark, grave Spaniards mixed with the blond nobility of Brabant and Flanders--now a school-room for Belgian girls; the cross-bow men's archery-ground--all are there--the pensionnat of Madame Heger.
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 Bronte 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 deje 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 e 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 e 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; and her estimation of their relative powers was the same. Emily had a head for logic, and a capability of argument, unusual in a man, and rare indeed in a woman, according to M. Heger. Impairing the force of this gift, was a stubborn tenacity of will, which rendered her obtuse to all reasoning where her own wishes, or her own sense of right, was concerned. "She should have been a man--a great navigator," said M. Heger in speaking of her. "Her powerful reason would have deduced new spheres of discovery from the knowledge of the old;and her strong imperious will would never have been daunted by opposition or difficulty; never have given way but with life."And yet, moreover, her faculty of imagination was such that, if she had written a history, her view of scenes and characters would have been so vivid, and so powerfully expressed, and supported by such a show of argument, that it would have dominated over the reader, whatever might have been his previous opinions, or his cooler perceptions of its truth. But she appeared egotistical and exacting compared to Charlotte, who was always unselfish (this is M. Heger's testimony); and in the anxiety of the elder to make her younger sister contented she allowed her to exercise a kind of unconscious tyranny over her.
After consulting with his wife, M. Heger told them that he meant to dispense with the old method of grounding in grammar, vocabulary, &c., and to proceed on a new plan--something similar to what he had occasionally adopted with the elder among his French and Belgian pupils. He proposed to read to them some of the master-pieces of the most celebrated French authors (such as Casimir de la Vigne's poem on the "Death of Joan of Arc," parts of Bossuet, the admirable translation of the noble letter of St.