_fine et spirituelle_;" one would hardly imagine it could ever resemble the "visage of a black and sallow tiger." His voice is low and soft, his bow still "very polite, not theatrical, scarcely French," his manner _suave_ and courteous, his dress scrupulously neat. He accosted us in the language Miss Bronte taught him forty years ago, and his accent and diction do honor to her instruction. He was, at this time, engaged with some patrons of the school, and, as his daughter had hinted that he was averse to speaking of Miss Bronte, we soon took leave of him and were shown through other parts of the school. The other class-rooms, used for less advanced pupils, are smaller. In one of them, the third, Miss Bronte had ruled as monitress after her return from Haworth. The large dormitory of the _pensionnat_ was above the long class-room, and in the time of the Brontes most of the boarders--about twenty in number--slept here. Their cots were arranged along either side, and the position of those occupied by the Brontes was pointed out to us at the extreme end of the long room. It was here that Lucy suffered the horrors of hypochondria, so graphically portrayed in "Villette," and found the discarded costume of the spectral nun lying upon her bed, and here Miss Bronte passed those nights of "dreary, wakeful misery" which Mrs. Gaskell describes. A long and rather narrow room in front of the class-rooms was shown us as the _refectoire_, where the Brontes, with the other boarders, took their meals, presided over by M. and Madame Heger, and where, during the evenings, the lessons for the ensuing days were prepared. Here were held the evening prayers, which Charlotte used to avoid by escaping into the garden. This, too, was the scene of M. Paul's whilom readings to teachers and pupils, and of some of his spasms of petulance, which readers of "Villette" will remember. From the _refectoire_ we passed again into the corridor, where we made our adieus to our affable conductress. She gave us her card, and explained that, whereas this establishment had formerly been both a _pensionnat_ and an _externat_, having about seventy day-pupils and twenty boarders when Miss Bronte was here, it is now, since the death of Madame Heger, used as a day-school only,--the _pensionnat_ being at some little distance, in the Avenue Louise, where Mademoiselle is a co-directress.