My mother formed a most favourable opinion of our visitor, and decided that I was fortunate in obtaining such a Professor. What had especially impressed her was a sentence delivered by M. Heger, with a masterly little gesture, that, as she herself said, entirely won her over to his opinions upon a question where elaborate arguments might have left her unconvinced. And I may observe here, that this belonged to M. Heger's methods, not so much of arguing, as of dispensing with arguments. His mind was made up upon most subjects, and as he had got into the habit of regarding the world as his class-room, and his fellow-creatures as pupils, he did not argue; he told people what they ought to think about things. And in order to make this method of settling questions not only convincing, but stimulating, to his most intelligent pupils, he held in reserve a store of these really luminous phrases, that he would use as little Lanterns, flashing them, now in this direction, now in that, but always with a special and appropriate direction given to the illuminative phrase, so that it lit up the point of view upon which he desired to fix attention. The particular sentence that conquered my mother's admiration and acquiescence in M. Heger's point of view was the one I have made the heading of this chapter. Here was how he contrived to introduce it. After discussing the plan of _my_ studies, and the arrangements for my being taken to the English church by my brother every Sunday, and allowed to take walks with him upon half-holidays (to all of which of course I listened with passionate attention), they passed on to discuss the terms asked by the tutor whom the Hegers had recommended. My mother had been told by her Dutch cousin that they were exorbitant terms; and, as a matter of fact, I believe they were exactly twice the amount charged by the Hegers themselves: '_I am not a rich woman_,' my mother had said, apologetically, '_and I have put aside a fixed sum for my children's education; I doubt if I can give this_.' ... Then did the Professor see, and seize, his opportunity: '_Madame,'_ he said, with a gesture, '_quelquefois, donner, c'est semer_.' My mother, dazzled with this prophetic utterance, remained speechless and vanquished. In the evening of the same day I heard her quote to the Dutch cousin, who did not approve of her consent to these charges, '_what that clever man, Professor Heger) said so well_,' as though it had been unanswerable. In the course of the next two years I often heard the same luminous phrase used, with equal appropriateness, to light up other propositions. (I have heard M. Heger use it in a sense where it became a different formula for expressing a fundamental doctrine of Rousseau, thus, '_Instruire, ce n'est pas donner, c'est semer_,' but I never heard the words without going back to the first impression, and to the vision it called up. I would see again the little _salle-à-manger_