Taking this portrait from _Villette_, as it is given of Madame Beck, and comparing it with my own recollections, and also with the photograph I am fortunate enough to possess of Madame Heger at the age of sixty, it seems to me that this _is_ a very accurate physical description of the real Directress of the school in the Rue d'Isabelle; who morally was as unlike the fictitious Madame Beck as truth is unlike falsehood. About the physical resemblance, I may say that, if I had trusted to my own impressions, I should have rejected the assertion that the 'outline of her features was stern.' I never remember associating sternness with Madame Heger; though her supreme quality of serenity imposed a sort of respect that had a little touch of fear in it. Upon re-examining the photograph attentively, however, I find that it is true that the outline of the features _is_ stern; but I do not think that this impression was conveyed by the younger face, remembered with softened colouring; and lit up, as a characteristic expression, by a normal expression of serenity and of kindliness. '_I know not what of harmony pervaded her whole person_': that sentence of Charlotte's (used by her of the unspeakable Madame Beck) exactly expresses the impression I still retain of the very estimable and, by myself, affectionately remembered, Madame Heger. [Illustration: MADAME HEGER AT SIXTY. (She was thirty years younger when Charlotte knew her) From a portrait given to the author by Madame Heger's daughter (Author's _Copyright_)]