Here is the
dormitory with its twenty beds, the two end ones being occupied by Emily
and Charlotte, they alone securing the privilege of age or English
eccentricity to curtain off their beds from the gaze of the eighteen
girls who shared the room with them. The crucifix, indeed, has been
removed from the niche in the _Oratoire_ where the children offered up
prayer every morning; but with a copy of _Villette_ in hand it is
possible to restore every feature of the place, not excluding the
adjoining Athenee with its small window overlooking the garden of the
Pensionnat and the _allee defendu_. It was from this window that Mr.
Crimsworth of _The Professor_ looked down upon the girls at play. It was
here, indeed, at the Royal Athenee, that M. Heger was Professor of Latin.
Externally, then, the Pensionnat Heger remains practically the same as it
appeared to Charlotte and Emily Bronte in February 1842, when they made
their first appearance in Brussels. The Rue Fossette of _Villette_, the
Rue d'Isabelle of _The Professor_, is the veritable Rue d'Isabelle of
Currer Bell's experience.
What, however, shall we say of the people who wandered through these
rooms and gardens--the hundred or more children, the three or four
governesses, the professor and his wife? Here there has been much
speculation and not a little misreading of the actual facts.
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