We are completely isolated in the midst of numbers. Yet I
think I am never unhappy; my present life is so delightful, so congenial
to my own nature, compared to that of a governess. My time, constantly
occupied, passes too rapidly. Hitherto both Emily and I have had good
health, and therefore we have been able to work well. There is one
individual of whom I have not yet spoken--M. Heger, the husband of
Madame. He is professor of rhetoric, a man of power as to mind, but very
choleric and irritable in temperament. He is very angry with me just at
present, because I have written a translation which he chose to
stigmatize as '_peu correct_.' He did not tell me so, but wrote the word
on the margin of my book, and asked, in brief stern phrase, how it
happened that my compositions were always better than my translations?
adding that the thing seemed to him inexplicable. The fact is, some
weeks ago, in a high-flown humour, he forbade me to use either dictionary
or grammar in translating the most difficult English compositions into
French. This makes the task rather arduous, and compels me every now and
then to introduce an English word, which nearly plucks the eyes out of
his head when he sees it. Emily and he don't draw well together at all.
Emily works like a horse, and she has had great difficulties to contend
with--far greater than I have had.
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