As I told you before, M. and Madame Heger are the only two
persons in the house for whom I really experience regard and esteem,
and of course, I cannot be always with them, nor even very often. They
told me, when I first returned, that I was to consider their sitting-
room my sitting-room also, and to go there whenever I was not engaged
in the schoolroom. This, however, I cannot do. In the daytime it is
a public room, where music-masters and mistresses are constantly
passing in and out; and in the evening, I will not, and ought not to
intrude on M. and Madame Heger and their children. Thus I am a good
deal by myself, out of school-hours; but that does not signify. I now
regularly give English lessons to M. Heger and his brother-in-law.
They get on with wonderful rapidity; especially the first. He already
begins to speak English very decently. If you could see and hear the
efforts I make to teach them to pronounce like Englishmen, and their
unavailing attempts to imitate, you would laugh to all eternity.
"The Carnival is just over, and we have entered upon the gloom and
abstinence of Lent. The first day of Lent we had coffee without milk
for breakfast; vinegar and vegetables, with a very little salt fish,
for dinner; and bread for supper.
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