The D.s were leaving Brussels; so, henceforth, her
weekly holiday would have to be passed in the Rue d'Isabelle, or so she
thought. "Mary" was gone off on her own independent course; Martha alone
remained--still and quiet for ever, in the cemetery beyond the Porte de
Louvain. The weather, too, for the first few weeks after Charlotte's
return, had been piercingly cold; and her feeble constitution was always
painfully sensitive to an inclement season. Mere bodily pain, however
acute, she could always put aside; but too often ill-health assailed her
in a part far more to be dreaded. Her depression of spirits, when she
was not well, was pitiful in its extremity. She was aware that it was
constitutional, and could reason about it; but no reasoning prevented her
suffering mental agony, while the bodily cause remained in force.
The Hegers have discovered, since the publication of "Villette," that at
this beginning of her career as English teacher in their school, the
conduct of her pupils was often impertinent and mutinous in the highest
degree. But of this they were unaware at the time, as she had declined
their presence, and never made any complaint. Still it must have been a
depressing thought to her at this period, that her joyous, healthy,
obtuse pupils were so little answerable to the powers she could bring to
bear upon them; and though from their own testimony, her patience,
firmness, and resolution, at length obtained their just reward, yet with
one so weak in health and spirits, the reaction after such struggles as
she frequently had with her pupils, must have been very sad and painful.
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