[1] This chapter is reproduced from the _Cornhill_ by the kind permission of Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co.
MONSIEUR AND MADAME HEGER AS I SAW THEM; AND BELGIAN SCHOOLGIRLS AS I KNEW THEM
Let me give here my mother's, and my own, account of the impressions made upon us by M. Heger's personal appearance at this time.
'He is very like one of those selected Roman Catholic Priests,' my mother told her Dutch relatives, 'who go into society and look after the eldest sons of Catholic noblemen. He has too good a nose for a Belgian and, I should say, he has Italian blood in him.'
My own report, to my brother, who made anxious inquiries of me, was less flattering perhaps, but it was not intended to be disrespectful. I always see M. Heger as I saw him then: as too interesting to be alarming; but too alarming to be lovable.
'He is rather like Punch,' I said, 'but better looking of course; and not so good-tempered.'
Let me justify these two descriptions by showing that both of them were based upon an accurate observation of the man himself.
M. Heger, as I remember him, was no longer what Charlotte called him, angrily, in her letter to Ellen Nussey, a _little Black Being_, and, affectionately, under the disguise of Paul Emanuel, '_a spare, alert man, showing the velvet blackness of a close-shorn head, and the sallow ivory of his brow beneath_.' M. Heger in 1859 was still alert, but he was not spare, he was inclining towards stoutness. His hair was not velvet black, but grizzled, and he was bald on the crown of his head, in a way that might have been mistaken for a tonsure; and this no doubt added to the resemblance my mother saw in him to a Priest. He did not look in the least old, however. His brow, not sallow but bronzed, was unwrinkled; his eyes were still clear and penetrating (Charlotte said they were violet blue; and certainly she ought to have known. Still, _do violet eyes penetrate one's soul like points of steel?_) The Roman nose, that my mother thought too good a nose to be Belgian, and that reminded me of Punch (but a good-looking Punch) was a commanding feature. And the curved chin (also suggesting a good-looking Punch, to a young and irreverent observer), although it indicated humour, meant sarcasm, rather than a sense of fun. But Monsieur Heger had one really beautiful feature, that I remember often watching with extreme pleasure when he recited fine poetry or read noble prose:--his mouth, when uttering words that moved him, had a delightful smile, not in the least tender towards ordinary mortals, but almost tender in its homage to the excellence of writers of genius.