'But I see you are now in a good disposition,' she went on, 'and I am pleased to see it. Thus then, go quietly to bed without disturbing your companions, and I will send Clothilde to you with some flower-of-orange water that will tranquillise this hot head. Good night, and be very wise in the future: and all will be well.'
Ever since I have known the story of Charlotte Brontë I have had the firm conviction of what was in Madame Heger's mind when she spoke to me of one who had imagined enemies in friends, and who, complaining of injustice, had been unjust. But since I have read Charlotte's Letters, the unmistakable proof is that Madame Heger, so far as my memory serves me after all these years, actually quoted the very words of one of these letters, about one dominated by a fixed idea, and the slave of vain desires.
So then we may decide finally, that Madame Heger was not Madame Beck. And of M. Heger we may decide that he was not Paul Emanuel either; for Paul Emanuel having learnt that he had committed an injustice, would have called his whole school together, and in full class-room repaired his involuntary fault. But the real M. Heger did nothing of the sort. For a time there was a great coldness towards him in my heart. But in the hours of his lessons he remained, as ever, the 'Professor' of unrivalled merit.
Summing up what may be gathered from these reminiscences, I think the facts that can be affirmed are these:—
No moral likeness, but a physical resemblance, between Madame Heger and the portrait of Madame Beck. A strong and lifelike resemblance, between Paul Emanuel and M. Heger, up to the point when the Professor Paul falls in love with Lucy Snowe. After this event, a dwindling resemblance between the Professor in Villette, and the real Professor in the Rue d'Isabelle, who was never in love with Charlotte Brontë, and who was the lawful and attached husband of the Directress of the Pensionnat.
But when Professor Paul Emanuel becomes the docile disciple of Père Silas, when he is caught in the 'Jesuitical cobwebs of mother Church,' then he ceases to resemble the real man in the very least. M. Heger's role in life was not that of a disciple but of a Master of other people, and a very arbitrary and domineering Master too, for whom the world was his class-room. He was under the thumb of no priest, nor spiritual director. As for Jesuitical 'cobwebs,' the notion of M. Heger caught in any cobweb is absurd!
Every one knows what happens when a bumble-bee in its courses comes in contact with a cobweb. It is a mere incident in the career of the bumble-bee—but it is a disaster for the cobweb.