The Professor / Учитель. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“Je les connais![227]” exclaimed M. Pelet. “Elles sont toujours au premier rang à l’église et à la promenade; une blonde superbe, une jolie espiegle, une belle brune.[228]”

“Exactly.”

“Lovely creatures all of them – heads for artists; what a group they would make, taken together! Eulalie (I know their names), with her smooth braided hair and calm ivory brow. Hortense, with her rich chesnut locks so luxuriantly knotted, plaited, twisted, as if she did not know how to dispose of all their abundance, with her vermilion lips, damask cheek, and roguish laughing eye. And Caroline de Blemont! Ah, there is beauty! beauty in perfection. What a cloud of sable curls about the face of a houri! What fascinating lips! What glorious black eyes! Your Byron[229] would have worshipped her, and you – you cold, frigid islander! – you played the austere, the insensible in the presence of an Aphrodite[230] so exquisite?”

I might have laughed at the director’s enthusiasm had I believed it real, but there was something in his tone which indicated got-up raptures. I felt he was only affecting fervour in order to put me off my guard, to induce me to come out in return, so I scarcely even smiled. He went on:

“Confess, William, do not the mere good looks of Zoraïde Reuter appear dowdyish and commonplace compared with the splendid charms of some of her pupils?”

The question discomposed me, but I now felt plainly that my principal was endeavouring (for reasons best known to himself – at that time I could not fathom them) to excite ideas and wishes in my mind alien to what was right and honourable. The iniquity of the instigation proved its antidote, and when he further added:

“Each of those three beautiful girls will have a handsome fortune; and with a little address, a gentlemanlike, intelligent young fellow like you might make himself master of the hand, heart, and purse of any one of the trio.”

I replied by a look and an interrogative “Monsieur?” which startled him.

He laughed a forced laugh, affirmed that he had only been joking, and demanded whether I could possibly have thought him in earnest. Just then the bell rang; the play-hour was over; it was an evening on which M. Pelet was accustomed to read passages from the drama and the belles lettres[231] to his pupils. He did not wait for my answer, but rising, left the room, humming as he went some gay strain of Beranger[232]’s.

Chapter XII

Daily, as I continued my attendance at the seminary of Mdlle. Reuter, did I find fresh occasions to compare the ideal with the real. What had I known of female character previously to my arrival at Brussels? Precious little. And what was my notion of it? Something vague, slight, gauzy, glittering; now when I came in contact with it I found it to be a palpable substance enough; very hard too sometimes, and often heavy; there was metal in it, both lead and iron.