Page:The Professor (1857 Volume 1).djvu/151

 what she intended should be a graceful and elastic step, thus accosted me.

"Monsieur is indeed most obliging to quit his books, his studies, at the request of an insignificant person like me—will Monsieur complete his kindness by allowing me to present him to my dear friend Madame Reuter, who resides in the neighbouring house—the young ladies' school."

"Ah!" thought I, "I knew she was old," and I bowed and took my seat; Madame Reuter placed herself at the table opposite to me.

"How do you like Belgium, monsieur?" asked she in an accent of the broadest Bruxellois. I could now well distinguish the difference between the fine and pure Parisian utterance of M. Pelet, for instance, and the guttural enunciation of the Flamands. I answered politely, and then wondered how so coarse and clumsy an old woman as the one before me, should be at the head of a ladies' seminary which I had always heard spoken