Quotation from: The Professor

Written by: Charlotte Bronte


Juanna was not very thin, but she had a gaunt visage, and her
"regard" was fierce and hungry; narrow as was her brow, it
presented space enough for the legible graving of two words,
Mutiny and Hate; in some one of her other lineaments I think the
eye--cowardice had also its distinct cipher. Mdlle. Trista
thought fit to trouble my first lessons with a coarse work-day
sort of turbulence; she made noises with her mouth like a horse,
she ejected her saliva, she uttered brutal expressions; behind
and below her were seated a band of very vulgar, inferior-looking
Flamandes, including two or three examples of that deformity of
person and imbecility of intellect whose frequency in the Low
Countries would seem to furnish proof that the climate is such as
to induce degeneracy of the human mind and body; these, I soon
found, were completely under her influence, and with their aid
she got up and sustained a swinish tumult, which I was
constrained at last to quell by ordering her and two of her tools
to rise from their seats, and, having kept them standing five
minutes, turning them bodily out of the schoolroom: the
accomplices into a large place adjoining called the grands salle;
the principal into a cabinet, of which I closed the door and
pocketed the key. This judgment I executed in the presence of
Mdlle. Reuter, who looked much aghast at beholding so decided a
proceeding--the most severe that had ever been ventured on in her
establishment. Her look of affright I answered with one of
composure, and finally with a smile, which perhaps flattered, and
certainly soothed her. Juanna Trista remained in Europe long
enough to repay, by malevolence and ingratitude, all who had ever
done her a good turn; and she then went to join her father in the
---- Isles, exulting in the thought that she should there have
slaves, whom, as she said, she could kick and strike at will.

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Old Dominion University CS Dept
Designed by Joan A. Smith for the CRATE project
Created: 2007-2-22T12:35:29Z
Part of the CratePreservation Project
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Part of a series of experiments in web preservation under the direction of Michael L. Nelson, Ph.D.