Quotation from: Villette

Written by: Charlotte Bronte


I was admiring the boy's handsome dark eyes, when the mother, young
Mrs. Leigh, entered. What a beautiful and kind-looking woman was the
good-natured and comely, but unintellectual, girl become! Wifehood and
maternity had changed her thus, as I have since seen them change
others even less promising than she. Me she had forgotten. I was
changed too, though not, I fear, for the better. I made no attempt to
recall myself to her memory; why should I? She came for her son to
accompany her in a walk, and behind her followed a nurse, carrying an
infant. I only mention the incident because, in addressing the nurse,
Mrs. Leigh spoke French (very bad French, by the way, and with an
incorrigibly bad accent, again forcibly reminding me of our school-
days): and I found the woman was a foreigner. The little boy chattered
volubly in French too. When the whole party were withdrawn, Mrs.
Barrett remarked that her young lady had brought that foreign nurse
home with her two years ago, on her return from a Continental
excursion; that she was treated almost as well as a governess, and had
nothing to do but walk out with the baby and chatter French with
Master Charles; "and," added Mrs. Barrett, "she says there are many
Englishwomen in foreign families as well placed as she."

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