Quotation from: Villette

Written by: Charlotte Bronte


That other self-elected judge of mine, the professor in the Rue
Fossette, discovering by some surreptitious spying means, that I was
no longer so stationary as hitherto, but went out regularly at certain
hours of certain days, took it upon himself to place me under
surveillance. People said M. Emanuel had been brought up amongst
Jesuits. I should more readily have accredited this report had his
manoeuvres been better masked. As it was, I doubted it. Never was a
more undisguised schemer, a franker, looser intriguer. He would
analyze his own machinations: elaborately contrive plots, and
forthwith indulge in explanatory boasts of their skill. I know not
whether I was more amused or provoked, by his stepping up to me one
morning and whispering solemnly that he "had his eye on me: _he_
at least would discharge the duty of a friend, and not leave me
entirely to my own devices. My, proceedings seemed at present very
unsettled: he did not know what to make of them: he thought his cousin
Beck very much to blame in suffering this sort of fluttering
inconsistency in a teacher attached to her house. What had a person
devoted to a serious calling, that of education, to do with Counts and
Countesses, hotels and chateaux? To him, I seemed altogether 'en
l'air.' On his faith, he believed I went out six days in the seven."

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