Quotation from: Villette

Written by: Charlotte Bronte


Paulina was awed by the savants, but not quite to mutism: she
conversed modestly, diffidently; not without effort, but with so true
a sweetness, so fine and penetrating a sense, that her father more
than once suspended his own discourse to listen, and fixed on her an
eye of proud delight. It was a polite Frenchman, M. Z----, a very
learned, but quite a courtly man, who had drawn her into discourse. I
was charmed with her French; it was faultless--the structure correct,
the idioms true, the accent pure; Ginevra, who had lived half her life
on the Continent, could do nothing like it not that words ever failed
Miss Fanshawe, but real accuracy and purity she neither possessed, nor
in any number of years would acquire. Here, too, M. de Bassompierre
was gratified; for, on the point of language, he was critical.

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