Fortunately I had had the advantage of being taught French by a

French lady; and as I had always made a point of conversing with

Madame Pierrot as often as I could, and had besides, during the last

seven years, learnt a portion of French by heart daily--applying

myself to take pains with my accent, and imitating as closely as

possible the pronunciation of my teacher, I had acquired a certain

degree of readiness and correctness in the language, and was not

likely to be much at a loss with Mademoiselle Adela. She came and

shook hand with me when she heard that I was her governess; and as I

led her in to breakfast, I addressed some phrases to her in her own

tongue: she replied briefly at first, but after we were seated at

the table, and she had examined me some ten minutes with her large

hazel eyes, she suddenly commenced chattering fluently.

"Ah!" cried she, in French, "you speak my language as well as Mr.

Rochester does: I can talk to you as I can to him, and so can

Sophie. She will be glad: nobody here understands her: Madame

Fairfax is all English. Sophie is my nurse; she came with me over

the sea in a great ship with a chimney that smoked--how it did

smoke!--and I was sick, and so was Sophie, and so was Mr. Rochester.

Mr. Rochester lay down on a sofa in a pretty room called the salon,

and Sophie and I had little beds in another place. I nearly fell

out of mine; it was like a shelf. And Mademoiselle--what is your

name?"

"Eyre--Jane Eyre."

"Aire? Bah! I cannot say it. Well, our ship stopped in the

morning, before it was quite daylight, at a great city--a huge city,

with very dark houses and all smoky; not at all like the pretty

clean town I came from; and Mr. Rochester carried me in his arms

over a plank to the land, and Sophie came after, and we all got into

a coach, which took us to a beautiful large house, larger than this

and finer, called an hotel. We stayed there nearly a week: I and

Sophie used to walk every day in a great green place full of trees,

called the Park; and there were many children there besides me, and

a pond with beautiful birds in it, that I fed with crumbs."

"Can you understand her when she runs on so fast?" asked Mrs.

Fairfax.

I understood her very well, for I had been accustomed to the fluent

tongue of Madame Pierrot.




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