Villette

by Charlotte Brontë

My visits to her resembled the sojourn of Christian and Hopeful beside a certain pleasant stream, with "green trees on each bank, and meadows beautified with lilies all the year round."

My godmother read the evening paper while she waited; I sewed. It was a wet night; the rain lashed the panes, and the wind sounded angry and restless.

"No need to say good-night, since we sleep in the same chamber," was the reply, with which she vanished from the drawing-room.

A proper "Little Miss"

It was not a noisy, not a wordy scene: for that I was thankful; but it was a scene of feeling too brimful, and which, because the cup did not foam up high or furiously overflow, only oppressed one the more.

Well! the amiable conjecture does no harm, and may therefore be safely left uncontradicted.

we cast with our own hands the tackling out of the ship;

I could wait on her and sit beside her with that calm which always blesses us when we are sensible that our manners, presence, contact, please and soothe the persons we serve.

All within me became narrowed to my lot. Tame and still by habit, disciplined by destiny, I demanded no walks in the fresh air; my appetite needed no more than the tiny messes served for the invalid. In addition, she gave me the originality of her character to study: the steadiness of her virtues, I will add, the power of her passions, to admire; the truth of her feelings to trust. All these things she had, and for these things I clung to her.

After a calm winter, storms were ushering in the spring.

A second storm transition

Three times in the course of my life, events had taught me that these strange accents in the storm--this restless, hopeless cry--denote a coming state of the atmosphere unpropitious to life.

"I love Memory to-night," she said: "I prize her as my best friend. She is just now giving me a deep delight: she is bringing back to my heart, in warm and beautiful life, realities--not mere empty ideas, but what were once realities, and that I long have thought decayed, dissolved, mixed in with grave-mould.

Memory in Proust

for I am not a particularly good woman: I am not amiable.

This I can now see and say: if few women have suffered as I did in his loss, few have enjoyed what I did in his love.

but I gave place to none except the surgeon; and when he had done what he could, I took my dying Frank to myself.

I doubt if I have made the best use of all my calamities. Soft, amiable natures they would have refined to saintliness; of strong, evil spirits they would have made demons; as for me, I have only been a woe-struck and selfish woman."

I left her about twilight; a walk of two miles lay before me; it was a clear, frosty night. In spite of my solitude, my poverty, and my perplexity, my heart, nourished and nerved with the vigour of a youth that had not yet counted twenty-three summers, beat light and not feebly.

In London for the first time; at an inn for the first time; tired with travelling; confused with darkness; palsied with cold; unfurnished with either experience or advice to tell me how to act, and yet--to act obliged. Into the hands of common sense I confided the matter.

I slept, then I woke and thought for two hours.

Villette--the great capital of the great kingdom of Labassecour.

wore a light not unbenignant to the friendless--the

A cook in a jacket, a short petticoat and sabots, brought my supper: to wit--some meat, nature unknown, served in an odd and acid, but pleasant sauce; some chopped potatoes, made savoury with, I know not what: vinegar and sugar, I think: a tartine, or slice of bread and butter, and a baked pear. Being hungry, I ate and was grateful.

Strangely had I been led since morning--unexpectedly had I been provided for. Scarcely could I believe that not forty-eight hours had elapsed since I left London, under no other guardianship than that which protects the passenger-bird--with no prospect but the dubious cloud-tracery of hope.

I shrank into my sloth like a snail into its shell, and alleged incapacity and impracticability as a pretext to escape action.

Besides, I seemed to hold two lives--the life of thought, and that of reality; and, provided the former was nourished with a sufficiency of the strange necromantic joys of fancy, the privileges of the latter might remain limited to daily bread, hourly work, and a roof of shelter.

Equality is much practised in Labassecour; though not republican in form, it is nearly so in substance, and at the desks of Madame Beck's establishment the young countess and the young bourgeoise sat side by side. Nor could you always by outward indications decide which was noble and which plebeian; except that, indeed, the latter had often franker and more courteous manners, while the former bore away the bell for a delicately-balanced combination of insolence and deceit. In the former there was often quick French blood mixed with the marsh-phlegm: I regret to say that the effect of this vivacious fluid chiefly appeared in the oilier glibness with which flattery and fiction ran from the tongue, and in a manner lighter and livelier, but quite heartless and insincere.

"Yes!" I said, "try to get a clear idea of the state of your mind. To me it seems in a great mess--chaotic as a rag-bag."

Les penseurs, les hommes profonds et passionnés ne sont pas à mon goût. Le Colonel Alfred de Hamal suits me far better. Va pour les beaux fats et les jolis fripons! Vive les joies et les plaisirs! A bas les grandes passions et les sévères vertus!"

She was solicitous about her family, vigilant for their interests and physical well- being; but she never seemed to know the wish to take her little children upon her lap, to press their rosy lips with her own, to gather them in a genial embrace, to shower on them softly the benignant caress, the loving word.

No sooner did Fifine emerge from his hands than Désirée declared herself ill. That possessed child had a genius for simulation, and captivated by the attentions and indulgences of a sick-room, she came to the conclusion that an illness would perfectly accommodate her tastes, and took her bed accordingly.

He, I believe, never remembered that I had eyes in my head, much less a brain behind them.

"Mademoiselle does not spare me: I am not vain enough to fancy that it is my merits which attract her attention; it must then be some defect. Dare I ask--what?"

People said he had no money, that he was wholly dependent upon his profession.

He had never been quite within the compass of my penetration, and I think he ranged farther and farther beyond it.

Never had I pitied Madame before, but my heart softened towards her, when she turned darkly from the glass. A calamity had come upon her. That hag Disappointment was greeting her with a grisly "All-hail," and her soul rejected the intimacy.

"Voyez-vous," cried she, "comme elle est propre, cette demoiselle Lucie? Vous aimez done cette allée, Meess?"

I did long, achingly, then and for four and twenty hours afterwards, for something to fetch me out of my present existence, and lead me upwards and onwards.

This is itchy feet.

une véritable bégueule Britannique à ce que vous dites-- espèce de monstre, brusque et rude comme un vieux caporal de grenadiers, et revêche comme une religieuse

I caught myself smiling as I lay awake and thoughtful on my couch-- smiling at Madame. The unction, the suavity of her behaviour offered, for one who knew her, a sure token that suspicion of some kind was busy in her brain.

Conrad and Elizabeth of Hungary,

Before I saw, I felt that life was in the great room, usually void: not that there was either stir or breath, or rustle of sound, but Vacuum lacked, Solitude was not at home.

how short some people make the road to a point which, for others, seems unattainable!

or any effrontery in chattering like a pie to the best gentleman in Christendom.

A strange, frolicsome, noisy little world was this school: great pains were taken to hide chains with flowers: a subtle essence of Romanism pervaded every arrangement: large sensual indulgence (so to speak) was permitted by way of counterpoise to jealous spiritual restraint. Each mind was being reared in slavery; but, to prevent reflection from dwelling on this fact, every pretext for physical recreation was seized and made the most of. There, as elsewhere, the CHURCH strove to bring up her children robust in body, feeble in soul, fat, ruddy, hale, joyous, ignorant, unthinking, unquestioning. "Eat, drink, and live!" she says. "Look after your bodies; leave your souls to me. I hold their cure--guide their course: I guarantee their final fate." A bargain, in which every true Catholic deems himself a gainer. Lucifer just offers the same terms: "All this power will I give thee, and the glory of it; for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou, therefore, wilt worship me, all shall be thine!"

Catholic!

"Eh bien! Deux ou trois cuillers, et autant de fourchettes en argent."

"Vous n'êtes donc que des poupées,"

"Vous n'avez pas de passions--vous autres. Vous ne sentez donc rien? Votre chair est de neige, votre sang de glace! Moi, je veux que tout cela s'allume, qu'il ait une vie, une âme!"

"C'est cela!" said a voice. "Je la connais: c'est l'Anglaise. Tant pis. Toute Anglaise, et, par conséquent, toute bégueule qu'elle soit-- elle fera mon affaire, ou je saurai pourquoi."

to kill time.

"J'ai tout entendu. C'est assez bien. Encore!"

"Eh bien! Qu'est-ce que c'est, Mademoiselle?" "J'ai bien faim." "Comment, vous avez faim! Et la collation?" "I know nothing about it.