Villette

by Charlotte Brontë

Throughout our walk she rang the most fanciful changes on this theme; proving, by her obstinate credulity, or incredulity, her incapacity to conceive how any person not bolstered up by birth or wealth, not supported by some consciousness of name or connection, could maintain an attitude of reasonable integrity.

Who are you?

Her light, disconnected prattle might have gratified Graham once; perhaps it pleased him still: perhaps it was only fancy which suggested the thought that, while his eye was filled and his ear fed, his taste, his keen zest, his lively intelligence, were not equally consulted and regaled.

her immature, but real and inbred tact, pleased their national taste;

"Voilà que le jour va poindre! Dites donc, mon ami." "Monsieur Paul, je vous pardonne."

Williams Shackspire; le faux dieu," he further announced, "de ces sots païens, les Anglais."

Conscious always of this basilisk attention, she would writhe under it, half-flattered, half-puzzled, and Monsieur would follow her sensations, sometimes looking appallingly acute; for in some cases, he had the terrible unerring penetration of instinct, and pierced in its hiding-place the last lurking thought of the heart, and discerned under florid veilings the bare; barren places of the spirit: yes, and its perverted tendencies, and its hidden false curves--all that men and women would not have known--the twisted spine, the malformed limb that was born with them, and far worse, the stain or disfigurement they have perhaps brought on themselves.

He thought he did justice; for my part I doubt whether man has a right to do such justice on man:

contumacity.

An inexorable voice merely recommended silence; and this salamander--for whom no room ever seemed too hot--sitting down between my desk and the stove-- a situation in which he ought to have felt broiled, but did not-- proceeded to confront me with--a Greek quotation!

A "woman of intellect," it appeared, was a sort of "lusus naturae," a luckless accident, a thing for which there was neither place nor use in creation, wanted neither as wife nor worker.

"Would I speak now, and be tractable?"

I had seen her run up to him, put her arm through his, and hang upon him. Once, when she did so, a curious sensation had struck through me--a disagreeable anticipatory sensation--one of the family of presentiments, I suppose--but I refused to analyze or dwell upon it.

I paced up and down, thinking almost the same thoughts I had pondered that night when I buried my glass jar--how I should make some advance in life, take another step towards an independent position;

"Courage, Lucy Snowe! With self-denial and economy now, and steady exertion by-and-by, an object in life need not fail you. Venture not to complain that such an object is too selfish, too limited, and lacks interest; be content to labour for independence until you have proved, by winning that prize, your right to look higher.

So this subject is done with. It is right to look our life-accounts bravely in the face now and then, and settle them honestly. And he is a poor self-swindler who lies to himself while he reckons the items, and sets down under the head--happiness that which is misery. Call anguish--anguish, and despair--despair; write both down in strong characters with a resolute pen: you will the better pay your debt to Doom. Falsify: insert "privilege" where you should have written "pain;" and see if your mighty creditor will allow the fraud to pass, or accept the coin with which you would cheat him. Offer to the strongest--if the darkest angel of God's host--water, when he has asked blood--will he take it? Not a whole pale sea for one red drop. I settled another account.

"Then you have more need of a careful friend. I scarcely know any one, Miss Lucy, who needs a friend more absolutely than you; your very faults imperatively require it. You want so much checking, regulating, and keeping down."

"That," said he, "is a room I have hired, nominally for a study-- virtually for a post of observation. There I sit and read for hours together: it is my way--my taste. My book is this garden; its contents are human nature--female human nature.

Perving

"Monsieur, I have observed you in public--on platforms, in tribunes, before titles and crowned heads--and you were as easy as you are in the third division."

You said that he felt uncomfortable being called into a discussion with wealthy society!

I am safe from poor Zélie."

Zelie St Pierre

"Monsieur, I tell you every glance you cast from that lattice is a wrong done to the best part of your own nature. To study the human heart thus, is to banquet secretly and sacrilegiously on Eve's apples. I wish you were a Protestant."

The pearl he admired was in itself of great price and truest purity, but he was not the man who, in appreciating the gem, could forget its setting.

He was a man whom it made happy to see others happy;

Only to the very stupid, perverse, or unsympathizing, was he in the slightest degree dangerous.

It had been a pleasant day: it would have been perfect, but for the breathing of melancholy which had dimmed its sunshine a moment. That tarnish was renewed the same evening.

fear a high wind, because storm demands that exertion of strength and use of action I always yield with pain; but the sullen down-fall, the thick snow-descent, or dark rush of rain, ask only resignation-- the quiet abandonment of garments and person to be, drenched.

That church, whose dark, half-ruinous turrets overlooked the square, was the venerable and formerly opulent shrine of the Magi.

"Que me voulez-vous?"

He had brought her to this house, "and," continued the priest, while genuine tears rose to his eyes, "here, too, he shelters me, his old tutor, and Agnes, a superannuated servant of his father's family. To our sustenance, and to other charities, I know he devotes three-parts of his income,

caught this glance, despite its veiled character; the momentary gleam shot a meaning which struck me.

"Oh la singulière petite bossue!" laughed she. "Et figurez-vous qu'elle me déteste, parcequ'elle me croit amoureuse de mon cousin Paul; ce petit dévot qui n'ose pas bouger, à moins que son confesseur ne lui donne la permission! Au reste"

Nor was opportunity slow to favour; my new impressions underwent her test the next day. Yes: I was granted an interview with my "Christian hero"--an interview not very heroic, or sentimental, or biblical, but lively enough in its way.

covenant of friendship could be ratified.

I was willing to be his sister, on condition that he did not invite me to fill that relation to some future wife of his; and tacitly vowed as he was to celibacy, of this dilemma there seemed little danger.

By dint of persuasion, I made him half-define these hints; they amounted to crafty Jesuit-slanders.

I thought Romanism wrong, a great mixed image of gold and clay;

She thought him very perfect; it was Graham himself, who, at first by the merest chance, mentioned some book he had been reading, and when in her response sounded a welcome harmony of sympathies, something, pleasant to his soul, he talked on, more and better perhaps than he had ever talked before on such subjects. She listened with delight, and answered with animation.

Proof of a life to come must be given. In fire and in blood, if needful, must that proof be written.

every mouth opened; every tongue wagged;

"Il est doux, le repos! Il est précieux le calme bonheur!"

"Que vous êtes pâle! Vous êtes donc bien malade, Mademoiselle!"

Once and again, I have found that the most cross- grained are by no means the worst of mankind; nor the humblest in station, the least polished in feeling.

Consider: M. Emanuel

All my life long I carried it folded in the hollow of my hand yet, released from that hold and constriction, I know not but its innate capacity for expanse might have magnified it into a tabernacle for a host.

Carrying a torch? Religiosexual symbolism

throughout this woody and turfy theatre reigned a shadow of mystery; actors and incidents unlooked-for, waited behind the scenes: I thought so foreboding told me as much.

In some shape, from some quarter or other, she was pretty sure to obtain her will, and so she got on--fighting the battle of life by proxy, and, on the whole, suffering as little as any human being I have ever known.

To be left to her and her cordial seemed to me something like being left to the poisoner and her bowl.

"Elle est toute pâle," said he, speaking to himself; "cette figure-là me fait mal."

Opening an inner door, M. Paul disclosed a parlour, or salon--very tiny, but I thought, very pretty. Its delicate walls were tinged like a blush; its floor was waxed; a square of brilliant carpet covered its centre; its small round table shone like the mirror over its hearth; there was a little couch, a little chiffonnière, the half-open, crimson-silk door of which, showed porcelain on the shelves; there was a French clock, a lamp; there were ornaments in biscuit china; the recess of the single ample window was filled with a green stand, bearing three green flower-pots, each filled with a fine plant glowing in bloom; in one corner appeared a guéridon with a marble top, and upon it a work-box, and a glass filled with violets in water. The lattice of this room was open; the outer air breathing through, gave freshness, the sweet violets lent fragrance.