Catholic circles, and was recognised in his character of a Professor as one with an admirable gift for teaching, even by the enemies of his religious convictions; but he was not in any way, save as a teacher, a distinguished or famous personage; and in all probability if this English writer of genius had not immortalised him in the character of 'Paul Emanuel,' M. Heger would not have outlived the affectionate and respectful remembrance of his family and personal friends.

The method of testing the question of whether intellectual enthusiasm, or tragical romantic love is the sentiment revealed in these Letters is to read the Letters themselves—in the light of a true impression of the real relationships (when they were written) between Charlotte Brontë and M. Heger, that is to say in the first twelve months that followed Charlotte's farewell to the Director and the Directress of the Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle, in January 1844. And to obtain this right impression, we have to see what had taken place, to alter the original entirely friendly terms between Madame Heger and the English under-mistress, who during the first year of her stay in Brussels had been a parlour-boarder:—for the story told in Villette of Lucy Snowe's arrival at the Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle late at night, and with no place of shelter, having lost her box and been robbed of her purse on the voyage, is, to start with, an incident that has no place in the true history.

CHAPTER III

CHARLOTTE'S LAST YEAR AT BRUSSELS

1842-43

What were Charlotte Brontë's real relationships with Monsieur and Madame Heger when, in January 1844, she bade them, what was to prove, a final farewell? This is what has to be understood before we can read with a full sense of their true meaning the tragical impassioned Letters to M. Heger, written within the first two years of Charlotte's return to England, Letters that not only place the authoress of Jane Eyre and Villette (as a devotee, and an exponent of Romantic love) on a 'higher pedestal than ever,' but that, also, explain at what cost of personal anguish she attained as a writer her extraordinary power of translating emotions into words, that, by the impression they produce retranslate themselves to her readers' imagination and sensibilities as feelings.

We have always to remember that the relationships between Charlotte and her former Professor were not those that existed between Lucy Snowe and her 'Master.' Paul Emanuel was unmarried, and in love with Lucy, although Madame Beck and the Jesuit, Père Silas,—and in the end Destiny—prevented the love-story from reaching a happy ending.

Nor were these relationships, as the facts of the case reveal them, those imagined by Mr. Clement Shorter; where 'it was no cause of grief to Charlotte that M. Heger was married,' because her enthusiasm for him was that of simple hero-worship for a great man. Nor yet were these relationships, when she left Bruxelles in 1844 (nor had they been for some ten months before that date), the same relationships (of trustful friendship on the one hand and sympathetic interest on the other) that had existed between Charlotte and the Director and Directress of the Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle when, a year earlier (in January 1843), Charlotte had returned to Bruxelles alone, in response to Madame's as well as Monsieur's invitation, to perfect her own French, and to receive a small salary as English Mistress. These first relationships had continued untroubled for the first few months after Charlotte's return. Thus, in March 1843, writing to her friend Ellen Nussey, she qualifies her complaints of loneliness in the Pensionnat (without the companionship she had enjoyed the previous year of her dearly loved sister Emily) by reference to the kindness of Madame, as well as of Monsieur Heger.

'As I told you before,' she writes, 'M. and Madame Heger are the only two persons in the house for whom I really experience regard and esteem; and of course I cannot be always with them, nor even very often. They told me, when I first returned, that I was to consider their sitting-room my sitting-room, and to go there whenever I was not engaged in the schoolroom. This, however, I cannot do. In the daytime it is a public room, where music-masters and mistresses are constantly passing in and out; and in the evening I will not, and ought not, to intrude on M. and Madame Heger and their children. Thus I am a good deal by myself; but that does not signify. I now regularly give English lessons to M. Heger and his brother-in-law. They get on with wonderful rapidity, especially the first.[1]

So that, up to this date, no cloud is visible. But by May 29 there is a cloud above the horizon. It is no bigger than 'a man's hand' as yet: but it is charged with electricity, and one knows the storm is gathering. This time Charlotte is writing to Emily, who never liked M. Heger for her part. 'Things wag on much as usual here, only Mlle. Blanche and Mlle. Haussé are at present on a system of war without quarter. They hate each other like two cats. Mlle. Blanche frightens Mlle. Haussé by her white passions, for they quarrel venomously; Mlle. Haussé complains that when Mlle. Blanche is in a fury "elle n'a pas de lèvres." I find also that Mlle. Sophie dislikes Mlle. Blanche extremely. She says she is heartless, insincere and vindictive, which epithets, I assure you, are richly deserved. Also I find she is the regular spy of Madame Heger, to whom she reports everything. Also she invents, which I should not have thought. I am [not] richly off for companionship in these parts. Of late days, M. and Madame Heger rarely speak to me; and I really don't pretend to care a fig for anybody else in the establishment. You are not to suppose by that expression that I am under the influence of warm affection for Madame Heger. I am convinced she does not like me: why, I can't tell. (O Charlotte!) Nor do I think she herself has any definite reason for this aversion.(!) But for one thing, she cannot understand why I do not make intimate friends of Mesdames Blanche, Sophie and Haussé. M. Heger is wondrously influenced by Madame: and I should not wonder if he disapproves very much of my unamiable want of sociability. He has already given me a brief lecture on universal bienveillance; and perceiving that I don't improve in consequence, I fancy he has taken to considering me as a person to be let alone, left to the error of her ways, and consequently he has, in a great measure, withdrawn the light of his countenance; and I get on from day to day, in a Robinson Crusoe like condition, very lonely. That does not signify; in other respects I have nothing substantial to complain of, nor is even this a cause of complaint. Except for the loss of M. Heger's goodwill (if I have lost it,) I care for none of 'em.'[2]

Let us see what this letter, written eight months before Charlotte left Bruxelles, tells us about the altered facts of the relationships between herself and the Directress and Director of the School. First, it is no longer Monsieur and Madame Heger who are the only people Charlotte cares about in the establishment, but it is only the goodwill of M. Heger that she would grieve to lose. And Madame Heger, who so kindly invited her to consider the family sitting-room hers, now takes no notice of her, and, Charlotte knows it, has taken an aversion to her. And when M. Heger says, 'Don't you think, "Mees Charlotte," who is lonely without her sister Emily, should be taken