In the stories made to please her fancy by Charlotte, we have in Villette Paul Emanuel unmarried-and in love with Lucy Snowe; but by the base contrivances of Madame Beck, a Jesuit priest, Père Silas, has been called in, to stir up superstitious dread of allying himself with a heretic in the mind of the good Catholic that Paul was, and so prevent him from carrying through certain tentative indications of the state of his affections that have awakened and justified the passionate but timid and self-despising Lucy Snowe. Nothing then can be more plain than the position here-Paul Emanuel and Lucy Snowe are being divided, and trouble is being created, by a horrid, jealous, mischievous Madame Beck, who wants Paul Emanuel to marry her, although she knows he loves Lucy, and that Lucy is in love with him, but too little self-confident, too feeble, in her dependent position, to assert her claims. In the Professor it is much the same case, only Mlle. Zoraïde Reuter is more of a cat than Madame Beck, and less an evil genius, who demands admiration for her cleverness whilst Mlle. Zoraïde, who makes coarse love to the Professor, provokes contempt.
Well but now here is the real case. Madame Heger knows that here is the English daughter of an Evangelical Pastor, who (although she is old enough to look after herself), is nevertheless under her (Madame's) protection, and behold this young woman has taken it into her head to conceive a most inconvenient infatuation for her husband, M. Heger! Now how is one to meet this situation in the best way for everybody? Happily the secret lies between herself and Mees Charlotte: it rests with Mees to take herself out of harm's way: and all is safe. But that is what she will not do. So here you have the position: this grown-up, obstinate Englishwoman, with her 'inconvenient' passion, always on the verge of exhibiting her sentiments in a way that may inform M. Heger-who is the best of men; most honourable, but still a man-who may or may not see how serious this is: who may tell one, 'Let me talk reason to her,' which is the last course to take! It is true, Madame will have said to herself, 'I might take matters into my hands; and since she has no sense of 'convenience' herself, I might say: 'Mees, I exact this of you: immediately you make up your trunks, and return to Yorkshire; you start to-morrow.' Yes, but what happens then? There are observations,-indignation is excited. M. Heger will say to me, 'What now is this sudden attitude you take up towards Mees? it is not just.' And if I explain, he may say: 'You imagine things; you women are not good to each other.' Or he may say: 'Let me talk to Mees Charlotte,' and then there will be attaques de nerfs-who can say? No, there is only one thing to do: as this Englishwoman has not herself any sense of 'convenience.' We must be patient until the end of the year, when her term is finished. Then she goes, arrive what may. And, meanwhile, one must support it; only she must not meet M. Heger alone: and one must constantly take precautions, in this sense, against scenes.'
Well, was there anything very cruel, or hard-hearted, or vindictive, in Madame Heger's conduct? If you are a psychologist, put yourself in her place. What could she have done with this entanglement of circumstances, all menacing what she most valued, a watchful preservation of 'convenience,' most necessary in a Pensionnat de Jeunes Filles of high repute? If any one will suggest a plan that would have been more considerate to Charlotte than the one she took, I should very much like to hear what plan? Even then, in the light of what I know of Madame Heger's incapability of a deliberate desire to torture, or inflict severe punishment on any pupil, or teacher, or living thing, I should still protest confidently that in all she did-that sweet and kind old schoolmistress of mine-in the days when she was twenty years younger than when I knew her-she meant to be considerate and kind.
Without attempting to decide who, between Charlotte and Madame Heger, was to blame, or whether either of them were to blame, here, at any rate, we have the conditions of feeling between these two women: each exasperated against the other, under the strain of a forced politeness, during the last seven months of Charlotte's residence in Bruxelles. No doubt, for both of them the strain was great. All this time (without saying it out aloud) Madame Heger was forcing upon Charlotte's attention, the 'inconvenience' of her presence in the Pensionnat; the necessity for her return to England. All this time Charlotte-outwardly compliant with all the demands made upon her, that keep her writing letters at Madame's dictation (in the hours when Monsieur is giving his lessons in class), that send her upon messages to the other end of Bruxelles (upon holidays when Monsieur's habit is to trim the vine above the Berceau in the garden)-all this time, Charlotte's bitter protest spoke out in the gaze she fastened on the Directress: 'Merciless woman that you are! you who have everything; who are his wife, the mother of his children, whom he loves; who will enjoy his conversation and his society, and the pleasant home you share with him, all your life; and who grudge me-I, who have nothing of all this, but who love him more-I, who in a few months must go out into the dark world, without the light his presence is to me; without the music his voice makes for me; without the delight his conversation is to my mind, and the complete satisfaction his society brings to my whole nature-and you grudge me these few months of happiness? Rich and cruel woman, who, in your selfish life possess all this, you are more cruel than Dives was to Lazarus; you grudge me even the crumbs that fall from your table.'
[1] Life of C.B., p. 254.
[2] Life, p. 258.
CHAPTER IV
Table of Contents THE CONFESSIONS AT ST. GUDULE
We are now in a position to realise the emotions and experiences that lasted up to the eve of Charlotte's return to England. But there are two events that vary the incessant conflict with Madame Heger; and that help to form the basis of real experiences, expressed in the portraits (that are not historical pictures) of Zoraïde Reuter and of Madame Beck. These two events also re-appear, as scenes in Villette, that did not take place in the way the authoress relates them; but that put us in possession of the parallel facts in Charlotte's true career: where she felt the very same emotions she describes in the novel. The first event gives us the actual, the original history, of what in Villette reappears in the imaginary account of Lucy Snowe's Confession: and serves there to introduce us to the Jesuit who is half a spy and half a saint-Père Silas. In Charlotte's life the event, as it is related by her in a letter to Emily, took place during that long and solitary vacation in the empty Pensionnat, where, from August to October 1843, Charlotte was left to face the position now made for her by Madame Heger's discovery of the Secret that, possessed by her enemy, could not remain hidden from Charlotte herself.
Charlotte's letter to Emily begins by describing the desolation of this large house, with its deserted class-rooms, and silent garden, and galérie, and for her solitary companion only the repulsive-minded and malicious Mademoiselle Blanche, whom she has described in an earlier letter as a spy of Madame Heger's.
'I should inevitably,' she writes, 'fall into the gulf of low spirits if I stayed always by myself.... Yesterday I went on a pilgrimage to the cemetery, and far beyond it, on to a hill where there was nothing but fields as far as the horizon. When I came back it was evening, but I had such a repugnance to return to the house which contained nothing that I cared for, that I kept treading the narrow streets in the neighbourhood of the Rue d'Isabelle, and avoiding it. I found myself opposite to Ste. Gudule; and the bell, whose voice you know, began to toll for evening salût. I went in quite alone (which procedure you will say is not much like me), wandered about the aisles (where a few old women were saying their prayers), till vespers. I stayed till they were over. Still I could not leave the church nor force myself to go home-to school, I mean. An odd whim came into my head. In a solitary part of the cathedral six or seven people still remained, kneeling by the Confessionals. In two Confessionals I saw a Priest. I felt as if I did not care what I did, provided it was not absolutely wrong, and that it served to vary my life and yield a moment's interest. I took a fancy to change myself into a Catholic, and go and make a real Confession to see what it was like. Knowing me as you do, you will think this odd, but when people are by themselves they have singular fancies. A penitent was occupied in confessing. They do not go into the sort of pew or cloister the priest occupies, but kneel down on the steps and confess through a grating. Both the confessor and the penitent whisper very low: you can hardly hear their voices. After I had watched two or three penitents go, and return, I approached at last, and knelt down in a niche which was just vacated. I had to kneel there ten minutes waiting, for on the other side was another penitent, invisible to me. At last that one went away, and a little wooden door inside the grating opened and I saw the Priest leaning his ear toward me. I was obliged to begin, and yet I did not know a word of the formula with which they always commence their confessions!... I began by saying I was a foreigner and had been brought up as a...
