Chapter XII

EUGÈNE SUE AND CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S BRUSSELS LIFE.

I.

MDLLE. LAGRANGE AND HER MANUSCRIPT "CATHERINE BELL THE ORPHAN."

When Mrs. Gaskell published her Brontë biography it was discovered that while she had been enabled by aid of the mass of commonplace Brontë correspondence to present an interesting picture of the domestic conditions at the Haworth parsonage, she had yet been unable to throw any light upon that episode in Charlotte Brontë's life which, it had been suspected, was responsible for the extraordinary love passages in the Brontë works and Miss Brontë's insistence in choosing the hero of each of her books from the same model.

It is therefore most miraculous and sensational that after having found Montagu's Gleanings in Craven was the key to Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, I should further come to discover, what the world had thought would never be found: external evidence throwing light upon Miss Brontë's real relations with the Hégers at Brussels, to whose pensionnat she went in the 'forties. This discovery was the subject of my article "The Lifting of the Brontë Veil" Mr. W. L. Courtney commissioned me to write in the Fortnightly Review. Therein I showed Eugène Sue had presented the whole history of M. Héger's passion for Charlotte Brontë, and Madame Héger's jealousy, in a work entitled Miss Mary ou l'Institutrice, published in 1850-51—seven years before the publication of Mrs. Gaskell's Life, and before the publication of either The Professor or Villette; and we saw that M. Héger knew all Miss Brontë's literary secrets in 1850.

Skilfully enough Eugène Sue in this story—the first version of which was issued serially in September 1850, from The Weekly Times Office, London, whence were published many of M. Sue's serials;[56] the second, an abridged and altered version for French readers, published in Paris in March 1851—gave two phases of Charlotte Brontë, something after the method we see Miss Brontë herself employed in Jane Eyre, wherein she gave two phases of Tabitha Aykroyd, one in the beginning as Bessie, another later on as Hannah of the Rivers family.[57]

Indeed it will be found that in this work Eugène Sue also imitated Charlotte Brontë's Method I., interchange of the sexes of characters portrayed from life.

The two phases of Miss Brontë in this romance are Miss Mary Lawson, an Irish governess at the de Morville establishment; and Mademoiselle Lagrange, a former governess at the same house. The Mademoiselle Lagrange is, however, always referred to in the abstract, and serves to illustrate, it appears, Miss Brontë before her first departure from and return to Brussels, as well as after, for she was twice at the Hégers. And it may be observed that Charlotte Brontë was called "Mademoiselle Charlotte" at the Héger pension when she was governess there in 1843. Certainly the choice of Lagrange for Miss Brontë was pertinent: la grange is French for "the barn," and may have been suggested by the Eyre of Jane Eyre, which to a French ear would recall aire—a barn floor. Mdlle. Lagrange who had left the de Morville (Anglicè, Morton. As we have seen, Morton of Jane Eyre was Haworth to Charlotte Brontë) establishment on account of the jealousy of Madame de Morville, whom I identify as Madame Héger, is a plain-featured literary aspirant, and she writes a manuscript entitled not exactly Currer Bell, but "Kitty Bell, the Orphan."

This manuscript has been sent by the author for an opinion of its merits to M. de Morville, who reads it aloud to his family. It is a parody, as it were, of Jane Eyre, with an imitation of Charlotte Brontë's methods of introducing private biographical facts. For instance, in presenting the Lowood school incidents it calls the school "the Kendall Institute," named after "a Mr. Kendall, its founder." Evidently the writer had heard, as only few indeed had at this early day, that the Lowood school of Jane Eyre was afterwards removed to Casterton in the Union of Kendal, or had heard that in a wise it was connected with a place of that name.

Other extraordinary facts with which he shows acquaintance are, that Charlotte Brontë had a sister Elizabeth at this school; that Helen Burns was her sister; that there was a West Indian girl at the school; that Charlotte Brontë was born on or about the 21st of April; that she might be called Kitty (Currer) Bell at home, but she must be called Catherine (Catherine Earnshaw); that Miss Brontë was the governess-daughter of an Irishman; that the original of John Reed was her brother and was no hero, and had shown strange signs of insanity during the last year or two, as it is now known he had at the time; that a female relative had provided Miss Brontë the money for the pensionnat; that skin disorders as well as the typhus fever were prevalent at the Clergy Daughters' School (it is in a private letter that Miss Brontë referred to scrofula at this school); that the original of Mr. Rochester was a foreigner and a resident abroad, an ex-soldier, and married to a lady who was not pretty, albeit "la vivacité, l'agrément de sa physionomie expressive, suppléaient à la beauté qui lui manquait"; that Charlotte Brontë had had in her possession since her childhood an old copy in English of The Imitation of Christ; that Miss Brontë was called a bas bleu at the pensionnat; that to form an opinion of her character by Madame Héger's estimate of her disposition would be completely erroneous; that M. Héger was accustomed to read feuilletons aloud; that religious differences existed between her and others at the establishment where Charlotte Brontë was; that Catherine's (Catherine Earnshaw's) rival was Isabella (Heathcliffe's wife—Madame Héger of the Rue d'Isabelle); that Miss Brontë travelled alone to Brussels and was accosted by deux jeunes gens—compare the opening chapters of Miss Mary with Lucy Snowe's arrival at Villette, evidently in some wise founded on fact, as to these two young men. See also The Professor, Chapter VII.

But to return to "Mdlle. Lagrange's Manuscript," the pseudo Jane Eyre, which of course at once identifies its author, Mdlle. Lagrange, as Charlotte Brontë, I find therein the whole Lowood school incidents—the typhus fever, the hair-cutting incident, the death of the consumptive Helen Burns, etc., amplified with biographical additions. For instance, take the hair-cutting incident of Jane Eyre as represented in "Lagrange's Manuscript"—

The master called out:—

"Elizabeth——"

... Meanwhile all the Elizabeths in the school must have felt the claws of the tiger in their necks, for who could tell which of them it was?...

"Superintendent of the Kendall Institute! you are aware, madam, one of the rules of this establishment enjoins you to cut short the hair of every new girl.... And yet what do I see? Six girls with long hair...."

The last of these had not been a week at the institution. She was a girl of fourteen, very dark, ... with a fine tinge of the Creole in her face. How well I thought did Isabella Hutchinson, with her dark, West Indian head, look by the side of the fair Yorkshire girl, Sophia Leigh, whose pale, straw-coloured locks, looked paler still by the side of that dark heap of hair, blacker than a raven's wing...[!]

We have seen in the chapter on "The Rivers or Brontë Family in Jane Eyre" that Charlotte Brontë portrayed in the character Julia Severn, who is first mentioned in connection with the hair-cutting incident, her sister Elizabeth, and it is most significant that M. Sue made play upon the name Elizabeth in the connection. In regard to the mention of a West Indian girl at the Lowood school and her being coupled with a fair-haired Yorkshire girl, it is important to note that no reference is made in Jane Eyre to a West Indian girl at this school. It is indeed astonishing how much M. Sue knew of Charlotte Brontë's private life. Here we find him telling the world in 1850 of a West Indian girl being with Charlotte Brontë at the Clergy Daughters' School, and not till seven years later did Mrs. Gaskell learn of the Rev. Patrick Brontë—Charlotte Brontë was then dead—that a girl from the West Indies had been Charlotte's friend at this school. Her name, he thought, was Mellany Hane, so far as he could remember to pronounce it. Mysteriously enough, the words "West Indies" or "West Indian" in this connection have been deleted from the later editions of Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë. See the Second Edition.

"Lagrange's Manuscript" is of considerable length and interest, and can be drawn upon in future editions of The Key to the Brontë Works. Frequently it follows in parallel to Jane Eyre, but as parody interspersed with biographical details which must have been intended chiefly for Charlotte Brontë herself, as scarcely any one else could at that day have understood the pertinence of the references.[58] Take a Helen Burns incident whereby M. Sue shows he is aware she was a Brontë sister, older than Charlotte—Maria Brontë who died of consumption:—

But the inexorable hand ... was upon Agnes Jones [Helen Burns]. Day by day I saw her pretty cheeks growing thinner and thinner, her eyes sinking still more deeply into her head, her little mouth becoming more blue and ashy, her long, thin fingers more transparent. Her voice, at all times so meek and low, dwindled away to that thin and tiny sound to which we listen as to something absent—already gone—something that comes from above or below us—that is not living amongst us—not breathing as we breathe—a retreating echo, rather than a living voice—a sigh, and not a sound.... It was not much I had learned from Agnes [Helen] since I had been at the institution; but never till then had I known her spirit so genial, her heart so lovingly persuasive; the beneficent lessons of those days, burning like candles within me, have since guided me well through life: she spoke to me like a prophet, and I listened to her like a believer. Oh, I could have lived for ever in that chamber, and Agnes [Helen] might have been to me the world! How often, as our cheeks lay against each other have I wished that I, too, had been ill, so that I also might have died, as she was dying, in my innocence!... One evening, ... just at that pleasant hour of twilight when two of God's wonders—night and day—cross each other like ships on the sea, Agnes [Helen] said:—'Life has its holiness as well as death, Catherine [Jane]; and you may live in the world as purely and justly as those who die in the cradle.'

"The world is full of temptation?"

"So it is, but there lies the merit, my dear; wrestle with temptation and do what is right, ... you must not allow my death to afflict you much, since I rejoice at it.... If you think of me, think of me living, not dead. Think of your playfellow in the garden; think of your elder sister who lived with you for six years."

Maria Brontë, Charlotte's eldest sister, and the original of Helen Burns, died when Charlotte was eight or nine. It is sensational indeed, that M. Sue thus identified Helen Burns seven years before the publication of Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë. The death of this character in "Lagrange's Manuscript" is in perfect agreement with that of Helen Burns. I will place the two side by side:—

Jane Eyre. "Kitty Bell, the Orphan."

Chapter IX. By Currer Bell. By the Mademoiselle Lagrange, of Eugène Sue's Miss Mary ou L'Institutrice.

The death of Helen Burns. The death of Agnes Jones.

———— ————

That forest dell, where Lowood lay, was the cradle of ... fog-bred pestilence, which ... crept into the Orphan Asylum, breathed typhus through [it] ... and transformed the seminary into a hospital.... One evening ... Mr. Bates came out, and ... a nurse.... I ran up to her. "How is Helen Burns?" "Very poorly," was the answer.... Two hours later ... I reached ... Miss Temple's room, ... I looked in. My eye sought Helen, and feared to find death.... "Helen!" I whispered softly; "are you awake?" ... I got on to her crib and kissed her: her forehead was cold, and her cheek both cold and thin, and so were her hand and wrist, but she smiled as of old. "Jane, ... lie down and cover yourself with the quilt." I did so: she put her arm over me, and I nestled close to her. ... I clasped my arms closer round Helen; she seemed dearer to me than ever; I felt as if I could not let her go; I lay with my face hidden on her neck. Presently she said:—"... Don't leave me, Jane; I like to have you near me." "I'll stay with you, dear Helen; no one shall take me away."... She kissed me, and I her; and we soon slumbered. When I awoke it was day; an unusual movement roused me. A day or two afterwards, I learned that Miss Temple, on returning to her own room at dawn, had found me laid in a little crib; my face against Helen Burn's shoulder, my arms round her neck. I was asleep, and Helen was—dead. The Master of the Kendall Institution ... had ... been very much shocked by the ravages of typhus fever, and since the reports of Agnes's health had become serious, had sent several times to ascertain how she was.... "Miss Bell, I am come to inquire after our friend, Miss Jones." "... Agnes is always calm and easy-minded.... This is very kind of you." ... As I was preparing to lie down in the room, Agnes called to me:— "Catherine, my dear, I feel rather cold to-night; will you sleep with me?" Of course I complied, and we lay talking in each other's arms until the sweet dove fell asleep. Poor Agnes, she was indeed cold; a strange chill came through me as I lay by her side.... I still heard my sister orphan breathe and pant.... Why did I listen ... so greedily? Why—when the poor thing turned round once in the night, and said: "Another kiss, Catherine!"—why did I feel in giving it her, as if a hundred steel arrows had gone through my heart? How long I lay awake and thinking—wondering at the cold emerging from the pure body at my side, I know not! I must have slept, too; for I remember opening my eyes with the first dawn, before the bells rang. "Agnes!" said I, softly; "are you awake?" But there was no answer!... I called again—then a third, and a fourth time! But still ... no reply! Wondering at this silence, ... I listened for that hard breathing I knew so well. But nothing—not a sound could I hear! Alarmed, but unwilling to trust my fears, I felt for her hand. Oh, God! it was cold as ice, and rigid as stone! Wild with affright, ... I started up ... and rushed out to call the Superintendent [Miss Temple]. I found her preparing to come to us.... When we entered the chamber, we found no Agnes there! No; her spirit had fled, and all we saw was the lifeless body of a poor houseless girl.

Another biographical passage occurs where Catherine Bell first sees the Miss Temple of "Lagrange's Manuscript," who herself, under the name of Ashton (Eshton),[59] is at times Miss Brontë, who took the name of the original of Miss Temple (Evans) for herself in the phase of Frances Evans Henri in The Professor, a work not published, we must note, till after Charlotte Brontë's death:—

"I love you, madam," I said.

"Your name, I believe, is Catherine Bell, is it not?"

"Kitty Bell, if you please, madam," I answered.

"Kitty Bell at home, my dear, but here we must call you Catherine; for a school, you know, is where many forms must be observed. How old are you?"

"I shall be ten next birthday, madam."

"And when will that be?"

"On the 23rd of April."

"Shakespeare's Day, I declare!"

The above is, of course, not in Jane Eyre. There is a stroke of sarcasm in the last sentence. It would appear that Currer Bell playfully had moved her birthday forward two days, in her private conversation with one from whom M. Sue had gleaned information—and this could be only M. Héger himself. Charlotte Brontë, as Lucy Snowe, in Villette, Chapter XLI., tells us that M. Paul Emanuel (M. Héger) said:—

"I wanted to prove to Miss Lucy that I could keep a secret. How often has she taunted me with lack of dignified reserve and needful caution! How many times has she saucily insinuated that all my affairs are the secret of Polichinelle!" And this had doubtless a reference to some such indiscretions as resulted in M. Sue whilst at Brussels (and he was publishing L'Orgueil from Brussels in 1844, in the January of which year Charlotte Brontë arrived home from the Belgian capital), learning the literary secrets of Jane Eyre, and perhaps Wuthering Heights.

A further reference to Currer Bell's literary aspirations—in the spirit of Mdlle. Reuter's sneers, in The Professor, at Mdlle. Henri's literary ambition—occurs in M. Sue's feuilleton in another version of the fortune-telling incident of Jane Eyre:—

"Here," said I, to a brown, sunburnt damsel, ... "take this shilling and tell me when I shall be Empress of Morocco?"

I held out my hand.... The young girl looked at it, ... then shook her head doubtfully:—

"Your life, lady, will be a troubled one—full of hopes and fears!"

"So I suppose; most people's lives are pretty well divided in this manner."

"But not so much as yours will be.... First, you are without father or mother?... Without fortune, too?"

"True, what more?"

"You will be married and not married."

"That's impossible. What can you mean by married and not married?"

"That deserves another shilling!"

"No; I only want a shillingsworth, ... that will do for to-day."

"Mdlle. Lagrange's Manuscript" was bound in blue morocco leather, and the term "Empress of Morocco" may have a reference to a literary ambition, as has the "Shakspeare's Day, I declare!" passage.

For constructive purposes the West Indian girl, or Creole, in "Lagrange's Manuscript," is made to take the place of the Mrs. Rochester of Jane Eyre, who is therein represented as a Creole:—

I did my best [continues Catherine Bell] to make a friend of her, but to no purpose. Whatever was the reason she disliked me from the first. ["I am convinced she does not like me," wrote Charlotte to Emily of Madame Héger.] I felt intuitively she was my enemy.... Had we been thrown together when I was a child [!] I should probably have suited her ... for at that time I was a little given to flattery myself. But that was before I had learned how many better things there are than mere beauty.... Perhaps ... I preferred more solid advantages, because my vanity assured me that I had them myself, whilst my personal appearance was insignificant compared with hers. I was certainly fond of talking of what I knew, which answered very well with those who knew as much, and was rather pleasing to those who knew more. [M. Héger seems to have found pleasure in his intellectual talks with Currer Bell], but to Isabella [this, as I have said, is the name of Catherine's rival in Wuthering Heights, who was married to Heathcliffe] it was hateful. She imagined I wanted to expose her ignorance.

I have given some of the biographical facts respecting Miss Brontë embodied in Mdlle. Lagrange's story, and before closing this chapter dealing with that extraordinary manuscript I will print a further extract or so from it. The opening is as follows:—

"KITTY BELL, THE ORPHAN."

I was not above four years old when my mother died, my father having gone to his grave two years before.... Oh, it is a sad, sad thing to be an orphan!... My little head has been cut with more than one fall, and blood has flowed down my neck. But nobody cared.... It was only Kitty Bell.... There was no loving heart to take me to itself and soothe me.... I had been taken home by some relation of my mother, ... a widow [Mrs. Burke], and though she treated me with great rigour, she melted on her death-bed.

She is locked in the room wherein Mrs. Burke died, after the manner of the same incident in Jane Eyre, and the writer takes an opportunity of inserting the most distinctive feature of Jane Eyre, the light-bearing apparition, the original of which I have shown Charlotte Brontë found in Montagu's Gleanings in Craven:—

Suddenly there came a gleam of light through the key-hole, ... and now I could hear a short, heavy tread upon the stairs—it was coming up.... The gleam shot through the key-hole a third time, with treble radiance. But what had I seen?... Was it a vision? was it a ghost? It was a tall figure in white, like a winding sheet, with a hideous face and balls of gleaming fire where the eyes should be. The sight had stunned and levelled me almost like a blow on the temple.... I cannot say how long I continued in this swoon, but when I began to recover myself I was in my own bed.

She had received medical treatment, she learns as did Jane Eyre in the similar incident. The "ghost," however, had been only George Burke—the John Reed of Jane Eyre. Hence the choice of the name Burke by reason of its connection with the Hare of the Burke and Hare association, the writer by this choice showing his acquaintance with the fact that in real life the Reeds and Jane Eyre were relations. After this incident the story is for a while occupied with the petty happenings connected with this orphan who "was not yet nine years old." An aunt of the Burkes [? Aunt Branwell] comes to live with them, a "poor, quiet, elderly spinster who paid a small stipend in order to preserve her independence and keep up her dignity.... I must not attempt to describe her ... she was fully six feet high." This is palpably antithetical: Miss Branwell was not tall. And it is this aunt who provides the money for Catherine Bell to go to school. Under the guise of presenting the Lowood school in "Lagrange's Manuscript," M. Sue gives us often the Héger pensionnat. Aunt Branwell provided Charlotte Brontë the money that enabled her to go to the Hégers'.

I will give in parallel columns the arrival of Charlotte Brontë at the Clergy Daughters' Institute as it is described in "Mademoiselle Lagrange's Manuscript," and in Jane Eyre the original:—

Jane Eyre. "Kitty Bell, the Orphan."

By Currer Bell. By the Mademoiselle Lagrange, of Eugène Sue's Miss Mary ou L'Institutrice.

The first days at the Institution. The first days at the Institution.

———— ————

The coach door was open and ... a servant was standing at it: I saw her ... by the light of the lamps. "Is there a little girl called Jane Eyre here?" she asked. I answered "Yes," and was lifted out, my trunk was handed down. We got to Kendall House.... I had been sitting near my trunk on the outside of the coach, and my legs were numb with cold. I was quite unable to move, so the coachman lifted me down along with my box. The door was open when the coach stopped; a servant was standing there with a lamp. "Are you Catherine Bell we expects down here to-day?" she asked me. "My name is Kitty Bell, if you please," replied I.

The servant led me ... into a room, with a fire, where she left me alone.... I stood and warmed my numbed fingers over the blaze; ... there was no candle. The girl returned no answer, but having ushered me into a spacious room with a fire in it, she left me there by myself; ... there was no candle. I stood ... warming my numb hands and limbs. I heard the door open ... and I saw a face ... I never can forget. My heart told me directly it was Miss Ashton [Eshton]. Dear, noble girl! her face was rather large, but accurately oval—just as you see them in the fine sacred pictures of Murillo—those pictures of grand female beauty. Everything in that face was great, open, frank, truthlike, ... and yet there was a grave ... melancholy overspreading that regal countenance.... It was singular to see a woman acting as the manager of a benevolent institution and living apart from the world who might have shone in any court in Europe and ... perhaps had no equal on any throne ... [!] She advanced towards me stately, but kindly, touched my cheek with her finger, and then seeing me smile, she smiled in return, and, after scanning my features a moment, she lifted me up and kissed me.

The door opened, and an individual entered, ... a tall lady with dark hair, dark eyes, and a pale and large forehead [Miss Temple. Her real name was Miss Evans], her countenance was grave, her bearing erect.

She considered me attentively for a minute or two. ... "Are you tired?" she asked, placing her hand on my shoulder. ... "A little, ma'am." "I love you, madam," I said. Then she set me down ... and, putting her hand upon my head, she asked me:— "Your name is Catherine Bell, is it not?"... [Here follows the "Shakespeare's Day" reference I have already given.]

I have not ... alluded to the visits of Mr. Brocklehurst [Rev. Mr. Carus Wilson]; his absence was a relief to me.... One afternoon (I had ... been three weeks at Lowood) ... I recognized almost instinctively that gaunt outline, ... it was Mr. Brocklehurst. After some lines we have the hair-cutting incident I have quoted already from "Lagrange's Manuscript." This incident comes after and not before Catherine (Jane) has been commanded to stand before the class. I had been at the Kendall Institute about three weeks without seeing Mr. King [Mr. Brocklehurst] the master or registrar.... One morning when I woke up I heard the bells in the dormitories ringing louder than ever.... I knew without being told this strange man was Mr. King. "Catherine Bell!" called out Miss Ashton.

... "Fetch that stool," said Mr. Brocklehurst.... "Place the child upon it." And I was placed there. "Miss Temple, ... children, it becomes my duty to warn you that this girl ... is a little castaway, ... this girl is—a liar!... Let her stand ... on that stool." On hearing my name I left my place in the rank, and advanced.... "So! this is Catherine Bell, is it?" cried Mr. King. "I have heard her kind friends at home speak of Catherine Bell, and they tell me she is a naughty, vicious, headstrong child—very ungrateful to those for whose generosity she ought to have so much respect and gratitude! Is this true, Catherine Bell?" "No, sir; not a word of it." "What, child!... Are you a little liar as well as an ingrate? Stand here!"

What my sensations were no language can describe.... I mastered the rising hysteria ... and took a firm stand on the stool. The passions and feelings of a child are only known to children. Grown-up people seem to have forgotten them.[60] I stood there with cheeks burning with shame, indignation, and anger.... My pride had been savagely assailed. I did not want pity. I wanted ... a refutation of the cruel charge; I was not a liar; and those who taxed me with ingratitude had no gratitude to claim from me. Great God! what emotions there were raging in my breast! and how my little heart did swell!

Often Mdlle. Lagrange's "Kitty Bell the Orphan" is mysterious in its allusions. As when Catherine Bell says she does not like a French lady teacher. The seed-cake incident of Chapter VIII. of Jane Eyre, which is given at length in "Lagrange's Manuscript," is herewith worked in again:—

"I don't like Madame Dubois...."

"Why so? she is a very good sort of a woman."

"That may be, but she takes snuff...."

"What is that to you or me, Catherine Bell? Surely it is no business of ours?"

"Sometimes it is, though.... I gave her a slice of my seed-cake yesterday, and she returned me half of it."

"That showed a good disposition in poor Madame Dubois; did it not?"

"Yes; but when I was going to eat it myself I was seized with a fit of sneezing, which I shall not forget in a hurry, I promise you!"

"You took snuff then, Catherine Bell, for the first time in your life?"

"All in—all in—for school!" shouted the teachers and examples that moment.

The following is an extract dealing with the fever scenes of Jane Eyre:—

Fever and consumption had fixed their abode under the large roof of Kendall Institution, death was stealing along with its soft, wolf-like tread, to feed upon these poor children. The first symptoms I remember that startled me were certain cold shiverings and sudden fits of perspiration without warmth, which seized upon the younger children. Then sickness and nausea, followed immediately by vomiting. [M. Sue had been a surgeon.] ... Oh, how cruel, how bitter it was to us when we saw the first little coffin borne out of the school!... And now we began to hear, for the first time, the dismal word typhus uttered here and there in whispers through the school.... When we went to the church on Sundays, and saw the many little mounds of fresh black earth lying over our innocent playmates of yesterday, our heads sank upon our bosoms and we wept most sorrowfully.

Faithful to its model, "Lagrange's Manuscript" brings Isabella the Creole as the rival of Catherine Bell, and thus of the Creole's husband Catherine writes:—

Unwittingly, and quite unknown to myself, I became the object of his admiration—nay, of his marked preference; but I rejected indignantly the homage of an affection which he had sworn to another, and which it was his sacred duty to preserve undefiled.... In the hope of overcoming my persistency in refusing his so often proffered and as often rejected love, he urged on by every imaginable means the final decision, which in the eyes of man were to permit a second marriage, guilty in the sight of God. With the natural instinct of divination peculiar to female jealousy, his wife had guessed who was the deity at whose altar the captain was burning his incense.... Nor did she consider whether I encouraged or rebuked him. She suspected, she spied, she believed, and unscrupulously involved me in the hateful vengeance she swore to take both on her husband and myself.

For a portrait of Mdlle. Lagrange who, as the author of this version of Jane Eyre, is of course meant for Charlotte Brontë, we turn to the feuilleton itself:—

Meanwhile we have lost sight of our blue-stocking friend, Mdlle. Lagrange ['Madame herself deemed me a regular bas bleu,' says Lucy Snowe of Madame Beck (Madame Héger) in Villette] ... her character ... remains to be described. Now, to form any opinion of it by Madame de Morville's [Madame Héger's] appreciation of that girl's disposition, would be completely erroneous. Lagrange was not devoid of intellectual faculties; she possessed an imaginative mind, rather too fond of romance, and too little of practical truths; but, above all, cunning and ambition formed the main basis of her character: she had risen from nothing, and would become something. Imbued as she was with the ideas prevalent among the lower rank [Had Charlotte Brontë related her father's history to the Hégers? She had 'views' on money. M. Sue, however, never seems to have forgotten the rank of his own god-parents], she deemed it her right and duty to concentrate all the power of her faculties towards the end she sighed for—wealth and a name. Thus it was she displayed all the resources of her subtle nature to make every circumstance serve to the gratifying of her ambition. What, then, was to be her means of success? Marriage?—yes, that perpetual dream of maidens, and a dream which too often ends in an everlasting nightmare. But the task was not easy, for, it has been said, beauty had been forgotten by Dame Nature among the few gifts she had granted her.[61] What the appearance failed in, the mind should, at any cost, supply [!]. This had become her ruling desire. Thence the manuscript ['Catherine Bell, The Orphan'] we have already read had been the first ponderous lucubration of her fortune-seeking imagination: she had been praised for this first attempt by her friends, and also by one two distinguished critics.[62] This was already a point gained, and an encouragement to her literary propensities.

Thus far the Mdlle. Lagrange phase of Currer Bell according to Eugène Sue, and before the publication of The Professor, Villette, and Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë. The next chapter shall deal with Eugène Sue's relation of her as "Miss Mary," the leading character of this extraordinary feuilleton, whereby it will be proved finally that in her works Charlotte Brontë has written from her own life-story.