The Bront? Family, Vol. 2 of 2

eir Residence with Madame Héger?-?A Picture of the Prospect in 'Villette' ?-?At the Pensionnat?-?Madame Héger?-?Monsieur Hége

was her way to work in obscurity, and to let her efforts 'be known by their results.' But at last, as I have said, consent was given to her plan; the necessary money was forthcoming; and it only remained for her to make the arrangements for her

ters were written, and Charlotte did not repent her boldness,-nay, she looked forward confidently to the venture. It seems a strange ambitious plan to us, and one showing little knowledge of the world, this of spending six months in Brussels, in that

esired pensionnat. But there was a temporary disappointment: it was reported that the schools in Brussels were not good; and Charlotte immediately set to work to discover another establishment, which was found at Lille-one that Baptist Noel recommended, where the terms were ￡50 for each pupil. It had been at last arranged that Charlotte and Emily should journey to this place

her by some inward voice, as to Lucy Snowe, who is the truest portrait of Charlotte, 'Leave this wilderness, and go out hence;' and she answered the query, 'Where?' with a sharp determination; and went out to enter into the spirit of the things she met, wherever her mental constitution would enable her to do so. 'For background

re delusions o

tte's career, and the record of it in 'Villette' was wrung from her as her heart's blood, amid paroxysms of positive anguish. But of these things she knew nothing in the January of 1842; then the future slept in sunny calm, so sunny, indeed, that to part from Haworth, and those she knew there, her father and

the influences of locality and of her home. Amidst the distant Yorkshire hills dwelt, too, her father, with Branwell and Anne, whom she loved more than all else in the world; and many an hour, sitting in the bare rooms

tropolis, that she revelled in its busy life and in the earnestness that moved it. We may imagine her on the dome of St. Paul's looking over the river with its bridges, and, alongside it, the Temple Gardens, and Westminster beyond; and we may see her in the classic ground of Paternoster Row. Emily has left no record of her feelings on this journey, but we may be sure they differed very much from Charlotte's. We have an account in 'The Professor' of William Crimsworth's feelings when he entered Belgium, and they we

and read and studied apart. These two sisters did not easily make friends; they were shy, and their companions thought them peculiar-Charlotte, clad in her plain, home-made dress, and Emily, with her gigot sleeves and long, straight skirts, walking in the garden together. Mrs. Jenkins told Mr

imneys of its houses are level with one's feet as one stands at the top of them. The quiet street was called the Fossé aux Chiens in the thirteenth century, because the ducal kennels were there, on the site of Madame Héger's house; but these gave place later to a hospital for the homeless and the poor. Afterwards the Arbalétriers du Grand Serme

vanced to the top of the great staircase just beyond, and I looked down into a narrow back street, which I afterwards learnt was called the Rue d'Isabelle.

harlotte, it appears, had little tolerance of her beliefs or her prejudices. Monsieur Héger, unlike his wife, was of a quick and energetic nature, choleric and irritable in temperament, but withal gentle and benevolent also. It was said that there were few characters so noble and admirable as his, that he was a zealous member of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and that, after days occupie

hment in the pages of 'Villette,' which indeed contains her mental history during her sojourn there. The training through which she and Emily were put was different from that of the other pupils. Monsieur Héger was quick to perceive that

of numbers,' says Charlotte; but she adds, 'I think I am never unhappy; my present life is so delightful, so congenial to my own nature, compared with that of a governess. My time, constantly occupied, passes too rapidly.' We do not find that news from home gave her trouble, nor that she

arlotte and Emily were called to Haworth. Lucy Snowe in 'Villette' tells of such hopes; of the tenement which she shall take, with its one large room and two or three smaller ones; of the few benches and desks, the black tableau, and the estrade, with its chair, tables, chalks, and sponge, where she shall teach the day-scholars.

occupied with a frequent contrast of 'the daughter of Albion and nursling of Protestantism' with 'the foster-child of Rome, the protegée of Jesuitry,' always to the disadvantage of the latter. Mesdemoiselles Eulalie, Hortense, and Caroline in 'The Professor,' and Mesdemoiselles Blanche, Virginie, and Angélique in 'Villette,' are Charlotte's types of the Belgian female-heavy, stolid, unimpressionable to good, sensual, gross, and unintellectual. The Labasse-couriennes were 'a swinish multitude,' not to be driven by force; 'whenever a lie was nec

staying there at the Chateau de Kokleberg, and these young ladies had cousins in the city, whos

a proposal that they should remain six months more, Charlotte as English teacher, and Emily to instruct some pupils in music; and they were to continue their studies and have board without payment

the things she saw, and she was left to solitary reflection a great deal. But her melancholy began with herself. 'My youth is leaving me,' she said to Mary; 'I can never do better than I have done, and I have done nothing yet,' and she seemed at such times, according to this friend, 'to think that most human beings were destined by the pressure of

o Lucy Snowe the future gave no promise of comfort; and a sorrowful indifference to existence often pressed upon her,-a 'despairing resignation to reach betimes the end of all things earthly.' She found the future but a hopeless desert: 'tawny sands, with no green fields, no palm-tree, no well in view.' And these were the thoughts, too,

ief to the little circle in Brussels, for the dead girl had been a bright and affectionate companion,-bewailed under the name of Jessie in 'Shirley,'-and she was deeply lamented. But another grief awaited the Bront? sisters; they heard that their aunt Branwell was ill,

ualities of the future. They were being instructed, and, at the same time, were acquiring the art of instruction: Emily was learning the piano, and receiving lessons from the best Belgian professors; and she had little pupils herself. 'Elle perdait donc à la fois un reste d'ignorance et