But his advice remained vividly present to her recollection we may feel sure. On the 23rd October, about a month after this event, she writes once more to Ellen Nussey:—
'It is a curious position to be so utterly solitary in the midst of numbers. One day lately I felt as if I could bear it no longer and I went to Madame Heger and gave her notice. If it had depended upon her I should certainly have soon been at liberty. But M. Heger having heard of what was in agitation, sent for me the day after and pronounced with vehemence his decision that I could not leave. I could not at that time have persevered in my intentions without exciting him to anger; and promised to stay a little while longer.'
And so what had to be done in the end was postponed: and the old hidden enmity between Charlotte and Madame Heger went on for another three months.
CHAPTER V
THE LEAVE-TAKING—THE SCENE IN THE CLASS-ROOM
—CHARLOTTE LEAVES BRUSSELS
Two other events that we know must have happened within a few days of Charlotte's departure from Brussels, 2nd January 1844, are lit up by the emotions painted in Villette. We cannot doubt that these emotions were suffered by the woman of genius who describes them, because it is, not imagination, but remembrance, that has given these pages the magical touch of life, the 'vibration' that translates words 'into feelings,' so that we are not readers, but witnesses, of what this tormented heart endures.
Anguish of suspense; heart-sickness of hope deferred; despair, following on repeated disappointment; rage and indignation at the cruelty and injustice of this outrage done to a Love, that has wronged no one, robbed no one, that has no desire to inflict injury on others; yet that is refused the right that even the condemned criminal is not refused,—to bid farewell to what he holds most dear on earth before he goes forth to execution—all these feelings are painted in the wonderful pages, where the circumstances of the story nevertheless are legendary, and belong to the parable of Lucy Snowe: but where the sufferings Lucy endures on the eve of her separation from Paul Emanuel were facts stored up in the experiences of Charlotte Brontë.
Like the incident of Lucy Snowe's 'Confession,' the passages that in Villette describe the efforts made by Madame Beck and the Jesuit, Père Silas, to prevent Paul Emanuel from bidding Lucy farewell, before he starts for his voyage to Basseterres in Guadeloupe, are pages from the spiritual life of Charlotte Brontë—taken out of their proper frame of circumstances, and altered in some important details. But outside of these alterations, one recognises their truthfulness, in the vivid light they throw upon the facts told us in Charlotte's correspondence.
In the novel, Paul Emanuel is expected to visit the class-room at a certain hour and to take farewell of his pupils. In connection with the real events, it has to be remembered that Charlotte left Bruxelles on the 2nd January, that is to say, in a period when, from Christmas day to perhaps the 7th January, there would be holidays, and the Bruxelles pupils would have gone to their homes. It is probable then that the English teacher, before the breaking-up, would have taken her farewell of her pupils in the class-rooms—this was the usual practice when a teacher was leaving for good—and that M. Heger, whom she hoped to have seen upon this occasion, would have been absent.