"Yes," he replied; ... "for I am to take mademoiselle to the moon, and there I shall seek a cave in one of the white valleys among the volcano tops, and mademoiselle shall live with me there, and only me."
"... But you can't get her there...."
"Adèle ... late one evening ... I sat down to rest me on a stile ... when something came up the path.... Our speechless colloquy was to this effect—
"It was a fairy, and come from Elf-land, it said.... It told me of the alabaster cave and silver vale.... I said I should like to go.... 'Oh,' returned the fairy.... 'Here is a talisman which will remove all difficulties' and she held out a pretty gold ring...."
"But what has mademoiselle [Jane Eyre] to do with it? I don't care for the fairy...."
"Mademoiselle [Jane Eyre] is a fairy," he said, whispering mysteriously.
But Adèle assures him she made no account of his "contes de fée."
For the present it is enough to know that in the main and ostensibly the Fairy Janet Eyre was Charlotte Brontë's adaptation of Montagu's Fairy Janet, the queen-elf of the Malhamdale fairies, said to frequent the enchanted land round the source of the Aire.
The fairy idea, Charlotte discovered, served well to give a certain gallantry to Rochester's bestowing of epithets. These the reader may have interest in finding in Jane Eyre. For instance, when Jane, returning from her visit to a dead relative, informs Rochester, he says:—
"A true Janian reply! [italics mine]. Good angels be my guard! She comes from the other world—from the abode of people who are dead, and tells me so when she meets me alone here in the gloaming! If I dared, I'd touch you, to see if you are substance or shadow, you elf!—but I'd as soon offer to take hold of a blue ignis-fatuus light in the marsh."