Villette - Charlotte Brontë (best fiction books of all time TXT) 📗

some blood, or some breath, whatever the circumstance or scene⁠—rousing its priest, treacherously promising vaticination, perhaps filling its temple with a strange hum of oracles, but sure to give half the significance to fateful winds, and grudging to the desperate listener even a miserable remnant⁠—yielding it sordidly, as though each word had been a drop of the deathless ichor of its own dark veins. And this tyrant I was to compel into bondage, and make it improvise a theme, on a school estrade, between a Mathilde and a Coralie, under the eye of a Madame Beck, for the pleasure, and to the inspiration of a bourgeois of Labassecour!

Upon this argument M. Paul and I did battle more than once⁠—strong battle, with confused noise of demand and rejection, exaction and repulse.

On this particular day I was soundly rated. “The obstinacy of my whole sex,” it seems, was concentrated in me; I had an orgueil de diable. I feared to fail, forsooth! What did it matter whether I failed or not? Who was I that I should not fail, like my betters? It would do me good to fail. He wanted to see me worsted (I knew he did), and one minute he paused to take breath.

“Would I speak now, and be tractable?”

“Never would I be tractable in this matter. Law itself should not compel me. I would pay a fine, or undergo an imprisonment, rather than write for a show and to order, perched up on a platform.”

“Could softer motives influence me? Would I yield for friendship’s sake?”

“Not a whit, not a hair-breadth. No form of friendship under the sun had a right to exact such a concession. No true friendship would harass me thus.”

He supposed then (with a sneer⁠—M. Paul could sneer supremely, curling his lip, opening his nostrils, contracting his eyelids)⁠—he supposed there was but one form of appeal to which I would listen, and of that form it was not for him to make use.

“Under certain persuasions, from certain quarters, je vous vois d’ici,” said he, “eagerly subscribing to the sacrifice, passionately arming for the effort.”

“Making a simpleton, a warning, and an example of myself, before a hundred and fifty of the ‘papas’ and ‘mammas’ of Villette.”

And here, losing patience, I broke out afresh with a cry that I wanted to be liberated⁠—to get out into the air⁠—I was almost in a fever.

“Chut!” said the inexorable, “this was a mere pretext to run away; he was not hot, with the stove close at his back; how could I suffer, thoroughly screened by his person?”

“I did not understand his constitution. I knew nothing of the natural history of salamanders. For my own part, I was a phlegmatic islander, and sitting in an oven did not agree with me; at least, might I step to the well, and get a glass of water⁠—the sweet apples had made me thirsty?”

“If that was all, he would do my errand.”

He went to fetch the water. Of course, with a door only on the latch behind me, I lost not my opportunity. Ere his return, his half-worried prey had escaped.

XXXI The Dryad

The spring was advancing, and the weather had turned suddenly warm. This change of temperature brought with it for me, as probably for many others, temporary decrease of strength. Slight exertion at this time left me overcome with fatigue⁠—sleepless nights entailed languid days.

One Sunday afternoon, having walked the distance of half a league to the Protestant church, I came back weary and exhausted; and taking refuge in my solitary sanctuary, the first classe, I was glad to sit down, and to make of my desk a pillow for my arms and head.

Awhile I listened to the lullaby of bees humming in the berceau, and watched, through the glass door and the tender, lightly-strewn spring foliage, Madame Beck and a gay party of friends, whom she had entertained that day at dinner after morning mass, walking in the centre-alley under orchard boughs dressed at this season in blossom, and wearing a colouring as pure and warm as mountain-snow at sunrise.

My principal attraction towards this group of guests lay, I remember, in one figure⁠—that of a handsome young girl whom I had seen before as a visitor at Madame Beck’s, and of whom I had been vaguely told that she was a filleule, or goddaughter, of M. Emanuel’s, and that between her mother, or aunt, or some other female relation of hers, and the Professor, had existed of old a special friendship. M. Paul was not of the holiday band today, but I had seen this young girl with him ere now, and as far as distant observation could enable me to judge, she seemed to enjoy him with the frank ease of a ward with an indulgent guardian. I had seen her run up to him, put her arm through his, and hang upon him. Once, when she did so, a curious sensation had struck through me⁠—a disagreeable anticipatory sensation⁠—one of the family of presentiments, I suppose⁠—but I refused to analyze or dwell upon it. While watching this girl, Mademoiselle Sauveur by name, and following the gleam of her bright silk robe (she was always richly dressed, for she was said to be wealthy) through the flowers and the glancing leaves of tender emerald, my eyes became dazzled⁠—they closed; my lassitude, the warmth of the day, the hum of bees and birds, all lulled me, and at last I slept.

Two hours stole over me. Ere I woke, the sun had declined out of sight behind the towering houses, the garden and the room were grey, bees had gone homeward, and the flowers were closing; the party of guests, too, had vanished; each alley was void.

On waking, I felt much at ease⁠—not chill, as I ought to have been after sitting so still for at least two hours; my cheek and arms were not benumbed by pressure against the