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

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

The coach door was open and ... We got to Kendall House.... I a servant was standing at it: I had been sitting near my trunk saw her ... by the light of the on the outside of the coach, and lamps. my legs were numb with cold. I was quite unable to move, so the "Is there a little girl called coachman lifted me down along Jane Eyre here?" she asked. I with my box. The door was open answered "Yes," and was lifted when the coach stopped; a out, my trunk was handed down. 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 The girl returned no answer, but room, with a fire, where she having ushered me into a left me alone.... I stood and spacious room with a fire in it, warmed my numbed fingers over she left me there by myself; ... the blaze; ... there was no there was no candle. I stood ... candle. warming my numb hands and limbs. I heard the door open ... and I The door opened, and an saw a face ... I never can individual entered, ... a tall forget. My heart told me lady with dark hair, dark eyes, directly it was Miss Ashton and a pale and large forehead [Eshton]. Dear, noble girl! her [Miss Temple. Her real name was face was rather large, but Miss Evans], her countenance was accurately oval--just as you see grave, her bearing erect. them in the fine sacred pictures of Murillo--those pictures of grand female beauty.

She considered me attentively Everything in that face was for a minute or two. great, open, frank, truthlike, ... and yet there was a grave ... "Are you tired?" she asked, ... melancholy overspreading placing her hand on my shoulder. that regal countenance.... It was singular to see a woman ... "A little, ma'am." 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.

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

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

What my sensations were no The passions and feelings of a language can describe.... I child are only known to mastered the rising hysteria ... children. Grown-up people seem and took a firm stand on the to have forgotten them.[60] I stool. 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.