And Charlotte’s letters from Brussels—­from the scene of passion in the year of crisis, eighteen-forty-three—­sufficiently reveal the nature of the trouble there.  Charlotte was alone in the Pensionnat without Emily.  Emily was alone at Haworth.  The few friends she had in Brussels left soon after her arrival.  She was alone in Brussels, and her homesickness was terrible.  You can trace the malady in all its stages.  In March she writes:  “I ought to consider myself well off, and to be thankful for my good fortune.  I hope I am thankful” (clearly she isn’t thankful in the least!), “and if I could always keep up my spirits and never feel lonely or long for companionship or friendship, or whatever they call it, I should do very well.”  In the same letter you learn that she is giving English lessons to M. Heger and his brother-in-law, M. Chapelle.  “If you could see and hear the efforts I make to teach them to pronounce like Englishmen, and their unavailing attempts to imitate, you would laugh to all eternity.”  Charlotte is at first amused at the noises made by M. Heger and his brother-in-law.

In May the noises made by Monsieur fail to amuse.  Still, she is “indebted to him for all the pleasure or amusement” that she had, and in spite of her indebtedness, she records a “total want of companionship”.  “I lead an easeful, stagnant, silent life, for which ...  I ought to be very thankful” (but she is not).  May I point out that though you may be “silent” in the first workings of a tragic and illegitimate passion, you are not “stagnant”, and certainly not “easeful”.

At the end of May she finds out that Madame Heger does not like her, and Monsieur is “wondrously influenced” by Madame.  Monsieur has in a great measure “withdrawn the light of his countenance”, but Charlotte apparently does not care.  In August the vacancies are at hand, and everybody but Charlotte is going home.  She is consequently “in low spirits; earth and heaven are dreary and empty to me at this moment"....  “I can hardly write, I have such a dreary weight at my heart.”  But she will see it through.  She will stay some months longer “till I have acquired German”.  And at the end:  “Everybody is abundantly civil, but homesickness comes creeping over me.  I cannot shake it off.”  That was in September, in M. Heger’s absence.  Later, she tells Emily how she went into the cathedral and made “a real confession to see what it was like”.  Charlotte’s confession has been used to bolster up the theory of the “temptation”.  Unfortunately for the theory it happened in September, when M. Heger and temptation were not there.  In October she finds that she no longer trusts Madame Heger.  At the same time “solitude oppresses me to an excess”.  She gave notice, and M. Heger flew into a passion and commanded her to stay.  She stayed very much against, not her conscience, but her will.  In the same letter and the same connection she says, “I have much to say—­many little odd things, queer and puzzling enough—­which I do not like to trust to a letter, but which one day perhaps, or rather one evening—­if ever we should find ourselves by the fireside at Haworth or Brookroyd, with our feet on the fender curling our hair—­I may communicate to you.”