No offspring of genius was ever more alive, more rich in individuality, than M. Paul.  He is alive and he is adorable, in his paletot and bonnet grec, from the moment when he drags Lucy up three pairs of stairs to the solitary and lofty attic and locks her in, to that other moment when he brings her to the little house that he has prepared for her.  Whenever he appears there is pure radiant comedy, and pathos as pure.  It is in this utter purity, this transparent simplicity, that Villette is great.  There is not one jarring note in any of the delicious dialogues between Lucy and M. Paul, not one of those passages which must be erased if quotation is not to fail of its effect.  Take the scene where Lucy breaks M. Paul’s spectacles.

“A score of times ere now I had seen them fall and receive no damage—­this time, as Lucy Snowe’s hapless luck would have it, they so fell that each clear pebble became a shivered and shapeless star.

“Now, indeed, dismay seized me—­dismay and regret.  I knew the value of these lunettes:  M. Paul’s sight was peculiar, not easily fitted, and these glasses suited him.  I had heard him call them his treasures:  as I picked them up, cracked and worthless, my hand trembled.  Frightened through all my nerves I was to see the mischief I had done, but I think I was even more sorry than afraid.  For some seconds I dared not look the bereaved Professor in the face; he was the first to speak.

“‘La!’ he said:  ’me voila veuf de mes lunettes!  I think that Mademoiselle Lucy will now confess that the cord and gallows are amply earned; she trembles in anticipation of her doom.  Ah, traitress, traitress!  You are resolved to have me quite blind and helpless in your hands!’

“I lifted my eyes:  his face, instead of being irate, lowering and furrowed, was overflowing with the smile, coloured with the bloom I had seen brightening it that evening at the Hotel Crecy.  He was not angry—­not even grieved.  For the real injury he showed himself full of clemency; under the real provocation, patient as a saint.”

Take the “Watchguard” scene.

“M.  Paul came and stood behind me.  He asked at what I was working; and I said I was making a watchguard.  He asked, ‘For whom?’ And I answered, ‘For a gentleman—­one of my friends.’”

Whereupon M. Paul flies into a passion, and accuses Lucy of behaving to him, “’With what pungent vivacities—­what an impetus of mutiny—­what a fougue of injustice.’... ’Chut! a l’instant! There! there I went—­vive comme la poudre.’  He was sorry—­he was very sorry:  for my sake he grieved over the hopeless peculiarity.  This emportement, this chaleur—­generous, perhaps, but excessive—­would yet, he feared, do me a mischief.  It was a pity.  I was not—­he believed, in his soul—­wholly without good qualities; and would I but hear reason, and be more sedate, more sober, less en l’air, less