“I shall gather manna for her morning and night:  the plains and hillsides in the moon are bleached with manna, Adele.”

“She will want to warm herself:  what will she do for a fire?”

“Fire rises out of the lunar mountains:  when she is cold, I’ll carry her up to a peak, and lay her down on the edge of a crater.”

“Oh, qu’ elle y sera mal —­ peu comfortable!  And her clothes, they will wear out:  how can she get new ones?”

Mr. Rochester professed to be puzzled.  “Hem!” said he.  “What would you do, Adele?  Cudgel your brains for an expedient.  How would a white or a pink cloud answer for a gown, do you think?  And one could cut a pretty enough scarf out of a rainbow.”

“She is far better as she is,” concluded Adele, after musing some time:  “besides, she would get tired of living with only you in the moon.  If I were mademoiselle, I would never consent to go with you.”

“She has consented:  she has pledged her word.”

“But you can’t get her there; there is no road to the moon:  it is all air; and neither you nor she can fly.”

“Adele, look at that field.”  We were now outside Thornfield gates, and bowling lightly along the smooth road to Millcote, where the dust was well laid by the thunderstorm, and, where the low hedges and lofty timber trees on each side glistened green and rain-refreshed.

“In that field, Adele, I was walking late one evening about a fortnight since —­ the evening of the day you helped me to make hay in the orchard meadows; and, as I was tired with raking swaths, I sat down to rest me on a stile; and there I took out a little book and a pencil, and began to write about a misfortune that befell me long ago, and a wish I had for happy days to come:  I was writing away very fast, though daylight was fading from the leaf, when something came up the path and stopped two yards off me.  I looked at it.  It was a little thing with a veil of gossamer on its head.  I beckoned it to come near me; it stood soon at my knee.  I never spoke to it, and it never spoke to me, in words; but I read its eyes, and it read mine; and our speechless colloquy was to this effect —

“It was a fairy, and come from Elf-land, it said; and its errand was to make me happy:  I must go with it out of the common world to a lonely place —­ such as the moon, for instance —­ and it nodded its head towards her horn, rising over Hay-hill:  it told me of the alabaster cave and silver vale where we might live.  I said I should like to go; but reminded it, as you did me, that I had no wings to fly.

“‘Oh,’ returned the fairy, ’that does not signify!  Here is a talisman will remove all difficulties;’ and she held out a pretty gold ring.  ‘Put it,’ she said, ’on the fourth finger of my left hand, and I am yours, and you are mine; and we shall leave earth, and make our own heaven yonder.’  She nodded again at the moon.  The ring, Adele, is in my breeches-pocket, under the disguise of a sovereign:  but I mean soon to change it to a ring again.”