From the tone of this letter, it may easily be perceived that the Brussels of 1843 was a different place from that of 1842.  Then she had Emily for a daily and nightly solace and companion.  She had the weekly variety of a visit to the family of the D.s; and she had the frequent happiness of seeing “Mary” and Martha.  Now Emily was far away in Haworth—­where she or any other loved one, might die, before Charlotte, with her utmost speed, could reach them, as experience, in her aunt’s case, had taught her.  The D.s were leaving Brussels; so, henceforth, her weekly holiday would have to be passed in the Rue d’Isabelle, or so she thought.  “Mary” was gone off on her own independent course; Martha alone remained—­still and quiet for ever, in the cemetery beyond the Porte de Louvain.  The weather, too, for the first few weeks after Charlotte’s return, had been piercingly cold; and her feeble constitution was always painfully sensitive to an inclement season.  Mere bodily pain, however acute, she could always put aside; but too often ill-health assailed her in a part far more to be dreaded.  Her depression of spirits, when she was not well, was pitiful in its extremity.  She was aware that it was constitutional, and could reason about it; but no reasoning prevented her suffering mental agony, while the bodily cause remained in force.

The Hegers have discovered, since the publication of “Villette,” that at this beginning of her career as English teacher in their school, the conduct of her pupils was often impertinent and mutinous in the highest degree.  But of this they were unaware at the time, as she had declined their presence, and never made any complaint.  Still it must have been a depressing thought to her at this period, that her joyous, healthy, obtuse pupils were so little answerable to the powers she could bring to bear upon them; and though from their own testimony, her patience, firmness, and resolution, at length obtained their just reward, yet with one so weak in health and spirits, the reaction after such struggles as she frequently had with her pupils, must have been very sad and painful.

She thus writes to her friend E.:—­

   “April, 1843.

“Is there any talk of your coming to Brussels?  During the bitter cold weather we had through February, and the principal part of March, I did not regret that you had not accompanied me.  If I had seen you shivering as I shivered myself, if I had seen your hands and feet as red and swelled as mine were, my discomfort would just have been doubled.  I can do very well under this sort of thing; it does not fret me; it only makes me numb and silent; but if you were to pass a winter in Belgium, you would be ill.  However, more genial weather is coming now, and I wish you were here.  Yet I never have pressed you, and never would press you too warmly to come.  There are privations and humiliations to submit to; there is monotony and uniformity of life; and, above