Tabby blowing the fire, in order to boil the potatoes to a sort of vegetable glue!  How divine are these recollections to me at this moment!  Yet I have no thought of coming home just now.  I lack a real pretext for doing so; it is true this place is dismal to me, but I cannot go home without a fixed prospect when I get there; and this prospect must not be a situation; that would be jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire. You call yourself idle! absurd, absurd! . . .  Is papa well?  Are you well? and Tabby?  You ask about Queen Victoria’s visit to Brussels.  I saw her for an instant flashing through the Rue Royale in a carriage and six, surrounded by soldiers.  She was laughing and talking very gaily.  She looked a little stout, vivacious lady, very plainly dressed, not much dignity or pretension about her.  The Belgians liked her very well on the whole.  They said she enlivened the sombre court of King Leopold, which is usually as gloomy as a conventicle.  Write to me again soon.  Tell me whether papa really wants me very much to come home, and whether you do likewise.  I have an idea that I should be of no use there—­a sort of aged person upon the parish.  I pray, with heart and soul, that all may continue well at Haworth; above all in our grey half-inhabited house.  God bless the walls thereof!  Safety, health, happiness, and prosperity to you, papa, and Tabby.  Amen.

“C.  B.”

Towards the end of this year (1843) various reasons conspired with the causes of anxiety which have been mentioned, to make her feel that her presence was absolutely and imperatively required at home, while she had acquired all that she proposed to herself in coming to Brussels the second time; and was, moreover, no longer regarded with the former kindliness of feeling by Madame Heger.  In consequence of this state of things, working down with sharp edge into a sensitive mind, she suddenly announced to that lady her immediate intention of returning to England.  Both M. and Madame Heger agreed that it would be for the best, when they learnt only that part of the case which she could reveal to them—­namely, Mr. Bronte’s increasing blindness.  But as the inevitable moment of separation from people and places, among which she had spent so many happy hours, drew near, her spirits gave way; she had the natural presentiment that she saw them all for the last time, and she received but a dead kind of comfort from being reminded by her friends that Brussels and Haworth were not so very far apart; that access from one place to the other was not so difficult or impracticable as her tears would seem to predicate; nay, there was some talk of one of Madame Heger’s daughters being sent to her as a pupil, if she fulfilled her intention of trying to begin a school.  To facilitate her success in this plan, should she ever engage in it, M. Heger gave her a kind of diploma, dated from, and sealed with the seal of the Athenee Royal de Bruxelles, certifying that she was perfectly capable of teaching the French language, having well studied the grammar and composition thereof, and, moreover, having prepared herself for teaching by studying and practising the best methods of instruction.  This certificate is dated December 29th 1843, and on the 2nd of January, 1844, she arrived at Haworth.