The Brontes

92 THE BRONTES
M. Emanuel, from his all-seeing window, has
pursued them with a determination equal to her
resolution ; by her very stoicism she has won
for herself an immortal Happiness which, on
the last page, the Heavens themselves open to
bestow.
Charlotte Bronte., in reality, we know did not
reach this Happiness. That she would have been
in love with M. Heger, if circumstances had
allowed, can hardly be denied, in view of the
letters she wrote to him, when back again at
Haworth after her second visit to Brussels; but
as M. Heger's feelings for her were, obviously, not
those of M. Emanuel for Lucy Snowe, and as
Charlotte just as evidently was aware of this, it
is not fair to say that she was in love with him.
To one of her disposition, there was all the differ-
ence in the world between the earlier stages of
romantic feeling and the supreme state of realising
"As I love, loved am I " ; not iust the difference
of Browning's " the little less and what worlds
away," for that was expressed in secure retrospect
from " the little more and how much it is " and
so the poet was able to minimise the last, actual,
transforming step. But Charlotte never reached
such haven ; the " worlds away " distance re-
mained to her illimitable, untransformed ; only
in imagination was her love returned. Had it
been otherwise, Villette might never have been
written ; for happiness does not make for the
writing of great love-stories, it is from unhappiness
that romance of the Villette order is born. And
Charlotte, had she been in love with M. Heger,