afternoon, when he chanced to meet me and Adele in the grounds: and

while she played with Pilot and her shuttlecock, he asked me to walk

up and down a long beech avenue within sight of her.

He then said that she was the daughter of a French opera-dancer,

Celine Varens, towards whom he had once cherished what he called a

'grande passion.' This passion Celine had professed to return with

even superior ardour. He thought himself her idol, ugly as he was:

he believed, as he said, that she preferred his 'taille d'athlete'

to the elegance of the Apollo Belvidere.

'And, Miss Eyre, so much was I flattered by this preference of

the Gallic sylph for her British gnome, that I installed her in an

hotel; gave her a complete establishment of servants, a carriage,

cashmeres, diamonds, dentelles, etc. In short, I began the process

of ruining myself in the received style, like any other spoony. I

had not, it seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame

and destruction, but trode the old track with stupid exactness not

to deviate an inch from the beaten centre. I had- as I deserved to

have- the fate of all other spoonies. Happening to call one evening

when Celine did not expect me, I found her out; but it was a warm

night, and I was tired with strolling through Paris, so I sat down

in her boudoir; happy to breathe the air consecrated so lately by

her presence. No,- I exaggerate; I never thought there was any

consecrating virtue about her: it was rather a sort of pastille

perfume she had left; a scent of musk and amber, than an odour of

sanctity. I was just beginning to stifle with the fumes of

conservatory flowers and sprinkled essences, when I bethought myself

to open the window and step out on to the balcony. It was moonlight

and gaslight besides, and very still and serene. The balcony was

furnished with a chair or two; I sat down, and took out a cigar,- I

will take one now, if you will excuse me.'

Here ensued a pause, filled up by the producing and lighting of a

cigar; having placed it to his lips and breathed a trail of Havannah

incense on the freezing and sunless air, he went on-

'I liked bonbons too in those days, Miss Eyre, and I was

croquant- (overlook the barbarism)- croquant chocolate comfits, and

smoking alternately, watching meantime the equipages that rolled along

the fashionable streets towards the neighbouring opera-house, when

in an elegant close carriage drawn by a beautiful pair of English

horses, and distinctly seen in the brilliant city-night, I

recognised the "voiture" I had given Celine. She was returning: of

course my heart thumped with impatience against the iron rails I leant

upon. The carriage stopped, as I had expected, at the hotel door; my

flame (that is the very word for an opera inamorata) alighted:

though muffled in a cloak- an unnecessary encumbrance, by the bye,

on so warm a June evening- I knew her instantly by her little foot,

seen peeping from the skirt of her dress, as she skipped from the

carriage step. Bending over the balcony, I was about to murmur "Mon

ange"- in a tone, of course, which should be audible to the ear of

love alone- when a figure jumped from the carriage after her;

cloaked also; but that was a spurred heel which had rung on the

pavement, and that was a hatted head which now passed under the arched

porte cochere of the hotel.

'You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre? Of course not: I need

not ask you; because you never felt love. You have both sentiments yet

to experience: your soul sleeps; the shock is yet to be given which

shall waken it. You think all existence lapses in as quiet a flow as

that in which your youth has hitherto slid away. Floating on with

closed eyes and muffled ears, you neither see the rocks bristling

not far off in the bed of the flood, nor hear the breakers boil at

their base. But I tell you- and you may mark my words- you will come

some day to a craggy pass in the channel, where the whole of life's

stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either

you will be dashed to atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne

on by some master-wave into a calmer current- as I am now.

'I like this day; I like that sky of steel; I like the sterness and

stillness of the world under this frost. I like Thornfield, its

antiquity, its retirement, its old crow-trees and thorn-trees, its

grey facade, and lines of dark windows reflecting that metal welkin:

and yet how long have I abhorred the very thought of it, shunned it

like a great plague-house? How I do still abhor-'

He ground his teeth and was silent: he arrested his step and struck

his boot against the hard ground. Some hated thought seemed to have

him in its grip, and to hold him so tightly that he could not advance.

We were ascending the avenue when he thus paused; the hall was

before us. Lifting his eye to its battlements, he cast over them a

glare such as I never saw before or since. Pain, shame, ire,

impatience, disgust, detestation, seemed momentarily to hold a

quivering conflict in the large pupil dilating under his ebon eyebrow.

Wild was the wrestle which should be paramount; but another feeling

rose and triumphed: something hard and cynical: self-willed and

resolute: it settled his passion and petrified his countenance: he

went on-

'During the moment I was silent, Miss Eyre, I was arranging a point

with my destiny. She stood there, by that beech-trunk- a hag like

one of those who appeared to Macbeth on the heath of Forres. "You like

Thornfield?" she said, lifting her finger; and then she wrote in the

air a memento, which ran in lurid hieroglyphics all along the

house-front, between the upper and lower row of windows, "Like it if

you can? Like it if you dare!"

'"I will like it" said I; "I dare like it;" and' (he subjoined

moodily) 'I will keep my word; I will break obstacles to happiness, to

goodness- yes, goodness. I wish to be a better man than I have been,

than I am; as Job's leviathan broke the spear, the dart, and the

habergeon, hindrances which others count as iron and brass, I will

esteem but straw and rotten wood.'

Adele here ran before him with her shuttlecock. 'Away!' he cried

harshly; 'keep at a distance, child; or go in to Sophie!' Continuing

then to pursue his walk in silence, I ventured to recall him to the

point whence he had abruptly diverged-

'Did you leave the balcony, sir,' I asked, 'when Mdlle. Varens

entered?'

I almost expected a rebuff for this hardly well-timed question,

but, on the contrary, waking out of his scowling abstraction, he

turned his eyes towards me, and the shade seemed to clear off his

brow. 'Oh, I had forgotten Celine! Well, to resume. When I saw my

charmer thus come in accompanied by a cavalier, I seemed to hear a

hiss, and the green snake of jealousy, rising on undulating coils from

the moonlitbalcony, glided within my waistcoat, and ate its way in

two minutes to my heart's core. Strange!' he exclaimed, suddenly

starting again from the point. 'Strange that I should choose you for

the confidant of all this, young lady; passing strange that you should

listen to me quietly, as if it were the most usual thing in the

world for a man like me to tell stories of his opera-mistresses to a

quaint, inexperienced girl like you! But the last singularity explains

the first, as I intimated once before: you, with your gravity,

considerateness, and caution were made to be the recipient of secrets.

Besides, I know what sort of a mind I have placed in communication

with my own: I know it is one not liable to take infection: it is a

peculiar mind: it is a unique one. Happily I do not mean to harm it:

but, if I did, it would not take harm from me. The more you and I

converse, the better; for while I cannot blight you, you may refresh

me.' After this digression he proceeded-

'I remained in the balcony. "They will come to her boudoir, no

doubt," thought I: "Let me prepare an ambush." So putting my hand in

through the open window, I drew the curtain over it, leaving only an

opening through which I could take observations; then I closed the

casement, all but a chink just wide enough to furnish an outlet to

lovers' whispered vows: then I stole back to my chair; and as I

resumed it the pair came in. My eye was quickly at the aperture.

Celine's chambermaid entered, lit a lamp, left it on the table, and

withdrew. The couple were thus revealed to me clearly: both removed

their cloaks, and there was "the Varens," shining in satin and

jewels,- my gifts of course,- and there was her companion in an

officer's uniform; and I knew him for a young roue of a vicomte- a

brainless and vicious youth whom I had sometimes met in society, and

had never thought of hating because I despised him so absolutely. On

recognising him, the fang of the snake Jealousy was instantly

broken; because at the same moment my love for Celine sank under an

extinguisher. A woman who could betray me for such a rival was not

worth contending for; she deserved only scorn; less, however, than

I, who had been her dupe.

'They began to talk; their conversation eased me completely:

frivolous, mercenary, heartless, and senseless, it was rather

calculated to weary than enrage a listener. A card of mine lay on

the table; this being perceived, brought my name under discussion.

Neither of them possessed energy or wit to belabour me soundly, but

they insulted me as coarsely as they could in their little way:

especially Celine, who even waxed rather brilliant on my personal

defects- deformities she termed them. Now it had been her custom to

launch out into fervent admiration of what she called my "beaute

male": wherein she differed diametrically from you, who told me

point-blank, at the second interview, that you did not think me

handsome. The contrast struck me at the time and-'

Adele here came running up again.

'Monsieur, John has just been to say that your agent has called and

wishes to see you.'

'Ah! in that case I must abridge. Opening the window, I walked in

upon them; liberated Celine from my protection; gave her notice to

vacate her hotel; offered her a purse for immediate exigencies;

disregarded screams, hysterics, prayers, protestations, convulsions;

made an appointment with the vicomte for a meeting at the Bois de

Boulogne. Next morning I had the pleasure of encountering him; left

a bullet in one of his poor etiolated arms, feeble as the wing of a

chicken in the pip, and then thought I had done with the whole crew.

But unluckily the Varens, six months before, had given me this filette

Adele, who, she affirmed, was my daughter; and perhaps she may be,

though I see no proofs of such grim paternity written in her

countenance: Pilot is more like me than she. Some years after I had

broken with the mother, she abandoned her child, and ran away to Italy

with a musician or singer. I acknowledged no natural claim on

Adele's part to be supported by me, nor do I now acknowledge any,

for I am not her father; but hearing that she was quite destitute, I

e'en took the poor thing out of the slime and mud of Paris, and

transplanted it here, to grow up clean in the wholesome soil of an

English country garden. Mrs. Fairfax found you to train it; but now

you know that it is the illegitimate offspring of a French opera-girl,

you will perhaps think differently of your post and protegee: you will

be coming to me some day with notice that you have found another

place- that you beg me to look out for a new governess, etc.- Eh?'

'No: Adele is not answerable for either her mother's faults or

yours: I have a regard for her; and now that I know she is, in a

sense, parentless- forsaken by her mother and disowned by you, sir-

I shall cling closer to her than before. How could I possibly prefer

the spoilt pet of a wealthy family, who would hate her governess as

a nuisance, to a lonely little orphan, who leans towards her as a

friend?'

'Oh, that is the light in which you view it! Well, I must go in

now; and you too: it darkens.'

But I stayed out a few minutes longer with Adele and Pilot- ran a

race with her, and played a game of battledore and shuttlecock. When

we went in, and I had removed her bonnet and coat, I took her on my

knee; kept her there an hour, allowing her to prattle as she liked:

not rebuking even some little freedoms and trivialities into which she

was apt to stray when much noticed, and which betrayed in her a

superficiality of character, inherited probably from her mother,

hardly genial" title="a.意气相投的；合适的">congenial to an English mind. Still she had her merits; and I

was disposed to appreciate all that was good in her to the utmost. I

sought in her countenance and features a likeness to Mr. Rochester,

but found none: no trait, no turn of expression announced

relationship. It was a pity: if she could but have been proved to

resemble him, he would have thought more of her.

It was not till after I had withdrawn to my own chamber for the

night, that I steadily reviewed the tale Mr. Rochester had told me. As

he had said, there was probably nothing at all extraordinary in the

substance of the narrative itself: a wealthy Englishman's passion

for a French dancer, and her treachery to him, were every-day

matters enough, no doubt, in society; but there was something

decidedly strange in the paroxysm of emotion which had suddenly seized

him when he was in the act of expressing the present contentment of

his mood, and his newly revived pleasure in the old hall and its

environs. I meditated wonderingly on this incident; but gradually

quitting it, as I found it for the present inexplicable, I turned to

the consideration of my master's manner to myself. The confidence he

had thought fit to repose in me seemed a tribute to my discretion: I

regarded and accepted it as such. His deportment had now for some

weeks been more uniform towards me than at the first. I never seemed

in his way; he did not take fits of chilling hauteur: when he met me

unexpectedly, the encounter seemed welcome; he had always a word and

sometimes a smile for me: when summoned by formal invitation to his

presence, I was honoured by a cordiality of reception that made me

feel I really possessed the power to amuse him, and that these evening

conferences were sought as much for his pleasure as for my benefit.

I, indeed, talked comparatively little, but I heard him talk with

relish. It was his nature to be communicative; he liked to open to a

mind unacquainted with the world glimpses of its scenes and ways (I do

not mean its corrupt scenes and wicked ways, but such as derived their

interest from the great scale on which they were acted, the strange

novelty by which they were characterised); and I had a keen delight in

receiving the new ideas he offered, in imagining the new pictures he

portrayed, and following him in thought through the new regions he

disclosed, never startled or troubled by one noxious allusion.

The ease of his manner freed me from painfulrestraint: the

friendly frankness, as correct as cordial, with which he treated me,

drew me to him. I felt at times as if he were my relation rather

than my master: yet he was imperious sometimes still; but I did not

mind that; I saw it was his way. So happy, so gratified did I become

with this new interest added to life, that I ceased to pine after

kindred: my thin crescent-destiny seemed to enlarge; the blanks of

existence were filled up; my bodily health improved; I gathered

flesh and strength.

And was Mr. Rochester now ugly in my eyes? No, reader: gratitude,

and many associations, all pleasurable and genial, made his face the

object I best liked to see; his presence in a room was more cheering

than the brightest fire. Yet I had not forgotten his faults; indeed, I

could not, for he brought them frequently before me. He was proud,

sardonic, harsh to inferiority of every description: in my secret soul

I knew that his great kindness to me was balanced by unjustseverity

to many others. He was moody, too; unaccountably so; I more than once,

when sent for to read to him, found him sitting in his library

alone, with his head bent on his folded arms; and, when he looked

up, a morose, almost a malignant, scowl blackened his features. But

I believed that his moodiness, his harshness, and his former faults of

morality (I say former, for now he seemed corrected of them) had their

source in some cruel cross of fate. I believed he was naturally a

man of better tendencies, higher principles, and purer tastes than

such as circumstances had developed, education instilled, or destiny

encouraged. I thought there were excellent materials in him; though

for the present they hung together somewhat spoiled and tangled. I

cannot deny that I grieved for his grief, whatever that was, and would

have given much to assuage it.

Though I had now extinguished my candle and was laid down in bed, I

could not sleep for thinking of his look when he paused in the avenue,

and told how his destiny had risen up before him, and dared him to

be happy at Thornfield.