Charlotte Bronte Quote
Come, Paul! she reiterated, her eye grazing me with its hard ray like a steel stylet. She pushed against her kinsman. I thought he receded; I thought he would go. Pierced deeper than I could endure, made now to feel what defied suppression, I cried -My heart will break!What I felt seemed literal heart-break; but the seal of another fountain yielded under the strain: one breath from M. Paul, the whisper, Trust me! lifted a load, opened an outlet. With many a deep sob, with thrilling, with icy shiver, with strong trembling, and yet with relief - I wept.Leave her to me; it is a crisis: I will give her a cordial, and it will pass, said the calm Madame Beck.To be left to her and her cordial seemed to me something like being left to the poisoner and her bowl. When M. Paul answered deeply, harshly, and briefly - Laissez-moi! in the grim sound I felt a music strange, strong, but life-giving.Laissez-moi! he repeated, his nostrils opening, and his facial muscles all quivering as he spoke.But this will never do, said Madame, with sternness. More sternly rejoined her kinsman -Sortez d'ici!I will send for Père Silas: on the spot I will send for him, she threatened pertinaciously.Femme! cried the Professor, not now in his deep tones, but in his highest and most excited key, Femme! sortez à l'instant!He was roused, and I loved him in his wrath with a passion beyond what I had yet felt.What you do is wrong, pursued Madame; it is an act characteristic of men of your unreliable, imaginative temperament; a step impulsive, injudicious, inconsistent - a proceeding vexatious, and not estimable in the view of persons of steadier and more resolute character.You know not what I have of steady and resolute in me, said he, but you shall see; the event shall teach you. Modeste, he continued less fiercely, be gentle, be pitying, be a woman; look at this poor face, and relent. You know I am your friend, and the friend of your friends; in spite of your taunts, you well and deeply know I may be trusted. Of sacrificing myself I made no difficulty but my heart is pained by what I see; it must have and give solace. Leave me!This time, in the leave me there was an intonation so bitter and so imperative, I wondered that even Madame Beck herself could for one moment delay obedience; but she stood firm; she gazed upon him dauntless; she met his eye, forbidding and fixed as stone. She was opening her lips to retort; I saw over all M. Paul's face a quick rising light and fire; I can hardly tell how he managed the movement; it did not seem violent; it kept the form of courtesy; he gave his hand; it scarce touched her I thought; she ran, she whirled from the room; she was gone, and the door shut, in one second.The flash of passion was all over very soon. He smiled as he told me to wipe my eyes; he waited quietly till I was calm, dropping from time to time a stilling, solacing word. Ere long I sat beside him once more myself - re-assured, not desperate, nor yet desolate; not friendless, not hopeless, not sick of life, and seeking death.It made you very sad then to lose your friend? said he.It kills me to be forgotten, Monsieur, I said.
Come, Paul! she reiterated, her eye grazing me with its hard ray like a steel stylet. She pushed against her kinsman. I thought he receded; I thought he would go. Pierced deeper than I could endure, made now to feel what defied suppression, I cried -My heart will break!What I felt seemed literal heart-break; but the seal of another fountain yielded under the strain: one breath from M. Paul, the whisper, Trust me! lifted a load, opened an outlet. With many a deep sob, with thrilling, with icy shiver, with strong trembling, and yet with relief - I wept.Leave her to me; it is a crisis: I will give her a cordial, and it will pass, said the calm Madame Beck.To be left to her and her cordial seemed to me something like being left to the poisoner and her bowl. When M. Paul answered deeply, harshly, and briefly - Laissez-moi! in the grim sound I felt a music strange, strong, but life-giving.Laissez-moi! he repeated, his nostrils opening, and his facial muscles all quivering as he spoke.But this will never do, said Madame, with sternness. More sternly rejoined her kinsman -Sortez d'ici!I will send for Père Silas: on the spot I will send for him, she threatened pertinaciously.Femme! cried the Professor, not now in his deep tones, but in his highest and most excited key, Femme! sortez à l'instant!He was roused, and I loved him in his wrath with a passion beyond what I had yet felt.What you do is wrong, pursued Madame; it is an act characteristic of men of your unreliable, imaginative temperament; a step impulsive, injudicious, inconsistent - a proceeding vexatious, and not estimable in the view of persons of steadier and more resolute character.You know not what I have of steady and resolute in me, said he, but you shall see; the event shall teach you. Modeste, he continued less fiercely, be gentle, be pitying, be a woman; look at this poor face, and relent. You know I am your friend, and the friend of your friends; in spite of your taunts, you well and deeply know I may be trusted. Of sacrificing myself I made no difficulty but my heart is pained by what I see; it must have and give solace. Leave me!This time, in the leave me there was an intonation so bitter and so imperative, I wondered that even Madame Beck herself could for one moment delay obedience; but she stood firm; she gazed upon him dauntless; she met his eye, forbidding and fixed as stone. She was opening her lips to retort; I saw over all M. Paul's face a quick rising light and fire; I can hardly tell how he managed the movement; it did not seem violent; it kept the form of courtesy; he gave his hand; it scarce touched her I thought; she ran, she whirled from the room; she was gone, and the door shut, in one second.The flash of passion was all over very soon. He smiled as he told me to wipe my eyes; he waited quietly till I was calm, dropping from time to time a stilling, solacing word. Ere long I sat beside him once more myself - re-assured, not desperate, nor yet desolate; not friendless, not hopeless, not sick of life, and seeking death.It made you very sad then to lose your friend? said he.It kills me to be forgotten, Monsieur, I said.
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About Charlotte Bronte
Charlotte was the third of six siblings born to Maria Branwell, the daughter of a Cornish merchant, and Patrick Brontë, an Irish clergyman. Maria died when Charlotte was only five years old, and three years later, Charlotte was sent to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire, along with her three sisters, Maria, Elizabeth and Emily. Conditions at the school were appalling, with frequent outbreaks of disease. Charlotte's two elder sisters fell ill there and died; Charlotte attributed her own lifelong ill-health to her time at Cowan Bridge, and later used it at the model for Lowood School in Jane Eyre.
In 1831, Charlotte became a pupil at Roe Head School in Mirfield, but left the following year in order to teach her sisters, Emily and Anne, at home. In 1835, Charlotte returned to Roe Head as a teacher. In 1839, she accepted a job as governess to a local family, but left after a few months.
In 1842, Charlotte joined the Heger Pensionnat, a girls' boarding school in Brussels, as a student teacher, in the hope of acquiring the skills required to open a school of her own. However she was obliged to leave after falling in love with the school's director, Constantin Heger, a married man, who inspired both the character of Rochester in Jane Eyre, and Charlotte's first novel, The Professor.
Charlotte, Emily and Anne then attempted to open a school in Haworth, but failed to attract pupils. In 1846 the sisters published a collection of poems under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Although Charlotte's first novel, The Professor, was rejected by publishers, her second novel, Jane Eyre, was published in 1847. The sisters' true identities were revealed in 1848, and by the following year Charlotte was known in London literary circles.
In 1854, Charlotte married Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father's curate. She became pregnant shortly after her wedding in June 1854, but died on 31 March 1855, possibly of tuberculosis, although there is evidence that she may have died from hyperemesis gravidarum, a complication of pregnancy.