Part 10 (2/2)

”'Then it is not necessary that I should cut out any portion--saying, this part is not mine: it was plaited under the idea and for the adornment of another?'

”'By no means It is neither necessary, nor would it be just'

”'This object is _all_ htway uard splendidly across his chest, displaying asas little as he could: for he had no notion of concealing what he adht decorative

”'_a present c'est un fait acco his paletot”

To the last gesture of Monsieur it is superb

I have taken those scenes because they are of crucial i in _Villette_, and yet would do They show not only an enormous advance in technique, but a sense of the situation, of the _scene a faire_, which is entirely or al in her earlier work

If there be degrees in reality, Lucy and Pauline de Bassompierre are only less real than M Paul And by some miracle their reality is not die of intention with regard to these two Little Polly, the child of the beginning, the inscrutable creature of nerves, exquisitely sensitive to pain, fretting her heart out in love for her father and for Grahanizable in Pauline, Countess de Bassoility, her fastidiousness, her little air of inaccessibility Polly is obviously predestined to that profound and tragic suffering which is Lucy Snowe's

”I watched Polly rest her small elbow on her small knee, her head on her hand; I observed her draw a square inch or two of pocket-handkerchief from the doll-pocket of her doll-skirt, and then I heard her weep Other children in grief or pain cry aloud, without sha wept: the tiniest occasional sniff testified to her eain (Polly is parted from her father): ”When the street-door closed, she dropped on her knees at a chair with a cry--'Papa!'

”It was low and long; a sort of 'why hast thou forsakenspace of soh, in that brief interval of her infant life, emotions such as some never feel; it was in her constitution: she would have more of such instants if she lived”

Polly is contrasted with the cold and disagreeable Lucy ”I, Lucy Snoas calives, of so creepily insensitive and most unpleasant, is unmistakable in these early chapters She watches Polly with a cold, analytic eye

”These sudden, dangerous natures--sensitive as they are called--offer many a curious spectacle to those whom a cooler tearies” When Polly, char Polly, waits on her father at the tea-table, Lucy is iht her a little busy-body” When Graha the occasion by inculcating some of those maxims of philosophy whereof I had ever a tolerable stock ready for application”

There is no sign in the beginning that this detestable Lucy is to be heroine But in Chapter Four Polly disappears and Lucy takes her place and plays her part The child Polly had a suffering and passionate heart, for all her little air of fastidiousness and inaccessibility It is the suffering and passionate heart of Polly that beats in Lucy of the Pensionnat There is only enough of the original Lucy left to sit in judgment on Ginevra Fanshawe and ”the Parisienne”

The child Polly had an Iination ”'Miss Snowe,' said she in a whisper, 'this is a wonderful bookit tells about distant countries, a long, long way fro thousands of athered in a desolate place--a plain spread with sand And here are pictures er than that There is the wonderful Great Wall of China; here is a Chinese lady with a foot littler than mine

There is a wild horse of Tartary; and here--reen fields, woods, or gardens In this land they found some mammoth bones; there are no mammoths now You don't knohat it was; but I can tell you, because Grahah as this roo thing, Graham thinks He believes if I met one in a forest, it would not kill me, unless I cast the bushes, as Iit'”

It is Polly's Iain in Lucy's ”Creative Impulse” ”I hom that Impulse was theof mastersa deity which sometimes, under circumstances apparently propitious, would not speak when questioned, would not hear when appealed to, would not, when sought, be found; but would stand, all cold, all indurated, all granite, a dark Baal with carven lips and blank eyeballs, and breast like the stone face of a to-tre past of an unseen stream of electricity, the irrational Deely alive, would rush fro to its votary for a sacrifice, whatever the hour--to its victim for some blood or so its priest, treacherously proe hunificance to fateful winds, and grudging to the desperate listener even a h each word had been a drop of the deathless ichor of its own dark veins”

That is Lucy But when Polly reappears fitfully as Pauline de Bassompierre, she is an ordinary, fastidious little lady without a spark of iination or of passion

Now in the first three chapters of _Villette_, Charlotte Bronte concentrated all her strength and all her art on the portrait of little Polly The portrait of little Polly is draith the most delicate care and tender comprehension, and the ree with Mr Swinburne that George Eliot, with her Totty and Eppie and Lillo, showed a closer observation of the ways, or aof the heart of a child Only little Maggie Tulliver can stand beside little Polly in _Villette_ She is an answer to every critic, from Mr Swinburne doards, who maintains that Charlotte Bronte could not draw children

But Lucy at fourteen is draith slight and grudging strokes, sufficient for the minor part she is evidently to play Lucy at Bretton is a mere foil to little Polly Charlotte Bronte distinctly stated in her letters that she did not care for Miss Snowe ”Lucy must not ht-spirited, and sweet-te' of Nature and of fortune, and , rich, pretty; he must be made very happy indeed If Lucy marries anybody, it ive, much to 'put up with' But I ainning I never meant to appoint her lines in pleasant places”

”As to the character of Lucy Snowe, my intention from the first was that she should not occupy the pedestal to which Jane Eyre was raised by some injudicious ade of self-laudation can touch her”

But Lucy is _not_ altogether where she was meant to be When she reappears at the Pensionnat it is with ”fla in her eyes” She reht, unta with a mixture of fire and fear the first entrance of the breaker-in”

”'You look,' said he, 'like one ould snatch at a draught of sweet poison, and spurn wholesoust'”

There is no inconsistency in this Women before now have hidden a soul like a furnace under coldness and unpleasantness, and s nerves under an appearance of apathy Lucy Snowe is one of theoes, Lucy at Bretton is profoundly consistent with Lucy in _Villette_ It is not Lucy's volcanic outbreaks in the Pensionnat that do violence to her creator's original intention It is the debaseic role, the endowment of Lucy with Polly's rarest qualities, to the utter impoverishment of Pauline de Bassompierre Polly in _Villette_ is a mere foil to Lucy