seen your hands and feet as
red and swelled as mine were, my discomfort would just have been
doubled. I can do very well under this sort of thing; it does not
fret me; it only makes me numb and silent; but if you were to pass a
winter in Belgium, you would be ill. However, more genial weather is
coming now, and I wish you were here. Yet I never have pressed you,
and never would press you too warmly to come. There are privations
and humiliations to submit to; there is monotony and uniformity of
life; and, above all, there is a constant sense of solitude in the
midst of numbers. The Protestant, the foreigner, is a solitary being,
whether as teacher or pupil. I do not say this by way of complaining
of my own lot; for though I acknowledge that there are certain
disadvantages in my present position, what position on earth is
without them? And, whenever I turn back to compare what I am with
what I was--my place here with my place at Mrs. ---'s for instance--I
am thankful. There was an observation in your last letter which
excited, for a moment, my wrath. At first, I thought it would be
folly to reply to it, and I would let it die. Afterwards, I
determined to give one answer, once for all. 'Three or four people,'
it seems, 'have the idea that the future _epoux_ of Mademoiselle
Bronte is on the Continent.' These people are wiser than I am. They
could not believe that I crossed the sea merely to return as teacher
to Madame Hegers. I must have some more powerful motive than respect
for my master and mistress, gratitude for their kindness, &c., to
induce me to refuse a salary of 50_l_. in England, and accept one of
16_l_. in Belgium. I must, forsooth, have some remote hope of
entrapping a husband somehow, or somewhere. If these charitable
people knew the total seclusion of the life I lead,--that I never
exchange a word with any other man than Monsieur Heger, and seldom
indeed with him,--they would, perhaps, cease to suppose that any such
chimerical and groundless notion had influenced my proceedings. Have
I said enough to clear myself of so silly an imputation? Not that it
is a crime to marry, or a crime to wish to be married; but it is an
imbecility, which I reject with contempt, for women, who have neither
fortune nor beauty, to make marriage the principal object of their
wishes and hopes, and the aim of all