ne!"

Now it must be borne in mind that her temperament was naturally
hypochondriacal.

Let me quote a passage dealing with the same experience; it is
undoubtedly autobiographical, though it comes from Villette, into which
Charlotte Bronte threw the picture of her own solitary experiences in
Brussels. She is left alone at the pensionnat in the vacation, strained
by work and anxiety, and tortured by exhaustion, restlessness, and
sleeplessness:--

"One day, perceiving this growing illusion, I said, 'I really believe
my nerves are getting overstretched: my mind has suffered somewhat too
much; a malady is growing upon it--what shall I do? How shall I keep
well?'

"Indeed there was no way to keep well under the circumstances. At last
a day and night of peculiarly agonising depression were succeeded by
physical illness; I took perforce to my bed. About this time the Indian
summer closed, and the equinoctial storms began; and for nine dark and
wet days, of which the hours rushed on all turbulent, deaf,
dishevelled--bewildered with sounding hurricane--I lay in a strange
fever of the nerves and blood. Sleep went quite away. I used to rise in
the night, look round for her, beseech her earnestly to return. A
rattle of the window, a cry of the blast only replied--Sleep never came!

"I err. She came once, but in anger. Impatient of my importunity she
brought with her an avenging dream. By the clock of St. Jean Baptiste,
that dream remained scarce fifteen minutes--a brief space, but
sufficing to wring my whole frame with unknown anguish; to confer a
nameless experience that had the hue, the mien, the terror, the very
tone of a visitation from eternity. Between twelve and one that night a
cup was forced to my lips, black, strong, strange, drawn from no well,
but filled up seething from a bottomless and boundless sea. Suffering,
brewed in temporal or calculable measure, and mixed for mortal lips,
tastes not as this suffering tasted. Having drank [sic] and woke, I
thought all was over: the end come and passed by. Trembling
fearfully--as consciousness returned--ready to cry out on some
fellow-creature to help me, only that I knew no fellow-creature was
near enough to catch the wild summons--Goton in her far distant attic
could not hear--I rose on my knees in bed. Some fearful hours went over
me; indescribably was I torn, racked and oppressed in mind. Amidst the
horrors of that dream I think the worst lay here. Methought the
well