Then she went
out to a school at Brussels, where under the teaching of M. Heger,
a gifted professor, her mind and heart awoke, and she formed for
him a strange affection, half an intellectual devotion, half an
unconscious passion, which deprived her of her peace of mind. Her
sad and wistful letters to him, lately published, were disregarded
by him, partly because his wife was undoubtedly jealous of the
relation, partly because he was disconcerted by the emotion he had
aroused. Her brother, a brilliant, wayward, and in some ways
attractive boy, got into disgrace, and drifted home, where he tried
to console himself with drink and opium. After three years of this
horrible life, he died, and within twelve months her two surviving
sisters, Emily and Anne, developed consumption and died. As Robert
Browning says, there indeed was "trouble enough for one!"
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.
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