Once, somewhere between 1890 and 1896, I was compelled to take up the pen in my own defence. I read in the _North American Review_ an article entitled "The Defamation of Charlotte Brontë," and to my great amazement found that it was a vicious attack upon my little book published more than twenty years previously! I was accused by the writer--an American lady whose name I had never heard before and have now forgotten--of having been the first to defame Charlotte Brontë, because I had been the first to point out the singular influence over her life and character which was exercised by her teacher in Brussels, M. Héger. It is now obvious to everybody that this gentleman was not only the original of the Paul Emanuel of "Villette," but was in many respects the inspiring influence in the whole of Charlotte Brontë's career as a writer. That he exercised a curious fascination over the untrained young woman who went to Brussels in order to improve her knowledge of French we know from her own declarations, nor is it surprising that a man of such genuine intellectual force should have exercised this influence over the mind of one who, until she met him, had known nothing whatever of intellectual society. It was not only my right, but my duty, as a critic to point out the important part which M. Héger had played in the development of Charlotte Brontë's genius, and there was most assuredly nothing in what I said that touched in the slightest degree the purity of her exalted character. Yet my critic in the _North American Review_ professed to discover that I had invented the story that Charlotte had "fallen in love" with her teacher in Brussels, and abused me soundly for having degraded her by presenting her to the world in an odious light. Surely it is a mad world that can thus misconstrue obvious and innocent facts! I cannot but think, however, that the good lady of the _North American Review_ was more anxious to figure in the great Brontë controversy than to contribute anything of value to our knowledge of the subject.