The unsupported and undisciplined individual, like communities, cannot always safely stand alone, and finally resolves into an automaton at the service of unlicensed and unconsidered impulse when the day of reaction comes. The anthropologist and the pathologist relate how exacting straitness suddenly has broken down with a lamentable demonstration of most morbid prurience; and relentless history has chronicled grievous moral declensions in the lives of men and women whose careers in the greater part were records of generous and unselfish devotion to a noble cause or an honourable work. Until the day of reaction is safely fought through the battle is not won. Perhaps it was to prevent all possibility of a final and definite reconciliation between M. Héger and Miss Brontë that M. Sue, aided by his friends, ridiculed their attachment in his _feuilleton, Miss Mary_. Not that Eugène Sue would do this necessarily for Virtue's sake, but the position of moral reprehender gave him title to the rôle he had assumed. M. Héger was sorely punished to lose Miss Brontë, as M. Sue has shown, and as we have seen Charlotte Brontë herself tells us in a letter; and the intensity of his affection for her is only further accentuated by the light M. Sue throws upon the subject in a conversation which occurs between Alphonsine and the jealous mother, concerning Mdlle. Lagrange in the opening chapters of his _feuilleton_. As I have stated, evidence compels us to perceive M. Sue often presented by imitation of Charlotte Brontë's Method I., Interchange of the sexes for obfuscation's sake, M. Héger in Alphonsine: Madame de Morville (Madame Héger) has just said Mdlle. Lagrange (Miss Brontë) affected a little to speak of her humble origin. "Elle affecter," replies Alphonsine, "... c'est une erreur. Quand, par hasard, elle parlait de sa famille, c'est que la conversation venait là-dessus. D'ailleurs, écoute donc, Mademoiselle Lagrange eût été fière qu'elle en avait le droit." "Proud! what of? not of her face, poor girl." "No, that is true." Madame de Morville admits that Mdlle. Lagrange was endowed with patience, learning, and fortitude; and says, "Tu le sais, nous avions pour elle les plus grands égards." "Without doubt ... and myself, I loved her like a sister." To which Madame de Morville retorts: "A ce point que, pendant les premiers jours qui ont suivi son départ je t'ai vue souvent pleurer, et que depuis je te trouve triste." "Que veux-tu ... se quitter après plus de trois ans d'intimité, cela vous laisse du chagrin." "This sensibility does credit to your heart, but after all it seems to me that you and I shall be able by our mutual tenderness to console each other for the loss d'une étrangère."