"Une étrangère!" says Alphonsine, naïvely; "dis donc une amie, une soeur.... Ainsi, toi ... tu es pour moi, n'est-ce pas, aussi affectueuse que possible; pourtant tu m'imposes toujours; il y a mille riens, mille folies, mille bêtises si tu veux, que je n'oserais jamais te dire, et qui nous amusaient et nous faisaient rire aux larmes avec cette pauvre Mademoiselle Lagrange; et puis ces causeries sans fin pendant les récréations, nos jeux mêmes, car elle était très enfant quand elle s'y mettait[70]; all this made our temps de l'étude pass like a dream, and that of recreation like a flash." "Without doubt," replied Madame de Morville, with a forced smile; ... "and I, ... je ne jouissais de la société de ces demoiselles que lors de notre promenade d'avant dîner, ou le soir jusqu'à l'heure du thé." The irreparableness of the loss at first to M. Héger is herein clearly shown. But whether he would confess himself to Miss Brontë afterwards is not certain. The tone of Charlotte Brontë's successive writings suggests he did not, as do many points of evidence and the reference in _Villette_, Chapter XIX., to that "He was a religious little man, in his way: the self-denying and self-sacrificing part of the Catholic religion commanded the homage of his soul." Likely enough it is that M. Héger hailed, as do truly noble men, the day of trial, and elevated by the very agony of great sacrifice the personality which worshipped a conception of duty consonant with Divine law. It seems, though, that then the battle was won; his day of reaction was fought through. At the time of what M. Sue makes M. de Morville call "ce premier entraînement" was the greatest danger, and abundant testimony goes to prove he would have gone the length of indiscretion but that Charlotte Brontë, herself innately honourable and influenced by her Christian upbringing, checked the mad rush of impetuous passion. Then the Church of M. Héger intervened. As Charlotte Brontë tells us in _Villette_, Chapter XXXVI.: "We were under the surveillance of a sleepless eye: Rome watched jealously her son through that mystic lattice at which I had knelt once, and to which M. Emanuel drew nigh month by month--the sliding panel of the confessional." She was much gratified by M. Héger's fervent admiration, though she had perforce to remember their circumstances. As M. Sue said of Lagrange so it had been with Miss Brontë:-- The girl had never before known love, save by reading and hearing of its magical influence. All the natural tenderness which lay in her heart she had year after year suppressed.