Miss Rigby thus excused herself a further consideration of _Wuthering Heights_. In the days of the gratification of discovering the one she loved in return loved her,[78] this recognition stood between Charlotte Brontë and "every thought of religion, as an eclipse between man and the broad sun," so in another sense truly did the contemplation of M. Héger's self-pacification intervene in the time of reaction. The doubtings and agonizing emotions of her equivocal season in Brussels were now precipitated. Her poems "Gilbert," "Frances," and "Preference" are testimony to her vengeful and retaliative instinct; as are her portrayals of M. Héger as M. Pelet of _The Professor_ and as Heathcliffe of _Wuthering Heights_. But as I show in the next chapter, Charlotte Brontë afterwards regretted her human weakness and her vituperations of the day of the recoil. She began to set forth the story of her ordeal more sanely and proportionately in _Jane Eyre_. As one who soberly rewrites of fact, she recited therein much that she already had given detachedly; and consistently she presented by aid of the frame-work of "plot" from Montagu's _Gleanings in Craven_ which already had given her elemental suggestions for her _Wuthering Heights_, the history of her life in _Jane Eyre_--a work that stands as testimony to Charlotte Brontë's love of truth as to her heroic battling in the days of fiercest temptation. A constant yearning to fine a presentation from untruthfulness is the God-given attribute of the artist, and this was responsible for much that is called harsh in Charlotte Brontë's character as a writer: she would not even spare her own physical and nervous imperfections in her self-portrayals. Emily Brontë would have presented Branwell Brontë as viewed through _couleur de rose_, yet Charlotte Brontë immortalized him as Hindley Earnshaw and John Reed--as she saw him: weak, tyrannical, a moral wreck. So she presented M. Héger. She knew his faults--and they were many; but she loved him though she hated them. Her sense of truth and justice, albeit she had lost the rancour of the time of the reaction, determined her in _Jane Eyre_, it is obvious, to show the occultation of her life's happiness by the incidents of her Brussels life. She would show there had been a day when the barriers between them would have been rashly ignored by him. Thus Rochester is made to sing in _Jane Eyre_, Chap. XXIV.:-- "I dreamed it would be nameless bliss, As I loved, loved to be; And to this object did I press As blind as eagerly. But wide as pathless[79] was the space That lay, our lives, between, And dangerous as the foamy race Of ocean-surges green. And haunted as a robber-path Through wilderness or wood; For Might and Right, and Woe and Wrath, Between our spirits stood.[80] I dangers dared; I hindrance scorned; I omens did defy: Whatever menaced, harassed, warned,[81] I passed impetuous by.