The absolute dependence of Charlotte Brontë's _Wuthering Heights_, _Jane Eyre_, and _Villette_ upon her own inner life in relation to M. Héger is proved by the evidence in the chapter on "The Rivers Family," in the chapters on "Eugène Sue and Charlotte Brontë's Brussels Life," and in those entitled "The Recoil." CHAPTER XII. EUGÈNE SUE AND CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S BRUSSELS LIFE. I. MDLLE. LAGRANGE AND HER MANUSCRIPT "CATHERINE BELL THE ORPHAN." When Mrs. Gaskell published her Brontë biography it was discovered that while she had been enabled by aid of the mass of commonplace Brontë correspondence to present an interesting picture of the domestic conditions at the Haworth parsonage, she had yet been unable to throw any light upon that episode in Charlotte Brontë's life which, it had been suspected, was responsible for the extraordinary love passages in the Brontë works and Miss Brontë's insistence in choosing the hero of each of her books from the same model. It is therefore most miraculous and sensational that after having found Montagu's _Gleanings in Craven_ was the key to _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_, I should further come to discover, what the world had thought would never be found: external evidence throwing light upon Miss Brontë's real relations with the Hégers at Brussels, to whose _pensionnat_ she went in the 'forties. This discovery was the subject of my article "The Lifting of the Brontë Veil" Mr. W. L. Courtney commissioned me to write in the _Fortnightly Review_. Therein I showed Eugène Sue had presented the whole history of M. Héger's passion for Charlotte Brontë, and Madame Héger's jealousy, in a work entitled _Miss Mary ou l'Institutrice_, published in 1850-51--seven years before the publication of Mrs. Gaskell's _Life_, and before the publication of either _The Professor_ or _Villette_; and we saw that M. Héger knew all Miss Brontë's literary secrets in 1850. Skilfully enough Eugène Sue in this story--the first version of which was issued serially in September 1850, from _The Weekly Times_ Office, London, whence were published many of M. Sue's serials;[56] the second, an abridged and altered version for French readers, published in Paris in March 1851--gave two phases of Charlotte Brontë, something after the method we see Miss Brontë herself employed in _Jane Eyre_, wherein she gave two phases of Tabitha Aykroyd, one in the beginning as Bessie, another later on as Hannah of the Rivers family.[57] Indeed it will be found that in this work Eugène Sue also imitated Charlotte Brontë's Method I., interchange of the sexes of characters portrayed from life.