Fever and consumption had fixed their abode under the large roof
of Kendall Institution, death was stealing along with its soft,
wolf-like tread, to feed upon these poor children. The first
symptoms I remember that startled me were certain cold shiverings
and sudden fits of perspiration without warmth, which seized upon
the younger children. Then sickness and nausea, followed
immediately by vomiting. [M. Sue had been a surgeon.] ... Oh, how
cruel, how bitter it was to us when we saw the first little coffin
borne out of the school!... And now we began to hear, for the
first time, the dismal word _typhus_ uttered here and there in
whispers through the school.... When we went to the church on
Sundays, and saw the many little mounds of fresh black earth lying
over our innocent playmates of yesterday, our heads sank upon our
bosoms and we wept most sorrowfully.
Faithful to its model, "Lagrange's Manuscript" brings Isabella the
Creole as the rival of Catherine Bell, and thus of the Creole's husband
Catherine writes:--
Unwittingly, and quite unknown to myself, I became the object of
his admiration--nay, of his marked preference; but I rejected
indignantly the homage of an affection which he had sworn to
another, and which it was his sacred duty to preserve
undefiled.... In the hope of overcoming my persistency in refusing
his so often proffered and as often rejected love, he urged on by
every imaginable means the final decision, which in the eyes of
man were to permit a second marriage, guilty in the sight of God.
With the natural instinct of divination peculiar to female
jealousy, his wife had guessed who was the deity at whose altar
the captain was burning his incense.... Nor did she consider
whether I encouraged or rebuked him. She suspected, she spied, she
believed, and unscrupulously involved me in the hateful vengeance
she swore to take both on her husband and myself.
For a portrait of Mdlle. Lagrange who, as the author of this version of
_Jane Eyre_, is of course meant for Charlotte Brontë, we turn to the
_feuilleton_ itself:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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