Meanwhile we have lost sight of our blue-stocking friend, Mdlle. Lagrange ['Madame herself deemed me a regular _bas bleu_,' says Lucy Snowe of Madame Beck (Madame Héger) in _Villette_] ... her character ... remains to be described. Now, to form any opinion of it by Madame de Morville's [Madame Héger's] appreciation of that girl's disposition, would be completely erroneous. Lagrange was not devoid of intellectual faculties; she possessed an imaginative mind, rather too fond of romance, and too little of practical truths; but, above all, cunning and ambition formed the main basis of her character: she had risen from nothing, and _would_ become something. Imbued as she was with the ideas prevalent among the lower rank [Had Charlotte Brontë related her father's history to the Hégers? She had 'views' on money. M. Sue, however, never seems to have forgotten the rank of his own god-parents], she deemed it her right and duty to concentrate all the power of her faculties towards the end she sighed for--wealth and a name. Thus it was she displayed all the resources of her subtle nature to make every circumstance serve to the gratifying of her ambition. What, then, was to be her means of success? Marriage?--yes, that perpetual dream of maidens, and a dream which too often ends in an everlasting nightmare. But the task was not easy, for, it has been said, beauty had been forgotten by Dame Nature among the few gifts she had granted her.[61] What the appearance failed in, the mind should, at any cost, supply [!]. This had become her ruling desire. Thence the manuscript ['Catherine Bell, The Orphan'] we have already read had been the first ponderous lucubration of her fortune-seeking imagination: she had been praised for this first attempt by her friends, and also by one two distinguished critics.[62] This was already a point gained, and an encouragement to her literary propensities. Thus far the Mdlle. Lagrange phase of Currer Bell according to Eugène Sue, and before the publication of _The Professor_, _Villette_, and Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Brontë_. The next chapter shall deal with Eugène Sue's relation of her as "Miss Mary," the leading character of this extraordinary _feuilleton_, whereby it will be proved finally that in her works Charlotte Brontë has written from her own life-story. CHAPTER XIII. EUGÈNE SUE AND CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S BRUSSELS LIFE. II. ACCUSATIONS AND PROTESTATIONS!