But the second fact we discover is that,--again, _in this book particularly_,--historical personages and real events are used as the materials for an imaginary story, in a way that has produced critical confusion: and what is graver still--has caused false and injurious opinions to be formed about historical people. And the difficulty we have to face is, not what amount of blame belongs to Charlotte for misrepresenting historical facts, nor even need we ask ourselves what reason she had for thus misrepresenting them. Because the reason becomes plain when we take the trouble to realise that the motive the writer of this work of genius had in view was one that concerned her own personal liberation from haunting memories, rather than any motive concerning the impressions she might produce. There can be no doubt that Charlotte's motive in _Villette_, judged as a method of personal salvation, was not only a permissible, but a noble one. It is the one that Pater attributed to Michael Angelo: '_the effort of a strong nature to attune itself to tranquillise vehement emotions by withdrawing them into the region of ideal sentiments':--'an effort to throw off the clutch of cruel and humiliating facts by translating them into the imaginative realm, where the artist, the author, the dreamer even, has things as he wills, because the hold of outward things_' (such a stern and merciless one in the case of Charlotte Brontë!) '_is thrown off at pleasure_.' But, judged as a literary and historical method, was Charlotte Brontë's manner of treating the real Director and Directress of the Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle a justifiable or fair one? Can she be held without fault in this; that in Paul Emanuel and in Madame Beck she painted Monsieur and Madame Heger in a way that rendered them visible to every one who knew them; and then placed them in fictitious circumstances that altered the character of their actions and feelings, in such a way as to misrepresent their true behaviour? It seems to me that we must admit that the authoress of the _Professor_ and of _Villette_ adopted an unjust literary and historical method in so far as these real people are concerned: and that in the case of Madame Heger especially, passion and prejudice betrayed her: and rendered her guilty of a fault that must be recognised as a very grave one. But when this fault has been recognised and admitted, it seems to me a conscientious critic's duty does not compel him to scold this woman of genius for having the passions of her kind. A great Romantic is not an angel: and in this case the main facts about Charlotte are not her shortcomings as a celestial being, but her transcendent merits as an interpreter of the human heart. For my own part, I confess that after reading Charlotte's Love-letters, I am in no mood to look for faults in her, nor even to lend much attention to some faults that, without looking for them, one is bound to recognise. For