everybody but Charlotte is going home. She is consequently "in low
spirits; earth and heaven are dreary and empty to me at this moment"....
"I can hardly write, I have such a dreary weight at my heart." But she
will see it through. She will stay some months longer "till I have
acquired German". And at the end: "Everybody is abundantly civil, but
homesickness comes creeping over me. I cannot shake it off." That was in
September, in M. Héger's absence. Later, she tells Emily how she went
into the cathedral and made "a real confession _to see what it was
like_". Charlotte's confession has been used to bolster up the theory of
the "temptation". Unfortunately for the theory it happened in
September, when M. Héger and temptation were not there. In October she
finds that she no longer trusts Madame Héger. At the same time "solitude
oppresses me to an excess". She gave notice, and M. Héger flew into a
passion and commanded her to stay. She stayed very much against, not her
conscience, but her will. In the same letter and the same connection she
says, "I have much to say--many little odd things, queer and puzzling
enough--which I do not like to trust to a letter, but which one day
perhaps, or rather one evening--if ever we should find ourselves by the
fireside at Haworth or Brookroyd, with our feet on the fender curling
our hair--I may communicate to you."

Charlotte is now aware of a situation; she is interested in it,
intellectually, not emotionally.

In November: "Twinges of homesickness cut me to the heart, now and
then." On holidays "the silence and loneliness of all the house weighs
down one's spirits like lead.... Madame Héger, good and kind as I have
described her" (_i.e._ for all her goodness and kindness), "never comes
near me on these occasions." ... "She is not colder to me than she is to
the other teachers, but they are less dependent on her than I am." But