Reuter, has represented M. Héger as the scheming and deceitful M. Pelet
and the preposterous M. Paul, Lucy Snowe's lover, that this lover was
the husband of Madame Héger, and father of the family of children to
whom Lucy was at first _bonne d'enfants_, and that possibly the daughter
she has described as the thieving, vicious Désirée--"that tadpole,
Désirée Beck"--was this very lady now so politely entertaining us. To
all this add the significant fact that "Villette" is an autobiographical
novel, which "records the most vivid passages in Miss Bronté's own sad
heart's history," not a few of the incidents being "literal transcripts"
from the darkest chapter of her own life, and the light which the
consideration of this fact throws upon her relations with members of the
family will help us to apprehend the stand-point from which the Hégers
judge Miss Bronté and her work, and to excuse, if not to justify, a
natural resentment against one who has presented them in a decidedly bad
light.

_How_ bad we began to realize when, during the ensuing chat, we called
to mind just what she had written of them. As Madame Beck, Madame Héger
had been represented as lying, deceitful, and shameless, as heartless
and unscrupulous, as "watching and spying everywhere, peeping through
every keyhole, listening behind every door," as duplicating Lucy's keys
and secretly searching her bureau, as meanly abstracting her letters and
reading them to others, as immodestly laying herself out to entrap the
man to whom she had given her love unsought. In letters to her friend
Ellen, Miss Bronté complains that "Madame Héger never came near her" in
her loneliness and illness.

It was, obviously, some accession to the existing animosity between
herself and Madame Héger which precipitated Miss Bronté's final
departure from the _pensionnat_. Mrs. Gaskell ascribes their mutual