Villette

– there – where she stands full in my sight. What is she like? What does she wear? How does she look? Who is she?
    There are many masks in the Park to-night, and as the hour wears late, so strange a feeling of revelry and mystery begins to spread abroad, that scarce would you discredit me, reader, were I to say that she is like the nun of the attic, that she wears black skirts and white head-clothes, that she looks the resurrection of the flesh, and that she is a risen ghost.
    All falsities – all figments! We will not deal in this gear. Let us be honest, and cut, as heretofore, from the homely web of truth.
    Homely,
though, is an ill-chosen word. What I see is not precisely homely. A girl of Villette stands there – a girl fresh from her pensionnat. She is very comely, with the beauty indigenous to this country; she looks well-nourished, fair, and fat of flesh. Her cheeks are round, her eyes good; her hair is abundant. She is handsomely dressed. She is not alone; her escort consists of three persons – two being elderly; these she addresses as ›Mon Oncle‹ and ›Ma Tante.‹ She laughs, she chats: good-humoured, buxom, and blooming, she looks, at all points, the bourgeoise belle.
    So much for ›Justine Marie;‹ so much for ghosts and mystery: not that this last was solved – this girl certainly is not my nun; what I saw in the garret and garden must have been taller by a span.
    We have looked at the city belle; we have cursorily glanced at the respectable old uncle and aunt. Have we a stray glance to give to the third member of this company? Can we spare him a moment's notice? We ought to distinguish him so far, reader; he has claims on us; we do not now meet him for the first time. I clasped my hands very hard, and I drew my breath very deep; I held in the cry, I devoured the ejaculation, I forbade the start, I spoke and I stirred no more than a stone; but I knew what I looked on; through the dimness left in my eyes by many nights' weeping, I knew him. They said he was to sail by the ›Antigua.‹ Madame Beck said so. She lied, or she had uttered what was once truth, and failed to contradict it, when it became false. The ›Antigua‹ was gone, and there stood Paul Emanuel.
    Was I glad? A huge load left me. Was it a fact to warrant joy? I know not. Ask first what were the circumstances attendant on this respite? How far did this delay concern
me?
Were there not those whom it might touch more nearly?
    After all, who may this young girl, this Justine Marie be? Not a stranger, reader; she is known to me by sight; she visits at the Rue Fossette; she is often of Madame Beck's Sunday parties. She is a relation of both the Becks and Walravens; she derives her baptismal name from the sainted nun who would have been her aunt had she lived; her patronymic is Sauveur; she is an heiress and an orphan, and M. Emanuel is her guardian; some say her godfather. The family junta wish this heiress to be married to one of their band – which is it? Vital question – which is it?
    I felt very glad now, that the drug administered in the sweet draught had filled me with a possession which made bed and chamber intolerable. I always, through my whole life, liked to penetrate to the real truth; I like seeking the goddess in her temple, and handling the veil, and daring the dread glance. O Titaness amongst deities! The covered outline of thine aspect sickens often through its uncertainty, but define to us one trait, show us one lineament, clear in awful sincerity; we may gasp in untold terror, but with that gasp we drink in a breath of thy divinity; our heart shakes, and its currents sway like rivers lifted by earthquake, but we have swallowed strength. To see and know the worst is to take from Fear her main advantage.
    The Walravens' party, augmented in numbers, now became very gay. The gentlemen fetched refreshments from the kiosk, all sat down on the turf under the trees; they drank healths and sentiments; they laughed, they jested. M. Emanuel underwent some raillery, half good-humoured, half, I thought, malicious, especially on Madame Beck's part. I soon gathered that his voyage had been temporarily deferred of his own will, without the concurrence, even against the advice of his friends; he had let the ›Antigua‹ go, and had taken his berth in the ›Paul et Virginie,‹ appointed to sail a fortnight later. It was his reason for this resolve which they teased him to assign, and which he would only vaguely indicate as