Quotation from: Villette

Written by: Charlotte Bronte


"I love Memory to-night," she said: "I prize her as my best friend.
She is just now giving me a deep delight: she is bringing back to my
heart, in warm and beautiful life, realities--not mere empty ideas,
but what were once realities, and that I long have thought decayed,
dissolved, mixed in with grave-mould. I possess just now the hours,
the thoughts, the hopes of my youth. I renew the love of my life--its
only love--almost its only affection; for I am not a particularly good
woman: I am not amiable. Yet I have had my feelings, strong and
concentrated; and these feelings had their object; which, in its
single self, was dear to me, as to the majority of men and women, are
all the unnumbered points on which they dissipate their regard. While
I loved, and while I was loved, what an existence I enjoyed! What a
glorious year I can recall--how bright it comes back to me! What a
living spring--what a warm, glad summer--what soft moonlight,
silvering the autumn evenings--what strength of hope under the ice-
bound waters and frost-hoar fields of that year's winter! Through that
year my heart lived with Frank's heart. O my noble Frank--my faithful
Frank--my _good_ Frank! so much better than myself--his standard
in all things so much higher! This I can now see and say: if few women
have suffered as I did in his loss, few have enjoyed what I did in his
love. It was a far better kind of love than common; I had no doubts
about it or him: it was such a love as honoured, protected, and
elevated, no less than it gladdened her to whom it was given. Let me
now ask, just at this moment, when my mind is so strangely clear,--let
me reflect why it was taken from me? For what crime was I condemned,
after twelve months of bliss, to undergo thirty years of sorrow?

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