Quotation from: Villette

Written by: Charlotte Bronte


I err. She came once, but in anger. Impatient of my importunity she
brought with her an avenging dream. By the clock of St. Jean Baptiste,
that dream remained scarce fifteen minutes--a brief space, but
sufficing to wring my whole frame with unknown anguish; to confer a
nameless experience that had the hue, the mien, the terror, the very
tone of a visitation from eternity. Between twelve and one that night
a cup was forced to my lips, black, strong, strange, drawn from no
well, but filled up seething from a bottomless and boundless sea.
Suffering, brewed in temporal or calculable measure, and mixed for
mortal lips, tastes not as this suffering tasted. Having drank and
woke, I thought all was over: the end come and past by. Trembling
fearfully--as consciousness returned--ready to cry out on some fellow-
creature to help me, only that I knew no fellow-creature was near
enough to catch the wild summons--Goton in her far distant attic could
not hear--I rose on my knees in bed. Some fearful hours went over me:
indescribably was I torn, racked and oppressed in mind. Amidst the
horrors of that dream I think the worst lay here. Methought the well-
loved dead, who had loved _me_ well in life, met me elsewhere,
alienated: galled was my inmost spirit with an unutterable sense of
despair about the future. Motive there was none why I should try to
recover or wish to live; and yet quite unendurable was the pitiless
and haughty voice in which Death challenged me to engage his unknown
terrors. When I tried to pray I could only utter these words: "From my
youth up Thy terrors have I suffered with a troubled mind."

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