Quotation from: Villette

Written by: Charlotte Bronte


Soon after his marriage, M. de Hamal was persuaded to leave the army
as the surest way of weaning him from certain unprofitable associates
and habits; a post of attache was procured for him, and he and his
young wife went abroad. I thought she would forget me now, but she did
not. For many years, she kept up a capricious, fitful sort of
correspondence. During the first year or two, it was only of herself
and Alfred she wrote; then, Alfred faded in the background; herself
and a certain, new comer prevailed; one Alfred Fanshawe de
Bassompierre de Hamal began to reign in his father's stead. There were
great boastings about this personage, extravagant amplifications upon
miracles of precocity, mixed with vehement objurgations against the
phlegmatic incredulity with which I received them. I didn't know "what
it was to be a mother;" "unfeeling thing that I was, the sensibilities
of the maternal heart were Greek and Hebrew to me," and so on. In due
course of nature this young gentleman took his degrees in teething,
measles, hooping-cough: that was a terrible time for me--the mamma's
letters became a perfect shout of affliction; never woman was so put
upon by calamity: never human being stood in such need of sympathy. I
was frightened at first, and wrote back pathetically; but I soon found
out there was more cry than wool in the business, and relapsed into my
natural cruel insensibility. As to the youthful sufferer, he weathered
each storm like a hero. Five times was that youth "in articulo
mortis," and five times did he miraculously revive.

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