d..." (_Jane
Eyre_) ... "Mr. Rochester" (M. Heger, we are informed in confidential
brackets) was not "what she had thought him". Assuring us that
Charlotte was here describing her own emotions, he builds his argument.
"Evidence" (the evidence of these passages) "shows it was in her dark
season when Charlotte Bronte wrote _Wuthering Heights_, and that she
portrayed M. Heger therein with all the vindictiveness of a woman with
'a riven, outraged heart', the wounds in which yet rankled sorely." So
that, key in hand, for "that ghoul Heathcliff!" we must read "that ghoul
Heger". We must believe that _Wuthering Heights_ was written in pure
vindictiveness, and that Charlotte Bronte repudiated its authorship for
three reasons: because it contained "too humiliating a story" of her
"heart-thrall"; because of her subsequent remorse (proof, the modified
animus of her portrait of M. Heger as Rochester and as M. Paul), and for
certain sound business considerations. So much for internal evidence.

Not that Mr. Malham-Dembleby relies on it altogether. He draws largely
upon legend and conjecture, and on more "sensational discoveries" of his
own. He certainly succeeds in proving that legend and conjecture in
Brussels began at a very early date. Naturally enough it fairly flared
after the publication of _Jane Eyre_. So far there is nothing new in his
discoveries. But he does provide a thrill when he unearths Eugene Sue's
extinct novel of _Miss Mary, ou l'Institutrice_, and gives us parallel
passages from that. For in _Miss Mary_, published in 1850-51[A] we have,
not only character for character and scene for scene, "lifted" bodily
from _Jane Eyre_, but the situation in _The Professor_ and _Villette_ is
largely anticipated. We are told that Eugene Sue was in Brussels in
1844, the year in which Charlotte left the Pensionnat. This is
interesting. But what does it prove? Not, I think, what Mr.
Malham-Dembleby maintains--that M. Heger made indiscreet revelations to
Eugene Sue, but that Eugene Sue was an unscrupulous plagiarist who took
his own where he found it, either in the pages of _Jane Eyre_ or in the
tittle-tattle of a Brussels salon. However indiscreet M. Heger may have
been, he was a man of proved gravity and honour. He would, at any rate,
have drawn the line at frivolous treachery. Nobody, however, can answer
for what Madame Heger and her friends may not have said. Which disposes
of Eugene Sue.

[Footnote A: Serially in the _London Jo