(D. V.) some months longer, till I have acquired
German; and then I hope to see all your faces again. Would that the
vacation were well over! it will pass so slowly. Do have the
Christian charity to write me a long, long letter; fill it with the
minutest details; nothing will be uninteresting. Do not think it is
because people are unkind to me that I wish to leave Belgium; nothing
of the sort. Everybody is abundantly civil, but home-sickness keeps
creeping over me. I cannot shake it off. Believe me, very merrily,
vivaciously, gaily, yours,

"C.B."

The _grandes vacances_ began soon after the date of this letter, when she
was left in the great deserted pensionnat, with only one teacher for a
companion. This teacher, a Frenchwoman, had always been uncongenial to
her; but, left to each other's sole companionship, Charlotte soon
discovered that her associate was more profligate, more steeped in a kind
of cold, systematic sensuality, than she had before imagined it possible
for a human being to be; and her whole nature revolted from this woman's
society. A low nervous fever was gaining upon Miss Bronte. She had
never been a good sleeper, but now she could not sleep at all. Whatever
had been disagreeable, or obnoxious, to her during the day, was presented
when it was over with exaggerated vividness to her disordered fancy.
There were causes for distress and anxiety in the news from home,
particularly as regarded Branwell. In the dead of the night, lying awake
at the end of the long deserted dormitory, in the vast and silent house,
every fear respecting those whom she loved, and who were so far off in
another country, became a terrible reality, oppressing her and choking up
the very life-blood in her heart. Those nights were times of sick,
dreary, wakeful misery; precursors of many such in after years.

In the daytime, driven abroad by loathing of her companion and by the
weak restlessness of fever, she tried to walk herself into such a state
of bodily fatigue as would induce sleep. So she went out, and with weary
steps would traverse the Boulevards and the streets, sometimes for hours
together; faltering and resting occasionally on some of the many benches
placed for the repose of happy groups, or for solitary wanderers like
herself. Then up again--anywhere but to the pensionnat--out to the
cemetery where Martha lay--out beyond it, to the hills whence there is
nothing to be seen but