Chapter XXXI

"If you could see and hear "I heard him trying to read to
the efforts I make to teach himself, and pretty blunders he
[M. Héger] to pronounce ... and makes!... it was extremely funny
[his] unavailing attempts to ... still, he has no right to
imitate you would laugh to all appropriate what is mine, and
eternity."--Mrs. GASKELL'S make it ridiculous to me with
_Life of Charlotte Brontë_. his vile mistakes and
mispronunciations! Those books,
both prose and verse, are
consecrated to me by other
associations, and I hate to have
them debased and profaned in his
mouth."

Note how in _The Professor_ and _Wuthering Heights_ the male lover is unable to devote himself to the reading lesson because of the distraction of the heroine's interesting physiognomy. In this connection we may glance at the following little parallel of the hen-killing figure, with which, like the foregoing, I do not deal in the course of _The Key to the Brontë Works_. Again we perceive Charlotte Brontë's Method I.:--

_Wuthering Heights._ _Jane Eyre._