第122页
《简·爱(英文版)》章节:第122页,宠文网网友提供全文无弹窗免费在线阅读。!
'True: yet I should scarcely fancy Mr. Rochester would entertain an
idea of the sort. But you eat nothing: you have scarcely tasted
since you began tea.'
'No: I am too thirsty to eat. Will you let me have another cup?'
I was about again to revert to the probability of a union between
Mr. Rochester and the beautiful Blanche; but Adele came in, and the
conversation was turned into another channel.
When once more alone, I reviewed the information I had got;
looked into my heart, examined its thoughts and feelings, and
endeavoured to bring back with a strict hand such as had been straying
through imagination's boundless and trackless waste, into the safe
fold of common sense.
Arraigned at my own bar, Memory having given her evidence of the
hopes, wishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night- of
the general state of mind in which I had indulged for nearly a
fortnight past; Reason having come forward and told, in her own
quiet way, a plain, unvarnished tale, showing how I had rejected the
real, and rabidly devoured the ideal;- I pronounced judgment to this
effect:-
That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of
life; that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet
lies, and swallowed poison as if it were nectar.
'You,' I said, 'a favourite with Mr. Rochester? You gifted with the
power of pleasing him? You of importance to him in any way? Go! your
folly sickens me. And you have derived pleasure from occasional tokens
of preference- equivocal tokens shown by a gentleman of family and a
man of the world to a dependant and a novice. How dared you? Poor
stupid dupe!- Could not even self-interest make you wiser? You
repeated to yourself this morning the brief scene of last night?-
Cover your face and be ashamed! He said something in praise of your
eyes, did he? Blind puppy! Open their bleared lids and look on your
own accursed senselessness! It does good to no woman to be flattered
by her superior, who cannot possibly intend to marry her; and it is
madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which,
if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if
discovered and responded to, must lead, ignis-fatuus-like, into miry
wilds whence there is no extrication.
'Listen, then, Jane Eyre, to your sentence: to-morrow, place the
glass before you, and draw in chalk your own picture, faithfully,
without softening one defect; omit no harsh line, smooth away no
displeasing irregularity; write under it, "Portrait of a Governess,
disconnected, poor, and plain."
'Afterwards, take a piece of smooth ivory- you have one prepared in
your drawing-box: take your palette, mix your freshest, finest,
clearest tints; choose your most delicate camel-hair pencils;
delineate carefully the loveliest face you can imagine; paint it in
your softest shades and sweetest hues, according to the description