Page:A note on Charlotte Brontë (IA note00swinoncharlottebrich).pdf/75

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triumph of Cervantes in the person of his perfect knight over all insult and mockery of brutal chance and ruffianly realities, all cudgels and all cheats and all contumely, it is hardly a more marvellous or a completer example of imaginative and moral mastery than the triumph of Charlotte Brontë in the quaint person of her grim little Professor over his own eccentric infirmities of habit and temper, more hazardous to our sense of respect than any outward risk or infliction of alien violence or mockery from duchesses or muleteers; a triumph so naturally drawn out and delicately displayed in the swift steady gradations of change and development, now ludicrous and now attractive, and wellnigh adorable at last, through which the figure of M. Paul seems to pass as under summer