With this sublime conclusion, Mr. Brocklehurst adjusted the top

button of his surtout, muttered something to his family, who rose,

bowed to Miss Temple, and then all the great people sailed in state

from the room. Turning at the door, my judge said "Let her stand half-an-hour longer on that stool, and let no one

speak to her during the remainder of the day."

There was I, then, mounted aloft; I, who had said I could not bear

the shame of standing on my natural feet in the middle of the room,

was now exposed to general view on a pedestal of infamy. What my

sensations were no language can describe; but just as they all rose,

stifling my breath and constricting my throat, a girl came up and

passed me: in passing, she lifted her eyes. What a strange light

inspired them! What an extraordinary sensation that ray sent

through me! How the new feeling bore me up! It was as if a martyr,

a hero, had passed a slave or victim, and imparted strength in the

transit. I mastered the rising hysteria, lifted up my head, and

took a firm stand on the stool. Helen Burns asked some slight

question about her work of Miss Smith, was chidden for the

triviality of the inquiry, returned to her place, and smiled at me

as she again went by. What a smile! I remember it now, and I know

that it was the effluence of fine intellect, of true courage; it lit

up her marked lineaments, her thin face, her sunken grey eye, like a

reflection from the aspect of an angel. Yet at that moment Helen

Burns wore on her arm "the untidy badge;" scarcely an hour ago I had

heard her condemned by Miss Scatcherd to a dinner of bread and water

on the morrow because she had blotted an exercise in copying it out.

Such is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the

disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd's can only

see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of

the orb.




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