Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë Chapter 15 Page 1

Mr. Rochester did, on a future occasion, explain it. It was one afternoon, when he chanced to meet me and Ad�le in the grounds: and while she played with Pilot and her shuttlecock, he asked me to walk up and down a long beech avenue within sight of her.

He then said that she was the daughter of a French opera-dancer, C�line Varens, towards whom he had once cherished what he called a “grande passion.” This passion C�line had professed to return with even superior ardour. He thought himself her idol, ugly as he was: he believed, as he said, that she preferred his “taille d’athl�te” to the elegance of the Apollo Belvidere.

“And, Miss Eyre, so much was I flattered by this preference of the Gallic sylph for her British gnome, that I installed her in an