APS TOGETHER
Day 22
Villette by Charlotte BrontëChapter XXIX
December 6, 2022 by Yiyun Li
All lives, dear Lucy Snowe, are perishable, rootless or rooted
I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad.
I wonder if this is the only time in literary history that a statement about a little man is spoken with such fondness.
The little man looked well, very well.
To one man Lucy Snowe is “a being inoffensive as a shadow”; to another, deeply vexing. How I love this latter Lucy Snowe! And in turn the latter man.
M. Paul was so tragic, and took my defection so seriously, he deserved to be vexed.
