Villette, the End "Tired wayfarer, gird up thy loins"

   IN WHICH, Lucy gets high, goes for a walk, and jumps to conclusions. She also meets her kindred spirit in the bookseller guy, who is testy and rude but nice to Lucy.We also get more conversations with concepts:

In my infatuation, I said, “Truth, you are a good mistress to your faithful servants! While a Lie pressed me, how I suffered! Even when the Falsehood was still sweet, still flattering to the fancy, and warm to the feelings, it wasted me with hourly torment. The persuasion that affection was won could not be divorced from the dread that, by another turn of the wheel, it might be lost. Truth stripped away Falsehood, and Flattery, and Expectancy, and here I stand— free!”

   Truth is not a person any more than Reason is, Lucy Snowe. And she's over M. Paul for about two seconds when BAM: JEALOUSY. Then she runs home and gets waved at, by someone who turns out to be Ginevra Fanshawe on the lam. Ginevra Fanshawe, whom we love and who says things like "we never meant to be spliced in the humdrum way of other people" and who, really, has been the best and most entertaining part of this book. I mean, she calls Lucy "dear old Tim". Also, we have apparently been using "literally" wrong since 1853: "she took me to herself and proceeded literally to suffocate me with her unrestrained spirits, her girlish, giddy, wild nonsense." Not "literally", Lucy, or you would now be dead of asphyxiation. 

this is what Ginevra is like

   But who cares about any of that: behold the return of GHOST NUN. BUT NO: we are bound for disappointment, in this and in EVERYTHING ELSE (except that Ginevra was fairly happy and wrote letters, because I love Ginevra). Because Ghost Nun is none other that DE HAMAL, and I am irked. I so wanted Ghost Nun to be more awesome, even though sneaking in to see your lady while dressed up as a nun is pretty hilarious. 

    I do not like that CB made Pere Silas so conniving and awful, and I thoroughly dislike Beck and her scheming and if-I-can't-have-him-no-one-can-ing

   I am still torn as regards M. Paul. He considers marrying his ward repugnant (well done, sir), and give Lucy a school and proposes to her, and then he DIES IN A STORM. What in the world, CB. WHAT IN THE WORLD. You are the weirdest writer in the world. 

   And so ends our delightful readalong, for even when Villette was exasperating, you were all lovely. I can't say I'm sad to be finished this book, since it was so bizarre and so infuriating, BUT I'm glad to have read it. I vote for more readalongs in the future.