Villette-along Week IS IT OVER YET? "Fighting the battle of life by proxy"

I lost steam there at the end, as did Charlotte by all appearances.

He advanced; he opened the door; my back was toward it; I felt a little thrill---a curious sensation, too quick and transient to be analyzed. I turned, I stood in the supposed master artisan's presence: looking toward the doorway, I saw it filled with a figure, and my eyes printed upon my brain the picture of M. Paul.

MY EYES PRINTED UPON MY BRAIN THE PICTURE OF M. PAUL.

But not, like, ALL of them.

Although I would've appreciated if Lucy had exerted herself to yell something more than "Dog in a manger!" at Madame Beck (who is a colossal twat, by the way, and I take back all the nice things I said about her at the beginning of this readalong).

I still like Lucy, because she personifies abstract ideas like a boss ("Freedom excused himself, as for the present, impoverished and disabled to assist; and Renovation never spoke; he had died in the night suddenly.") and because everyone else is so awful that she seems pretty okay in comparison. Also she says things that make me want to put her in a nest and pet her head:

I believe in that goodly mansion, his heart, he kept one little place under the skylights where Lucy might have entertainment, if she chose to call. . . . gradually, by long and equal kindness, he proved to me that he kept one little closet, over the door of which was written "Lucy's Room."

Ginevra eloped just because she felt like it, but still got a trousseau and family money and a proper wedding after the fact. And remember how she was disgusted by John's whiskers and Lucy described de Hamal as really feminine? Well de Hamal also saw a nun's dress and thought, "I should definitely put that on and walk around a little and then keep doing that on a regular basis." Juuuuust saying.

So after a long period of Lucy being passive to an infuriating degree, M. Paul presented her with a place to live and her own school and might have said that he would maybe want to get married when he came back in three years.

He promptly went to the West Indies and . . . never came back? (CB, what is with you and the West Indies as a place where bad things happen to love interests?) Did he come back? I DON'T KNOW.

What I do know is that the three characters I hated the absolute most in the whole book lived long and prospered all the days of their lives, because that is the literal last line of this 559-page book of which they are not the main characters.

I mean it this time, Charlotte.