daughter who never existed, strikes to my heart as if I had been

that child.”

“You, Lucie? It is out of the consolation and restoration you

have brought to me, that these remembrances arise, and pass

between us and the moon on this last night.What did I say just

now?”

“She knew nothing of you. She cared nothing for you.”

“So! But on other moonlight nights, when the sadness and the

silence have touched me in a different wayhave affected me with

something as like a sorrowful sense of peace, as any emotion that

had pain for its foundations couldI have imagined her as coming

to me in my cell, and leading me out into the freedom beyond the

fortress. I have seen her image in the moonlight often, as I now see

you; except that I never held her in my arms; it stood between the

little grated window and the door. But, you understand that that

was not the child I am speaking of?”

“The figure was not; thetheimage; the fancy?”

“No. That was another thing. It stood before my disturbed

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sense of sight, but it never moved. The phantom that my mind

pursued, was another and more real child. Of her outward

appearance I know no more than that she was like her mother.

The other had that likeness tooas you havebut was not the

same. Can you follow me, Lucie? Hardly, I think? I doubt you

must have been a solitary prisoner to understand these perplexed

distinctions.”

His collected and calm manner could not prevent her blood

from running cold, as he thus tried to anatomise his old condition.

“In that more peaceful state, I have imagined her, in the

moonlight, coming to me and taking me out to show me that the

home of her married life was full of her loving remembrance of her

lost father. My picture was in her room, and I was in her prayers.

Her life was active, cheerful, useful; but my poor history pervaded

it all.”

“I was that child, my father. I was not half so good, but in my

love that was I.”

“And she showed me her children,” said the Doctor of

Beauvais, “and they had heard of me, and had been taught to pity

me. When they passed a prison of the State, they kept far from its

frowning walls, and looked up at its bars, and spoke in whispers.

She could never deliver me; I imagined that she always brought

me back after showing me such things. But then, blessed with the

relief of tears, I fell upon my knees and blessed her.”

“I am that child, I hope, my father. O my dear, my dear, will you

bless me as fervently tomorrow?”

“Lucie, I recall these old troubles in the reason that I have

tonight for loving you better than words can tell, and thanking

God for my great happiness. My thoughts, when they were wildest,

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never rose near the happiness that I have known with you, and