Pagina 438 van 896

"My father! Even to hear that you had such thoughts of a 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 way--have affected me with

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

had pain for its foundations could--I 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; the--the--image; the fancy?"