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 b