Profoundly touched by the thought that some frightful and sudden misfortune should have ended an existence which seemed to have been so poetic and so happily occupied, I continued to observe with the most minute attention everything that surrounded me. I saw a tolerably large bookcase filled with the works of the best poets of France, Germany, and Italy. Near by stood an easel, on which was the most delicious sketch of a child's head that one could imagine,--the adorable little face of a child of about three or four years old, with blue eyes and long brown hair. I know not why it should have occurred to me that only a mother could have made such a picture, and that she only could have thus painted her own child. All these discoveries, while they saddened me exceedingly, only excited more and more my interest and my curiosity. I therefore determined to use every possible means of finding out the secret so obstinately kept by the curé. This portrait of a child, of which I speak, was placed near one of the windows that lighted the room. Without thinking of what I was doing, I drew the curtain to one side. What did I behold? At about a league's distance, certainly not more, there was the sea, the Mediterranean! which sparkled like a great azure mirror, and reflected the glowing sunshine,--the sea that one beheld between the slopes of the two hills. The view was magnificent, and I thought how it must have revealed all its splendours to the poetic soul which had left in this home so many touching traces of its noble and elevated nature. I turned away my head for a moment from this majestic spectacle to rest my eyes, in order to enjoy the more a second view of the scene. I then perceived an object that I had not at first noticed. It was the portrait of a man. It was placed on an easel, which was draped with blue velvet. In the sort of oval formed at the top of the easel, where the two branches met in a curve, I saw a monogram composed of an A and an R, surmounted by a count's crown. This portrait was drawn in pastel. As I have some knowledge of painting, I easily recognised the same hand that had sketched the child's head. The head, set on its long and slender neck, stood out pale and clearly from a background of a dark, reddish brown, while the costume was entirely black, fancifully cut after the manner of the Van Dyck portraits. This young and bold face had such a striking expression of great intelligence, resolution, and grace, that I shall never be able to forget it. The face was of a long oval, the forehead high, prominent, and uncovered, smooth, except a very decided line which separated the eyebrows, whose arch was almost imperceptible, so straight were they.