While I thus alternately solaced myself with dwelling upon all the sweetness, the beauty, the affection of her I loved, and tormenting myself with imagining all that might separate us; epitomising in one short hour the many fluctuating hopes and fears of a long human life; to my surprise the darkness became less opaque, and by the grey which gradually mingled with the black, I found that morning was imperceptibly stealing upon night, so that my slumber must have lasted more than twenty hours. But a still greater surprise awaited me. Gradually as the day dawned, one object after another struck me as resembling the furniture of the little room which I had tenanted ever since I quitted the inn after my arrival in Paris. Was I dreaming still? or had I dreamed? I asked myself. Had all I had seen during the last two days been but a delusion, or was I still labouring under some deception of my imagination? But no! with the clear daylight it became evident that I was there--in the little chamber I had hired in the Rue des Prêtres St. Paul. There was the carved scrutoire, with its thousand grotesque heads; there the old table which had acknowledged more than one dynasty; there lay my clothes, my hat, my sword, as if I had left them there on going to bed the night before; and nothing served to show that the whole I have lately described was not a dream, except the bruises on my shoulder and side, which smacked somewhat painfully of reality. In about an hour afterwards, my good landlady came in, to ask if I wanted anything; and from her I learned that I had been brought home on a litter still sound asleep, by some persons she did not know, who told her I had met with an accident, and bade her take great care of me, enforcing their injunction with a piece of gold. This was an effort of liberality on the part of Arnault which I had not expected, either from his own character, which was notedly avaricious, or from the general rule of nature, that the long habit of accumulating small sums narrows the heart and leaves no room for any generous feeling. I began to believe that I had been mistaken in his character, and I tried, fondly, to persuade myself with a theory as fallacious as any other of those fallacious things, theories, that the father of so noble-spirited a girl as Helen, whose whole soul was liberality, and her every thought a feeling, must, in some degree, partake of the same nature, and possess hidden qualities which, when called into action, would shine out and assert their kindred.