The soft light of the lamp fell upon his beautiful pale face, which seemed to beam upon me with mild radiance like a star out of the surrounding gloom; and his gentle voice came to my ear like the voice of some good spirit that in the stillness of the night speaks to some needy and stricken soul. I lay there without moving, without turning my eyes from him, and softly begged him to speak on. "It is perhaps selfish in me to do so," he said, "if I now seize the moment when your soul awakes to fresh life, and is disposed to look with trusting child-like eyes upon the world it has regained, to teach you to know me, and, if possible, to love me, as I know and love you--I repeat it, not now for the first time. I knew you before you came here. You look at me with surprise, and yet nothing could be more simple. I always deeply loved my eldest brother, although in reality we only passed our childhood and boyhood together, and were then separated, never again to associate, nor indeed even to see each other, for the last fourteen years. For, whatever the world and his passions may have made of him, his was originally the fairest, noblest, bravest soul that ever was bestowed upon man. You can imagine what a blow to me was the news of his death; with what painful care I strove to learn everything connected with his death and its cause; how eagerly I seized an opportunity that offered to read the reports of the trial in which the name and actions of my unfortunate brother figured so conspicuously, and in which you were yourself so unhappily involved. From these reports I first learned to know you, I have long been accustomed to inspect reports of this kind, and know how to read between the lines of the text. Never was this skill more necessary to me than in this case; for never has the juristic understanding--or rather imbecility--divested of all psychological insight, committed grosser wrong than in your case; never did the hand of a dauber produce from an easily-outlined, sun-clear, youthful face, a more hideous caricature in black upon black. In almost every feature with which the accusation furnished it, I thought I could perceive and prove exactly the contrary. And had it not been my dearly-loved brother whose fault you were to expiate--if the whole trial had been foreign to me, instead of touching me nearly, and in a thousand painful ways, I would have made your cause my own, and tried to save you, if in my power. But I could do nothing for you; I could only exert all my influence to have you brought here instead of to N., where it was originally intended to send you.