And Madame Seraskier, in all the youthful bloom and splendor of her sacred beauty! A chosen lily among women--the mother of Mary! She sits on the old bench by the willow, close to her daughter's gloves. Sometimes (a trivial and almost comic detail!) she actually seems to sit _upon_ them, to my momentary distress; but when she goes away, there they are still, not flattened a bit--the precious mould of those beautiful, generous hands to which I owe everything here and hereafter. * * * * * I have not been again to my old home. I dread the sight of the avenue. I cannot face "Parva sed Apta." But I have seen Mary again--seven times. And every time she comes she brings a book with her, gilt-edged and bound in green morocco like the Byron we read when we were children, or in red morocco like the _Elegant Extracts_ out of which we used to translate Gray's "Elegy," and the "Battle of Hohenlinden," and Cunningham's "Pastorals" into French. Such is her fancy! But inside these books are very different. They are printed in cipher, and in a language I can only understand in my dream. Nothing that I, or any one else, has ever read in any living book can approach, for interest and importance, what I read in these. There are seven of them. I say to myself when I read them: it is perhaps well that I shall not remember this when I wake, after all! For I might be indiscreet and injudicious, and either say too much or not enough; and the world might come to a stand-still, all through me. For who would fardels bear, as Mary said! No! The world must be content to wait for the great guesser! Thus my lips are sealed. All I know is this: _that all will be well for us all, and of such a kind that all who do not sigh for the moon will be well content_. * * * * * In such wise have I striven, with the best of my ability, to give some account of my two lives and Mary's. We have lived three lives between us--three lives in one. It has been a happy task, however poorly performed, and all the conditions of its performance have been singularly happy also. A cell in a criminal lunatic asylum! That does not sound like a bower in the Elysian Fields! It is, and has been for me. Besides the sun that lights and warms my inner life, I have been treated with a kindness and sympathy and consideration by everybody here, from the governor downward, that fills me with unspeakable gratitude. Most especially do I feel grateful to my good friends, the doctor, the chaplain, and the priest--best and kindest of men--each of whom has made up his mind about everything in heaven and earth and below, and each in a contrary sense to the two others! There is but one thing they are neither of them quite cocksure about, and that is whether I am mad or sane. And there is one thing--the only one on which they are agreed; namely, that, mad or sane, I am a great undiscovered genius!