bitterness of my life, for I no longer felt them! A single look had regenerated me. I spoke of myself as of one that was dead; a new man was born within me. When I had ended, I raised my eyes to her, as towards my judge. She was trembling and pale with emotion. "Heavens," she exclaimed, "how you alarmed me!" "And why?" said I. "Because," she rejoined, "if you had not been unhappy and lonely here below, there would have been one link the less between us. You would have felt no desire to pity another; and I should have quitted life without having seen a shadow of myself, save in the heartless mirror where my own cold image is reflected." "The history of your life," she continued, "is the history of mine, with the change of a few particulars. Only yours commences, and mine--" I would not let her conclude. "No, no!" said I hoarsely pressing my lips to her feet, which I embraced convulsively as if to hold her down to earth; "no, no! you will not, must not die; or, if you do, I feel two lives will end at once!" I was alarmed at my own gesture and at the exclamation which had involuntarily escaped me; and I durst not raise my face off the ground, from which she had withdrawn her feet. "Rise," she said, in a grave voice, but without anger; "do not worship dust--dust as lowly as that in which you are soiling your fine hair, and which will be scattered as light and as impalpable by the first autumnal wind. Do not deceive yourself as to the poor creature you see before you. I am but the shadow of youth, of beauty, and of love,--of the love you will one day feel and inspire, when this shadow shall long have passed away. Keep your heart for those who are to live, and only give to the dying what the dying ask, a gentle hand to support their last steps, and tears to mourn their loss." The grave and serious tone-with which she said these words struck to my heart. Yet as I looked on her, and saw the glowing tints of the setting sun illumining her face, which shone with hourly increasing youth and serenity of expression, as though a new sun had risen in her heart, I could not believe in death concealed under these glorious signs of life. Besides, what cared I? If that heavenly vision was death, well, it was death I loved. It might be that the vast and perfect love for which I thirsted was only to be found in death. It might be that God had only showed me its nearly extinguished light on earth, to urge me to follow the trace of its ray into the grave, and from thence to heaven.