“Then came a change. My nurse died; and it became clear that I must quit my solitary life, and see the sort of world I lived in. So my father, seeing all this, sat down in the twilight one night beside me, and told me the story of my own hideousness. I was but a child then, and it is many and many years ago; but this gray summer morning, I feel what I felt then, as vividly as I did at the time. I had not learned the great lesson of life then--endurance, I have scarcely learned it yet, or I should bear life's burden longer; but that first night's despair has darkened my whole after-life. For weeks I would not listen to my father's proposal, to hide what would send all the world from me in loathing behind a mask; but I came to my senses at last, and from that day to the present--more days than either you or I would care to count--it has not been one hour altogether off my face.” “I was the wonder and talk of Paris, when I did appear; and most of the surmises were wild and wide of the mark--some even going so far as to say it was all owing to my wonderful unheard-of beauty that I was thus mysteriously concealed from view. I had a soft voice, and a tolerable shape; and upon this, I presume, they founded the affirmation. But my father and I kept our own council, and let them say what they listed. I had never been named, as other children are; but they called me La Masque now. I had masters and professors without end, and studied astronomy and astrology, and the mystic lore of the old Egyptians, and became noted as a prodigy and a wonder, and a miracle of learning, far and near. “The arts used to discover the mystery and make me unmask were innumerable and almost incredible; but I baffled them all, and began, after a time, rather to enjoy the sensation I created than otherwise.