He had been blind from the age of three years. "I know not," said he, as he related these particulars to Lucille one evening when they were alone; "I know not what the earth may be like, or the heaven, or the rivers whose voice at least I can hear, for I have no recollection beyond that of a confused, but delicious blending of a thousand glorious colors--a bright and quick sense of joy--A VISIBLE MUSIC. But it is only since my childhood closed that I have mourned, as I now unceasingly mourn, for the light of day. My boyhood passed in a quiet cheerfulness; the least trifle then could please and occupy the vacancies of my mind; but it was as I took delight in being read to,--as I listened to the vivid descriptions of poetry,--as I glowed at the recital of great deeds,--as I was made acquainted by books, with the energy, the action, the heat, the fervor, the pomp, the enthusiasm of life, that I gradually opened to the sense of all I was forever denied. I felt that I existed, not lived; and that, in the midst of the Universal Liberty, I was sentenced to a prison, from whose blank walls there was no escape. Still, however, while my parents lived, I had something of consolation; at least I was not alone. They died, and a sudden and dread solitude--a vast and empty dreariness settled upon my dungeon. One old servant only, who had nursed me from my childhood, who had known me in my short privilege of light, by whose recollections my mind could grope back its way through the dark and narrow passages of memory, to faint glimpses of the sun, was all that remained to me of human sympathies. It did not suffice, however, to content me with a home where my father and my mother's kind voice were _not_. A restless impatience, an anxiety to move, possessed me; and I set out from my home, journeying whither I cared not, so that at least I could change an air that weighed upon me like a palpable burthen. I took only this old attendant as my companion; he too died three months since at Bruxelles, worn out with years. Alas! I had forgotten that he was old, for I saw not his progress to decay; and now, save my faithless dog, I was utterly alone, till I came hither and found _thee_." Lucille stooped down to caress the dog; she blest the desertion that had led to a friend who never could desert. But however much and however gratefully St. Amand loved Lucille, her power availed not to chase the melancholy from his brow, and to reconcile him to his forlorn condition. "Ah, would that I could see thee! Would that I could look upon a face that my heart vainly endeavors to delineate." "If thou couldst," sighed Lucille, "thou wouldst cease to love me." "Impossible!" cried St. Amand, passionately; "however the world may find thee, _thou_ wouldst become my standard of beauty, and I should judge not of thee by others, but of others by thee."