“You are pale,” said she, for she was always kindly and affectionate as a mother with a child, as a guardian angel with his ward. “You are pale. You always forget yourself for others, and now you suffer anxiety for me. Do not suffer. I have my consolations.” I did not make any reply, but took my Cremona, and sought to lift up all my soul to a level with hers, to that lofty realm where her spirit ever wandered, that so I might not be comfortless. She started at the first tone that I struck forth, and looked at me with her large, earnest eyes. I found my own gaze fixed on hers, rapt and entranced. Now there came at last the inspiration so longed for, so sought for. It came from where her very soul looked forth into mine, out of the glory of her lustrous, spiritual eyes. They grew brighter with an almost immortal radiance, and all my heart rose up till it seemed ready to burst in the frenzy of that inspired moment. Now I felt the spirit of prophecy, I felt the afflatus of the inspired sibyl or seer, and the voice of music which for a lifetime I had sought to utter forth now at last sounded as I longed that it should sound. I exulted in that sound. I knew that at last I had caught the tone, and from her. I knew its meaning and exulted, as the poet or the musician must always exult when some idea sublimer than any which he has ever known is wafted over his upturned spiritual gaze. She shared my exaltation. There came over her face swiftly, like the lightning flash, an expression of surprise and joy. So the face of the exile lightens up at the throbbing of his heart, when, in some foreign land, he suddenly and unexpectedly hears the sound of his own language. So his eyes light up, and his heart beats faster, and even amidst the very longing of his soul after home, the desire after that home is appeased by these its most hallowed associations. And the full meaning of that eloquent gaze of hers as her soul looked into mine became all apparent to me. “Speak on,” it said; “sound on, oh strains of the language of my home! Unheard so long, now heard at last.” I knew that I was comprehended. Now all the feelings of the melancholy months came rushing over my heart, and all the holiest ideas which had animated my life came thronging into my mind, bursting forth into tones, as though of their own accord, involuntarily, as words come forth in a dream. “Oh thou,” I said, in that language which my own lips could not utter--“oh thou whom I saved from the tomb, the life to which I restored thee is irksome; but there remains a life to which at last thou shalt attain. “Oh thou,” I said, “whose spirit moves among the immortals, I am mortal yet immortal! My soul seeks commune with them. I yearn after that communion. Life here on earth is not more dear to me than to thee. Help me to rise above it. Thou hast been on high, show me too the way.