to tell my amazement when I perceived that the child to whose rescue my mother came was _my own self_. Never in my seventy-two years of earthly life, with all the unlooked-for changes and strange events with which it was crowded, never in all its surprises and chances have I felt such emotion as this sight caused me; I was completely overcome when in this child I recognised--_myself!_ QUÆRENS. You saw yourself? LUMEN. Yes, myself, with the blond curls of six years of age, with my little collar embroidered by my mother's hands, my little blouse of light blue colour, and the cuffs always rumpled. There I was, the very same as you have seen in the half-effaced miniature that stood on my mantelpiece. My mother came over to me, and sharply reproving the other boys, took me up in her arms, and then led me by the hand into the house, which was close to the Rue d'Ulm. There I saw that, after passing through the house, we reappeared in the garden in the midst of a numerous company. QUÆRENS. Master, pardon me a criticism. I confess to you that it appears to me impossible that you could see yourself; you could not be two persons; and since you were seventy-two years old, your infancy was passed, and had totally disappeared. You could not see a thing that no longer existed. I cannot comprehend how when an old man you could see yourself as an infant. LUMEN. Why cannot you admit this point on the same grounds as the preceding ones? QUÆRENS. Because you cannot see yourself double, an infant and an old man, at the same time. [Sidenote: A logical inference.] LUMEN. Look at the matter more closely, my friend. You admit the general fact, but you do not sufficiently observe, that this last particular is logically inferred from that fact. You admit that the view I had of the Earth was seventy-two years in coming to me, do you not? that events reached me only at that interval of time after they had taken place? in short, that I saw the world as it was at that epoch? You admit, likewise, that as I saw the streets of that time I saw also the children running in those streets? You admit all this? QUÆRENS. Yes, decidedly. LUMEN. Well, then, since I saw this troop of children, and myself amongst them, why do you say I could not see myself as well as the others? QUÆRENS. But you were no longer there amongst them! LUMEN. Again, I repeat, this whole troop of children has ceased to exist. But I saw them such as they were at the moment the ray of light left the Earth, which only reached me at the present time. And as I could distinguish the fifteen to eighteen children in the group, there was no reason why I should disappear from amongst them because I myself was the distant spectator. Since any other observer could see me in company with my comrades, why should I form an exception? I saw them all, and I saw myself amongst them.