s of the
river and gazing at the moon like a burning disk from the furnace,
slowly rising behind the towers of Notre Dame.

Often I prowled under the windows of my friends, stopping at yours to
send you a good-night.

Returning home I would rekindle my fire and begin anew my labors,
interrupted from time to time by the bells of the neighboring convents
and the sound of the hours striking sadly in the darkness.

O! nights more beautiful than the day. It was then that I felt germinate
and flourish in my heart a strange love.

Opposite me, beyond the garden that separated us, was a window, in a
story on a level with mine; it was hid during the day by the tall pines,
but its light shone clear and bright through the foliage. This lamp was
lit invariably at the same hour every evening and was rarely
extinguished before dawn. There, I thought, one of God's poor creatures
works and suffers. Sometimes I rose from my desk to look at this little
star twinkling between heaven and earth, and with my brow pressed
against the pane gazed sadly at it.

In the beginning it excited me to watch, and I made it a point of honor
never to extinguish my lamp as long as the rival lamp was burning; at
last it became the friend of my solitude, the companion of my destiny. I
ended by giving it a soul to understand and answer me. I talked to it; I
questioned. I sometimes said, "Who art thou?"

Now I imagined a pale youth enamored with glory, and called him my
brother. Then it was a young and lovely Antigone, laboring to sustain
her old father, and I called her my sister, and by a sweeter name too.
Finally, shall I tell you, there were moments when I fancied that the
light of our fraternal lamps was but the radiance of two mysterious
sympathies, drawn together to be blended into one.

One must have passed two years in solitude to be able to comprehend
these puerilities. How many prisoners have become attached to some
wall-flower, blooming between the bars of their cell, like the Marvel of
Peru of the garden, which closes to the beams of day to open its petals
to the kisses of the evening; the flower that I loved was a star.
Anxiously I watched its awakening, and could not repose until it had
disappeared. Did it grow dim and flicker, I cried--"Courage and hope!
God blesses labor, he keeps for thee a purer and brighter seat in
heaven!"

Did I in turn feel sad, it threw out a brighter light and a voice said,
"Hope, friend, I watch and suffer