ge 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
colours, 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 fervour, 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
attended 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
burden. 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 blessed the desertion that
had led him 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 conditi