on. But in the singular unity of look, in the
common features and common bearing, of all these painted generations on
the walls of the residencia, the miracle started out and looked me in the
face. And an ancient mirror falling opportunely in my way, I stood and
read my own features a long while, tracing out on either hand the
filaments of descent and the bonds that knit me with my family.

At last, in the course of these investigations, I opened the door of a
chamber that bore the marks of habitation. It was of large proportions
and faced to the north, where the mountains were most wildly figured. The
embers of a fire smouldered and smoked upon the hearth, to which a chair
had been drawn close. And yet the aspect of the chamber was ascetic to
the degree of sternness; the chair was uncushioned; the floor and walls
were naked; and beyond the books which lay here and there in some
confusion, there was no instrument of either work or pleasure. The sight
of books in the house of such a family exceedingly amazed me; and I began
with a great hurry, and in momentary fear of interruption, to go from one
to another and hastily inspect their character. They were of all sorts,
devotional, historical, and scientific, but mostly of a great age and in
the Latin tongue. Some I could see to bear the marks of constant study;
others had been torn across and tossed aside as if in petulance or
disapproval. Lastly, as I cruised about that empty chamber, I espied
some papers written upon with pencil on a table near the window. An
unthinking curiosity led me to take one up. It bore a copy of verses,
very roughly metred in the original Spanish, and which I may render
somewhat thus--

Pleasure approached with pain and shame,
Grief with a wreath of lilies came.
Pleasure showed the lovely sun;
Jesu dear, how sweet it shone!
Grief with her worn hand pointed on,
Jesu dear, to thee!

Shame and confusion at once fell on me; and, laying down the paper, I
beat an immediate retreat from the apartment. Neither Felipe nor his
mother could have read the books nor written these rough but feeling
verses. It was plain I had stumbled with sacrilegious feet into the room
of the daughter of the house. God knows, my own heart most sharply
punished me for my indiscretion. The thought that I had thus secretly
pushed my way into the confidence of a girl so strangely situated, and
the fear that she might somehow come to hear