urse, presume to name, scarcely
presumed to think, it seemed so like an unnatural monstrosity of my
own mind. But when, one morning, the child died, holding in his
hands the _bonbons_ his mother had given him, and Madame C----, all
agitation and frenzy and weeping, still contrived to extract them from
the tightly closed, tiny fists, and threw them into the grate, I felt
a horrid thrill like the effect of the last scene in a tragedy. _I
knew that the bonbons were poisoned_.

So that is the reason I shuddered as I passed through the saloon.

Throwing open the window, a dim light flickered through, and a sickly
ray fell upon the fountain. It shivered upon the dripping marble
column in its centre, and struck with an icy hue the water in the
basin below. The fountain was not in my range of vision from the
window; but I often turned to look at it as I opened the shutters,
thinking it a pretty sight when the drops sparkled in the misty light
against the background of the otherwise darkened room. It pleased my
imagination to watch the effect produced by a little more or a little
less opening of the shutters,--a nonsensical morning play-spell, which
quite enlivened me for the sedate occupations of the day. It was,
however, not imagination now which whispered to me that there was
something else to look at beside the jet of water and the shadowy
play of light. Stooping down upon the fountain-brink, absorbed in
contemplating the gold-fish swimming below, and with its naked little
feet touching the water's edge, a tiny figure sat. My first thought
(the first thoughts of fear are never reasonable) was, that some child
from up-stairs had stolen down unawares, (as children are quite as
fond as grown folks of forbidden pleasures,) to amuse itself with the
water. But the children were not risen yet, and the saloon was too
utterly dark and dismal at that hour to tempt the bravest of them.
Second thoughts reminded me of that certainty, and I looked again. The
figure raised its head from its drooping posture, and gazed vacantly,
out of a pair of dim blue eyes, at me. The eyes were the eyes of
little Jacques.

I do not know how I should have been so utterly overcome, but I
started up in terror as I felt the dreamy phantom-gaze fixed upon me,
raising my hands wildly above my head. The hammer which I held in my
hand to drive back the bolts of the shutters flew from my grasp and
struck the great mirror,--the new mirror which had just been bo