scarcely, without vertigo, recall her as I
had last seen her, with her hand wounded in my defence; nor, without
emotions painful in their intensity, fancy myself restored to the youth
of which I had taken leave, and to the rosy hopes and plannings which
visit most men once only, and then in early years. Hitherto I had deemed
such things the lot of others.

Daylight found me--and no wonder--still diverting myself with these
charming speculations; which had for me, be it remembered, all the force
of novelty. The sun chanced to rise that morning in a clear sky, and
brilliantly for the time of year; and words fail me when I look
back, and try to describe how delicately this single fact enhanced
my pleasure! I sunned myself in the beams, which penetrated my barred
window; and tasting the early freshness with a keen and insatiable
appetite, I experienced to the full that peculiar aspiration after
goodness which Providence allows such moments to awaken in us in youth;
but rarely when time and the camp have blunted the sensibilities.

I had not yet arrived at the stage at which difficulties have to be
reckoned up, and the chief drawback to the tumult of joy I felt took
the shape of regret that my mother no longer lived to feel the emotions
proper to the time, and to share in the prosperity which she had so
often and so fondly imagined. Nevertheless, I felt myself drawn closer
to her. I recalled with the most tender feelings, and at greater leisure
than had before been the case, her last days and words, and particularly
the appeal she had uttered on mademoiselle's behalf. And I vowed, if
it were possible, to pay a visit to her grave before leaving the
neighbourhood, that I might there devote a few moments to the thought of
the affection which had consecrated all women in my eyes.

I was presently interrupted in these reflections by a circumstance which
proved in the end diverting enough, though far from reassuring at the
first blush. It began in a dismal rattling of chains in the passage
below and on the stairs outside my room; which were paved, like the
rest of the building, with stone. I waited with impatience and some
uneasiness to see what would come of this; and my surprise may be
imagined when, the door being unlocked, gave entrance to a man in whom I
recognised on the instant deaf Mathew--the villain whom I had last seen
with Fresnoy in the house in the Rue Valois. Amazed at seeing him
here, I sprang to my feet in fear