[Illustration: RAPHAEL'S DEVOTION.]
The cool morning air had awakened her, while I was praying by her
bedside, with my face buried in my hands. She had noted my ardent pity,
and my ardent prayer, and had recognized me by the clear light of
morning, which now streamed into the chamber. When she had fainted she
was lonely and indifferent, and had revived under the tender care, and
perhaps the love of a pitying stranger. She, who, in the neglected
flower of her days, had been deprived of all the kindred ties of the
heart, had unexpectedly found in me the care and pity, the tears and
prayers, of a youthful brother; and that tender name had escaped her
lips at the moment that returning life gave her the consciousness of so
great a joy.
"A brother! Ah, no, not a brother!" I exclaimed, reverently removing
her hand from my brow, as though I had not been worthy of her touch,
"not a brother, but a slave, a living shadow following on your steps,
who asks but one blessing of Heaven, and one felicity on earth--the
right of remembering this night; who only desires to preserve eternally
the image of the superhuman vision he would wish to follow unto death,
or for whom alone he could bear to live." As I faltered out these words
in a low voice, the rosy tints of life gradually reappeared on her
cheeks, a sad smile, implying an obstinate unbelief in happiness,
played round her mouth, and she raised her eyes to the ceiling, as
though they listened to words which responded not to the ear, but to
the thoughts. Never was the change from life to death, from a dream to
reality, so rapid; on her countenance, now blooming with youth and
refreshed by rest, surprise, languor, delight, repose, joy and
melancholy, timidity and grace were all painted in quick succession.
Her radiance seemed to illumine the dark recess more than the light of
morning. There existed more languor, more revealings, more sympathy in
her looks and silence, than in millions of words. The human face speaks
a language to the eye, and in youth the countenance is an instrument of
which one look of passion sweeps the keys. It transmits from soul to
soul mysteries of mute communion, which cannot be translated into
words. My countenance, too, must have revealed what I felt to those
eyes which were bent so earnestly upon me. My damp clothes, my long,
dishevelled hair, my eyes heavy with watching, my pale and anxious
looks, the pious enthusiasm with which I bent before the holiness of
suffering beauty, my emotion, joy, and surprise, the dimness of the
room in which I durst not take a step for fear of dispelling the
enchantment of so divine a dream, the first rays of sun, which showed
the tears still glistening in my eyes,--all conspired to lend to my
countenance a power of expression, and a look of tenderness, which it
will doubtless never wear again in the course of a long life.
Unable to bear any longer the reaction of these feelings, and the
internal vibration of such silence, I called up the women. On entering
the room, they broke out into repeated exclamations of surprise at the
sight of a resurrection which appeared to them a miracle. At the same
moment the doctor made his appearance. He prescribed repose and an
infusion of certain plants of the mountain which allay the irregular
movements of the heart. He reassured every one by telling us that the
lady's malady was one of youth, produced by excessive sensibility, and
which time would mitigate; that it was but a superabundance of life,
although it often wore the appearance of death, and was never fatal,
except when inward grief or some moral cause changed its character into
one of habitual melancholy, or an unconquerable distaste to life. While
some of the women went out into the fields, to gather the samples
ordered by the doctor, and others were ironing out her damp clothes in
the lower room, I left the house to wander alone among the ruins of the
old Abbey.