Pagina 436 di 896

"See!" said the Doctor of Beauvais, raising his hand towards the

moon. "I have looked at her from my prison-window, when I could

not bear her light. I have looked at her when it has been such

torture to me to think of her shining upon what I had lost, that

I have beaten my head against my prison-walls. I have looked at

her, in a state so dull and lethargic, that I have thought of

nothing but the number of horizontal lines I could draw across

her at the full, and the number of perpendicular lines with which

I could intersect them." He added in his inward and pondering

manner, as he looked at the moon, "It was twenty either way, I

remember, and the twentieth was difficult to squeeze in."

The strange thrill with which she heard him go back to that time,

deepened as he dwelt upon it; but, there was nothing to shock her

in the manner of his reference. He only seemed to contrast his

present cheerfulness and felicity with the dire endurance that

was over.