I called up to memory the pictured nun
on the panel; present to my mind was the sad love-story; I saw in
thought the vision of the garret, the apparition of the alley, the
strange birth of the berceau; I underwent a presentiment of discovery,
a strong conviction of coming disclosure. Ah! when imagination once
runs riot where do we stop? What winter tree so bare and
branchless--what way-side, hedge-munching animal so humble, that Fancy,
a passing cloud, and a struggling moonbeam, will not clothe it in
spirituality, and make of it a phantom?

With solemn force pressed on my heart, the expectation of mystery
breaking up: hitherto I had seen this spectre only through a glass
darkly; now was I to behold it face to face. I leaned forward; I looked.

"She comes!" cried Josef Emanuel.

The circle opened as if opening to admit a new and welcome member. At
this instant a torch chanced to be carried past; its blaze aided the
pale moon in doing justice to the crisis, in lighting to perfection the
denouement pressing on. Surely those near me must have felt some little
of the anxiety I felt, in degree so unmeted. Of that group the coolest
must have "held his breath for a time!" As for me, my life stood still.

It is over. The moment and the nun are come. The crisis and the
revelation are passed by.

The flambeau glares still within a yard, held up in a park-keeper's
hand; its long eager tongue of flame almost licks the figure of the
Expected--there--where she stands full in my sight. What is she like?
What does she wear? How does she look? Who is she?

There are many masks in the park to-night, and as the hour wears late,
so strange a feeling of revelry and mystery begins to spread abroad,
that scarce would you discredit me, reader, were I to say that she is
like the nun of the attic, that she wears black skirts and white
head-clothes, that she looks the resurrection of the flesh, and that
she is a risen ghost.

All falsities--all figments! We will not deal in this gear. Let us be
honest, and cut, as heretofore, from the homely web of truth.

_Homely_, though, is an ill-chosen word. What I see is not precisely
homely. A girl of Villette stands there--a girl fresh from her
pensionnat. She is very comely, with the beauty indigenous to this
country. She looks well-nourished, fair, and fat of flesh. Her cheeks
are round, her eyes good; her hair is abundant. She is handsomely
dressed. She is not alone; her escort consists of thr