bright present-time
affords you," the old woman said.

"'"Be quiet," he answered. "There is something more, which makes my
life wretched, continually tortures me, and will, sooner or later, be
my destruction. Ever since I awoke to consciousness in the hospital, an
unutterable longing, a yearning, which consumes my very heart, for a
something which I can neither name nor understand, has continually
filled my whole being. When I used to throw myself down at night on my
hard bed, poor and wretched, worn and broken by the bitter labour of
the day, there came a dream, fanning my fevered brow, and giving back
to me, in gentle whisperings, all the bliss of a brief moment of utter
happiness, which the Eternal Power permitted me to realize in my
fancy--for the consciousness that I did once possess it rests ever in
the depths of my heart. I sleep on soft cushions now, and bitter labour
no longer consumes my strength. But when I awake from my dream, or
when, in the waking state, the consciousness of that moment comes into
my soul, I feel that my poor, wretched existence is, to me, now as
then, an unbearable burden which I long to shake away from me. All
reflection, all researching, are in vain. I can not fathom what, so
gorgeously happy, occurred to me in my early life, of which the dim
reflected echo--incomprehensible to me, alas!--fills me with such
delight. But this delight becomes burning torture when I am compelled
to recognize the truth that every hope of finding that Eden again--nay,
of even searching for it--is over. Can there be traces of that which
has disappeared _without_ a trace?"

"'Antonio ceased speaking, and sighed profoundly from the depths of his
heart.

"'During his narration the old woman had borne herself as one who is
wholly carried away by the pain of another, and, like a mirror,
reflects every movement to which that other is constrained by his
suffering.

"'"Tonino! dear Tonino!" she now said, in a tearful voice; "why do you
despair because something delightful, of which you have lost the
memory, happened to you in early life? Silly boy! Silly boy! Listen!
he, he, he."

"'And she commenced her usual disagreeable kickering and laughing, as
she danced about on the marble pavement. People came--she crouched down
again--they gave her alms.

"'"Antonio, Antonio!" she cried, "take me to the sea, take me to the
sea!"

"'Antonio, scarce knowing what he was doing, lifted her in his arms and
carried her s