wered me, and the mere recalling of these events caused me a
fever which laid me prostrate for a week. Still it always seemed to me
as if I were wronging you, when I used jestingly to evade your
railleries on my bachelorhood. Believe me, it was principally to
redress this wrong, that I sought your society when I this time
returned from my yearly visit to her grave. Let me therefore simply
tell you all that my heart dictates to me; but first I must open this
casement; the air here is so oppressive that I breathe with difficulty.
So, now, go on with your cigars and your wine, while I walk up and
down.

"A quarter of a century has passed since those events, yet they are as
present to my memory as if they had happened only yesterday; they will
not let me rest."

What he confessed to us in that night, till the day dawned--and even
then we could not part--I wrote down the following day, keeping as much
as possible to his own words. Then I little thought that they were to
be his last ones, his last bequest. He had rightly judged of the power
these recollections still exercised over him; they brought on a fever,
which clung to him during his homeward journey, and was aggravated by
his exertions during a night conflagration, and a few weeks after our
meeting the news reached us that we had then seen him for the last
time.

The following record is now doubly precious to me, and I can with
difficulty bring myself to allow indifferent eyes to peruse his secret.
Then again I feel it a duty to bring to light the strange fate of those
two hearts. Are not the expressions of noble and generous souls the
rightful property of humanity?...

* * * * *

I had reached my twenty-fifth year when my father died. Standing at his
death-bed, after witnessing his painful agony, it seemed to me that ten
years had passed over my head. My only sister who was very dear to me,
had shortly before married a young agent of our establishment, a
Frenchman, whose family had long ago settled at Geneva, and who now
entered into partnership with our firm.

He was like a brother to me, and so when he and my sister urged me to
travel for several months with the hope of rallying my depressed
spirits, I took their advice in this, as in all things, and set out on
my journey, the more readily that I felt how necessary to me was some
outward diversion to my thoughts.

The change of scene soon realized the hopes of my relat