hich will be with him the work of a second, would be to you
difficulties insurmountable."

"To Paris! Jasper go to Paris!" exclaimed my mother, as she grew deadly
pale.

"Jasper leave us!" cried Raper, in a tone of terror.

"And why not?" replied the Count. "Is it here you would have him waste
the best years of youth? Is it in the wild barbarism of this dreary
valley that he will catch glimpses of the prizes for which men struggle
and contend? The boy himself has higher and nobler instincts; he feels
that this is but the sluggish existence of a mere peasant, and that
yonder is the tournament where knights are jousting."

"And you wish to leave us, Jasper?" cried my mother, with a quivering
lip, and a terrible expression of anxiety in her features.

"To forsake your home!" muttered Raper.

"Ask himself; let him be as frank with you as he was half-an-hour ago
with me, and you will know the truth."

"Oh, Jasper, speak!--leave me not in this dreadful suspense!" cried
my mother; "for in all my troubles I never pictured to my mind this
calamity."

"No, no!" said Raper; "the boy 's nature has no duplicity,--he never
thought of this!"

"Ask him, I say," cried the Count; "ask him if he wish not to accompany
me to Paris."

I could bear no longer the power of the gaze that I felt was fixed
upon me, but, falling at her feet, I hid my face in her lap, and cried
bitterly. My heart was actually bursting with the fulness of sorrow, and
I sobbed myself to sleep, still weeping through my dreams, and shedding
hot tears as I slumbered.

My dream is more graven on my memory than the events which followed my
awaking. I could recount the strange and incoherent fancies which chased
each other through my brain on that night, and yet not tell the actual
occurrences of the following day.

I do remember something of sitting beside my mother, with my hand locked
in hers, and feeling the wet cheek that from time to time was pressed
against my own; of the soft hand as it parted the hair upon my forehead,
and the burning kiss that seemed to sear it. Passages of intense
emotion--how caused I know not--are graven in my mind; memories of a
grief that seemed to wrench the heart with present suffering, and cast
shadows of darkest meaning on the future. Oh, no, no!--the sorrows--if
they be indeed sorrows--of childhood are not short-lived; they mould the
affections, and dispose them in a fashion that endures for many a year
to come.

While