id of a little bit of broken looking-glass, how
long it is probable that I shall retain the "regulation" number of the
human features.

Ah, you gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease, may smile at
such miseries; but let me tell you that however impertinent you might
deem him who told you "to follow your nose," the impossibility of
compliance is a yet heavier infliction; and it was with a trembling
eagerness that, each morning as I awoke, I consulted the map of my face,
to be sure that I was master of each geographical feature.

While all who may break a leg or cut a blood-vessel are reckoned fit
subjects to expose to the risk of this contagion, the most guarded
measures are adopted to protect the world without the walls from every
risk. Not only is every leper denied access to his friends and family,
but even written communication is refused him, while sentinels are
stationed at short intervals around the grounds, with orders to fire
upon any who should attempt an escape.

Here then was I in a jail, with the danger of a horrible disease
superadded. Algebraically, my case stood thus: letting the letter P
represent a prison, L the leprosy, and N my nose, P + L--N being equal
to any given number of deaths by torture. Such was my case, such my
situation; while of the past, by what chain of events I came to be thus
a prisoner, I knew nothing. A little memoir at the head of my bed set
forth that I was "a case of punctured wound in the thorax," with several
accessory advantages, not over intelligible by my ignorance, but which I
guessed to imply, that if the doctor didn't finish me off at once, there
was every chance of my slipping away by a lingering malady,--some one
of those "chest affections" that make the fortunes of doctors, but
are seldom so profitable to the patients. One fact was, however, very
suggestive. It was above four months since the date of my admission
to the hospital,--a circumstance that vouched for the gravity of my
illness, as well as showing what a number of events might have occurred
in the interval.

Four months! and where was Donna Maria now? Had she forgotten
me,--forgotten the terrible scene on the Collorado; forgotten the
starlit night in the forest? Had they left me, without any interest in
my future,--deserted me, wounded, perhaps dying?--a sad return for the
services I had rendered them! That Fra Miguel should have done this,
would have caused me no surprise; but the Senhora,--she wh