ad received Godefroid with a look that was long a
stranger to his eyes. If tears were not forever dried at their source,
withered by such scorching sorrows, that look would have been tearful.

The old man sat playing with his snuff-box and looking at his daughter
in silent ecstasy.

"To-morrow, madame," said Godefroid, when the music ceased; "to-morrow
your fate will be decided. I bring you good news. The celebrated
Halpersohn is coming to see you at three o'clock in the afternoon. He
has promised," added Godefroid in a low voice to Monsieur Bernard, "to
tell me the exact truth."

The old man rose, and grasping Godefroid's hand, drew him to a corner of
the room beside the fireplace.

"Ah! what a night I shall pass! a definitive decision! My daughter cured
or doomed!"

"Courage!" said Godefroid; "after tea come out with me."

"My child, my child, don't play any more," said the old man; "you
will bring on an attack; such a strain upon your strength must end in
reaction."

He made Auguste take away the instrument and offered a cup of tea to his
daughter with the coaxing manner of a nurse quieting the petulance of a
child.

"What is the doctor like?" she asked, her mind already distracted by the
prospect of seeing a new person.

Vanda, like all prisoners, was full of eager curiosity. When the
physical phenomena of her malady ceased, they seemed to betake
themselves to the moral nature; she conceived the strangest fancies, the
most violent caprices; she insisted on seeing Rossini, and wept when her
father, whom she believed to be all powerful, refused to fetch him.

Godefroid now gave her a minute account of the Jewish doctor and his
study; of which she knew nothing, for Monsieur Bernard had cautioned
Auguste not to tell his mother of his visits to Halpersohn, so much had
he feared to rouse hopes in her mind which might not be realized.

Vanda hung upon Godefroid's words like one fascinated; and she fell into
a sort of ecstasy in her passionate desire to see this strange Polish
doctor.

"Poland has produced many singular, mysterious beings," said Monsieur
Bernard. "To-day, for instance, besides this extraordinary doctor, we
have Hoene Wronski, the enlightened mathematician, the poet Mickievicz,
Towianksi the mystic, and Chopin, whose talent is supernatural. Great
national convulsions always produce various species of dwarfed giants."

"Oh! dear papa; what a man you are! If you would only write down what we
h