reading and songs gave her. At last romantic reminiscences overflowed
in my brain, and sometimes I was a page, and sometimes a troubadour.

With all these fanciful ideas, the fact is that I began to grow thin
quite perceptibly, which was observed with great disquietude in my
parents and my aunt.

"In this dangerous and critical age of development, everything is
alarming," said my father, who used to read books of medicine, and
anxiously studied my dark eyelids, my dull eyes, my contracted and
pale lips, and above all, the complete lack of appetite which had
taken possession of me.

"Play, boy; eat, boy," he would say to me, and I replied to him,
dejectedly:

"I don't feel inclined."

They began to talk of distractions, offered to take me to the theater;
stopped my studies, and gave me foaming new milk to drink. Afterwards
they poured cold water over my head and back to fortify my nerves; and
I noticed that my father at table or in the morning when I went to his
bedroom to bid him good morning, would gaze at me fixedly for some
little time, and would sometimes pass his hand down my spine, feeling
the vertebrae. I hypocritically lowered my eyes, resolved to die
rather than confess my crime. As soon as I was free from the
affectionate solicitude of my family, I found myself alone with my
lady of the portrait. At last, to get nearer to her, I thought I would
do away with the cold crystal. I trembled upon putting this into
execution; but at last my love prevailed over the vague fear with
which such a profanation filled me, and with skillful cunning I
succeeded in pulling away the glass and exposing the ivory plate. As I
pressed my lips to the painting I could scent the slight fragrance of
the border of hair, I imagined to myself even more realistically that
it was a living person whom I was grasping with my trembling hands. A
feeling of faintness overpowered me, and I fell unconscious on the
sofa, tightly holding the miniature.

When I came to my senses I saw my father, my mother, and my aunt, all
bending anxiously over me; I read their terror and alarm in their
faces; my father was feeling my pulse, shaking his head, and
murmuring:

"His pulse is nothing but a flutter, you can scarcely feel it."

My aunt, with her claw-like fingers, was trying to take the portrait
from me, and I was mechanically hiding it and grasping it more firmly.

"But, my dear boy--let go, you are spoiling it!" she exclaimed. "Don't
you s