o shame and poverty, heart-broken by despair! Misery, doubtless, has
cast a yellow tinge upon thy cheeks and stolen its radiance from thy
glance. But no! thank God, it is not so! Thy heroic blood has
strengthened thee against fate, and thy beauty is even more ravishing
than of old! If a cloistered life has chastened thy roses, their tender
bloom has only become more touching. Thy brow has grown loftier and
purer; thine eyes still glisten beneath their sweeping lashes; and that
well-remembered smile still hovers around thy coral lips!

Suddenly Lenora stopped working. Her hands rested on the work in her
lap, her head bent forward, her eyes were riveted dreamily on the
ground, and her soul, wandering perhaps to other lands, seemed to
abandon itself on the current of a happy reverie. After a while she
placed the linen she had been sewing on a chair and got up slowly.
Leaning languidly on the window-frame, she gathered a few violets,
played with them a while, and then looked abroad at the sky over the
roof-tops, as if longing to breathe once more the fresh air and enjoy
the spring. Soon her eyes fixed themselves compassionately on the bird
that hopped about its cage and ever and anon struck its bill against the
wires as if striving to get out.

"Why dost thou want to leave us, dear little bird?" said she, softly.
"Why dost thou wish to be gone, dear comforter of our sadness? Sing
gayly to-day; father is well again, and life is once more a pleasure.
What is it makes thee flutter about so wildly and pant in thy cage? Ah!
is it not hard, dear little one, to be captive when we know there are
joy and freedom in the open air?--when we are born in the fields and
woods?--when we know that _there_ alone are independence and liberty.
Like thee, poor bird, I am a child of nature; I too have been torn from
my birthplace; I too bemoan the solitudes where my childhood was passed!
But has a friend or lover been snatched from thee--as from me--forever?
Dost thou grieve for something more than space and freedom? Yet why do I
ask? Thy love-season has come round again, has it not? and love is the
greatest blessing of thy little life! I understand thee, poor bird! I
will no longer be thy fate! Fly away, and God help you! Begone, and
enjoy the two greatest blessings of life! Ah, how thou singest as thy
wings bear thee away,--away to the sky and woods! Farewell! farewell!"
As she uttered these last words Lenora opened the cage-door and released