ly _your_ brain I'm using now. But your brain is
infinitely better than that of poor M. Noiret, who doesn't know what
his eye really perceives, and takes it for something else! Your
brain is the best brain I know, although you are not aware of this,
and have never even used it, except for trash and nonsense. But you
_shall_--some day. _I'll_ take care of that, and the world shall
wonder.

"Trust me. Live on, and I will never desert you again, unless you
again force me to by your conduct. I have come back to you in the
hour of your need.

"I have managed to make you, in your sleep, throw away your poison
where it will injure nobody but the rats, and no one will be a bit
the wiser. I have made you burn your touching letters of farewell;
you will find the ashes inside the stove. Yours is a good heart!

"Now take a cold bath and have a good breakfast, and go to Antwerp
or Brussels and see people and amuse yourself.

"Never see M. Noiret again. But when your aunt comes back you must
both clear out of this depressing priestly hole; it doesn't suit
either of you, body or mind. Go to Duesseldorf, in Prussia. Close by,
at a village called Riffrath, lives an old doctor, Dr. Hasenclever,
who understands a deal about the human heart and something about the
human body; and even a little about the human eye, for he is a
famous oculist. He can't cure, but he'll give you things that at
least will do you no harm. He won't rid you of the eye that remains!
You will meet some pleasant English people, whom I particularly wish
you to meet, and make friends, and have a holiday from trouble, and
begin the world anew.

"As to who _I_ am, you shall know in time. My power to help you is
very limited, but my devotion to you (for very good reasons) has no
limits at all.

"Take it that my name is Martia. When you have finished reading this
letter look at yourself in your looking-glass and say (loud enough
for your own ears to hear you):

"'I trust you, Martia!'

"Then I will leave you for a while, and come back at night, as in
the old days. Whenever the north is in you, there am ~I~; seeing,
hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling with your five splendid wits by
day--sleeping your lovely sleep at night; but only able to think
with _your_ brain, it seems, and then only when you are fast asleep.