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 see you are smudging it? I am not scolding you, my dear.--I will
show it to you as often as you like, but don't destroy it; let go, you
are injuring it."

"Let him have it," begged my mother, "the boy is not well."

"Of all things to ask!" replied the old maid. "Let him have it! And
who will paint another like this--or make me as I was then? Today
nobody paints miniatures--it is a thing of the past, and I also am a
thing of the past, and I am not what is represented there!"