mimcry and declamation.

I told him what I had come for; he opened a cabinet and drew from it
a manuscript, which he placed on a table that I might examine it at
my leisure.

Never in my life did I experience such an emotion--except, indeed,
during some few brief months of my youth, months whose memories,
though I should live a hundred years, would remain as fresh at my
last hour as in the first day they came to me.

It was, indeed, the very manuscript described by the librarian of
Sir Thomas Raleigh; it was, indeed, the manuscript of the Clerk
Alexander which I saw, which I touched! The work of Voragine himself
had been perceptibly abridged; but that made little difference to
me. All the inestimable additions of the monk of Saint-Germain-
des-Pres were there. That was the main point! I tried to read the
Legend of Saint Droctoveus; but I could not--all the lines of the
page quivered before my eyes, and there was a sound in my ears like
the noise of a windmill in the country at night. Nevertheless, I
was able to see that the manuscript offered every evidence of
indubitable authenticity. The two drawings of the Purification of
the Virgin and the Coronationof Proserpine were meagre in design
and vulgar in violence of colouring. Considerably damaged in 1824,
as attested by the catalogue of Sir Thomas, they had obtained
during the interval a new aspect of freshness. But this miracle
did not surprise me at all. And, besides, what did I care about
the two miniatures? The legends and the poem of Alexander--those
alone formed the treasure I desired. My eyes devoured as much of
it as they had the power to absorb.