The words faltered, and died upon her lips. The beautiful image of
her mother, fading slowly from her memory, seemed already a vision
so vague, that to name it were to lose it,--an idea too precious and
too impalpable to put in words. The past, with all its love and joy
and beauty, was becoming for our 'Toinette what we may fancy heaven
is to a little baby, whose solemn eyes and earnest gaze seem forever
attempting to recall the visions of celestial beauty it has left for
the pale, sad skies, and mournful sounds of earth.

On rushed the train through the quiet night, waking wild echoes in
the woods, and leaving them to whisper themselves again to sleep
when it had passed; lighting dark valleys that the moonlight left
unlighted, with its whirling banner of flame and sparks, and its
hundred blazing windows; moving across the holy calm of midnight
like some strange and troubled vision, some ugly nightmare, that for
the moment changes peace and rest to horror and affright, and then
passes again to the dim and ghostly Dreamland, whose frontier crowds
our daily life on every hand, and whence forever peep and beckon the
mysteries that perplex and haunt the human mind.

On and on and on, through misty lowland and shadowy wood, and over
shining rivers, and through sleeping hamlets, and winding,
snake-like, between great round hills and along deep
mountain-gorges, until the wild, bright eyes that watched beneath
Cherry's matted curls grew soft and dim; and at last the white lids
fell, and the curve of the sad lips relaxed beneath the kiss of
God's mildest messenger to man,--the spirit of sleep.

As for Giovanni, he long had slumbered heavily; and even Pantalon,