"'We are happy, then,' I said to myself, 'there is no excitement
now. How glad I am that I can now look at her through my spectacles.'

"I feared least some instinct should warn me to beware. I escaped from
her arms, and ran home and seized the glasses, and bounded back again
to Preciosa. As I entered the room I was heated, my head was swimming
with confused apprehensions, my eyes must have glared. Preciosa was
frightened, and rising from her seat, stood with an inquiring glance
of surprise in her eyes.

"But I was bent with frenzy upon my purpose. I was merely aware that
she was in the room. I saw nothing else. I heard nothing. I cared for
nothing, but to see her through that magic glass, and feel at once all
the fulness of blissful perfection which that would reveal. Preciosa
stood before the mirror, but alarmed at my wild and eager movements,
unable to distinguish what I had in my hands, and seeing me raise them
suddenly to my face, she shrieked with terror, and fell fainting upon
the floor, at the very moment that I placed the glasses before my
eyes, and beheld--_myself_, reflected in the mirror, before which
she had been standing.

"Dear madam," cried Titbottom, to my wife, springing up and falling
back again in his chair, pale and trembling, while Prue ran to him and
took his hand, and I poured out a glass of water--"I saw myself."

There was silence for many minutes. Prue laid her hand gently upon the
head of our guest, whose eyes were closed, and who breathed softly
like an infant in sleeping. Perhaps, in all the long years of anguish
since that hour, no tender hand had touched his brow, nor wiped away