Rouen. Mr. Guindé, the celebrated historian
(whose acquaintance I had made in Paris),
had employed me to decypher ancient English
and French manuscripts, in the library of
Nôtre Dame, for his use in writing his well-
known History of the Parliament of
Normandy; a labour that occupied me many
months. And thus my days were spent in
straining my eyes over yellow parchments,
and my evenings in watching the shadow on
the blind.

I had felt lonely—very lonely: perhaps
this contributed to my interest in the shadow.
It was winter time, and my labours in the
library ceasing at dusk, my evenings were
proportionately long. One afternoon, a fog,
of the old familiar colour of the parchments I
had been poring over, came creeping up from
the river, till I could not distinguish the
opposite walls. That night, I betook myself
gloomily to read beside a miserable fire. The
next night was foggy again. No Platonism
could be more abstract and self-sufficing than
my passion; but if I were to be denied the
very lightest food that ever love was nourished
on, I felt that it must be starved into action.
Therefore, the next afternoon, meeting the fog
creeping up the street again a little after sunset,
I went directly over to the porter's lodge
of the house opposite; and, having remarked
to the porter (whom I knew slightly) that it
was very foggy, asked him who lived on the
second floor on that side of the house.

The porter glanced at the hooks for hanging
the lodgers' keys within the lodge, and
answered, "M. La Roche."

"What is his business?"

"I never knew. I am not curious."

Now, it is a general maxim, that when the
porter of a large house in France does not
know the business of any one of the lodgers,
that lodger must be engaged in concerns of
a secret and extraordinary nature. This fact,
therefore, I noted.

"Has he a wife ?" I asked nervously.

"No; only a sister."

"Indeed! I never saw either him or his
sister."

"Very likely; he seldom goes out except
at night; and the young lady scarcely ever,
unless she walks in the garden behind the
house."

"And his name, you say, is——"

"Hush!" said the porter, suddenly turning
towards the door. I turned also, and saw
there a tall man, with a stoop in the shoulders,
long dark hair, and a face with such hideous
features and such a repulsive expression,
that I could scarcely refrain from uttering
some exclamation.

"Any letters for me, M. Grégoire?" asked
the stranger.

"None, sir," replied the porter; and, to
my great relief, the hideous countenance
disappeared.

"That was M. La Roche," said the porter,
when he was gone.

"Indeed! is his sister then——" I was
about to add "like him," but could not make
up my mind to put a question so important:
so I merely said, "older or younger than
he?"

"Younger. But if you should——"

"What ?"

"If you should wish——"

Without in the slightest degree divining
the drift of his question, I interrupted him by
saying, "Oh no! not at all; I'm much obliged
to you," and hastened out.

Shall I call it a proof of my infatuation; or
shall I regard it (as I did then) as an indication
of the high and etherial nature of my
sentiment, that I shrunk, thus instinctively,
from a personal knowledge of the owner of
my shadow? I am inclined to take credit for
it. The event of all this (as you are aware, if
you are a philosopher) enters not into this
question. I have a right, in defending my
conduct at that time, to take my stand where
I stood at that time. I might (some would
say) at once have questioned the porter, and
thus, perhaps, have saved myself the folly of
wasting my time night after night. But I
was not wasting my time. The emotional
part of my nature, and the divinest faculty of
imagination, must be nourished, if I am to
become in all parts well proportioned; and
for these, illusions are an excellent food. If
the contemplation of a mere shadow will serve
to lift me, and keep me for many days above
the smoke and air of this dim spot, then,
although I may suddenly drop down to
earth again, I shall carry with me the
benefit of that pure atmosphere that I have
breathed; the quality of the spirit will be
improved, which I take to be the aim of all
education.

After this defence, I trust that no one will
think contemptuously of me when I relate
that, on the following afternoon, my old
enemy, the fog, having missed his way, and
wandered (as I heard afterwards) about the
marshes behind the Faubourg d'Eauplet, I
planted myself again at the window, and
watched as before. But this time the bird-
cage was there with the bird (still standing
upon one leg, and with his head sunk into his
neck, motionless on his perch), but my shadow
was not. Afterwards, horrible substitute!
the gigantic brother must have walked across
the room towards the window; for I saw the
shape of his hideous head appear at the top
of the blind, and slowly sink (like the ghost of
Banquo), till the whole dreadful spectre
vanished. When, after an hour's watching, I
saw at last my shadow approaching; saw it
set a box (I think) on the table; saw it place
a chair or something like it, beside; saw it
stand a moment before sitting down, and,
with arms upturned, arrange its back hair,
and fix it again with a comb—did I have no
misgivings? No thoughts of the possibility ot
a family likeness? I did; but I deliberately
refused to entertain them, and inhospitably