“ La voilà! ” suddenly cried one of the gentlemen, “ voilà Justine Marie qui arrive! ” 241

This moment was for me peculiar. I called up to memory the pictured nun on the panel; present to my mind was the sad love-story; I saw in thought the vision of the garret, the apparition of the alley, the strange birth of the berceau; I underwent a presentiment of discovery, a strong conviction of coming disclosure. Ah! when imagination once runs riot where do we stop? What winter tree so bare and branchless⁠—what wayside, hedge-munching animal so humble, that Fancy, a passing cloud, and a struggling moonbeam, will not clothe it in spirituality, and make of it a phantom?

With solemn force pressed on my heart, the expectation of mystery breaking up: hitherto I had seen this spectre only through a glass darkly; now was I to behold it face to face. I leaned forward; I looked.

Emanuel’s (whom he knew well, and whom I had often seen sitting on Miret’s counter, turning over the current month’s publications); and it was in this affinity I read the explanation of that conciliatory feeling with which I instinctively regarded him.