Villette

letter? Was this gentleman near me in this dim garret, John Graham – Dr. Bretton himself?
    Yes: it was. He had been called in that very evening to prescribe for some access of illness in old Madame Kint; he was the second gentleman present in the salle à manger when I entered.
    »Was it
my
letter, Lucy?«
    »Your own: yours – the letter you wrote to me I had come here to read it quietly. I could not find another spot where it was possible to have it to myself. I had saved it all day – never opened it till this evening: it was scarcely glanced over: I
cannot bear
to lose it. Oh, my letter!«
    »Hush! don't cry and distress yourself so cruelly. What is it worth? Hush! Come out of this cold room; they are going to send for the police now to examine further: we need not stay here – come, we will go down.«
    A warm hand, taking my cold fingers, led me down to a room where there was a fire. Dr. John and I sat before the stove. He talked to me and soothed me with unutterable goodness, promising me twenty letters for the one lost. If there are words and wrongs like knives, whose deep-inflicted lacerations never heal – cutting injuries and insults of serrated and poison-dripping edge – so, too, there are consolations of tone too fine for the ear not fondly and for ever to retain their echo: caressing kindnesses – loved, lingered over through a whole life, recalled with unfaded tenderness, and answering the call with undimmed shine, out of that raven cloud foreshadowing Death himself. I have been told since, that Dr. Bretton was not so nearly perfect as I thought him: that his actual character lacked the depth, height, compass, and endurance it possessed in my creed. I don't know: he was as good to me as the well is to the parched wayfarer – as the sun to the shivering jail-bird. I remember him heroic. Heroic at this moment will I hold him to be.
    He asked me, smiling, why I cared for his letter so very much. I thought, but did not say, that I prized it like the blood in my veins. I only answered that I had so few letters to care for.
    »I am sure you did not read it,« said he; »or you would think nothing of it!«
    »I read it, but only once. I want to read it again. I am sorry it is lost.« And I could not help weeping afresh.
    »Lucy, Lucy, my poor little god-sister (if there be such a relationship), here –
here
is your letter. Why is it not better worth such tears, and such tenderly exaggerating faith!«
    Curious, characteristic manœuvre! His quick eye had seen the letter on the floor where I sought it; his hand, as quick, had snatched it up. He had hidden it in his waistcoat pocket. If my trouble had wrought with a whit less stress and reality, I doubt whether he would ever have acknowledged or restored it. Tears of temperature one degree cooler than those I shed would only have amused Dr. John.
    Pleasure at regaining made me forget merited reproach for the teasing torment; my joy was great; it could not be concealed: yet I think it broke out more in countenance than language. I said little.
    »Are you satisfied now?« asked Dr. John.
    I replied that I was – satisfied and happy.
    »Well then,« he proceeded, »how do you feel physically? Are you growing calmer? Not much; for you tremble like a leaf still.«
    It seemed to me, however, that I was sufficiently calm: at least I felt no longer terrified. I expressed myself composed.
    »You are able, consequently, to tell me what you saw? Your account was quite vague, do you know? You looked white as the wall; but you only spoke of ›something,‹ not defining
what.
Was it a man? Was it an animal?
What
was it?«
    »I never will tell exactly what I saw,« said I, »unless some one else sees it too, and then I will give corroborative testimony; but otherwise, I shall be discredited and accused of dreaming.«
    »Tell me,« said Dr. Bretton; »I will hear it in my professional character: I look on you now from a professional point of view, and I read, perhaps, all you would conceal – in your eye, which is curiously vivid and restless; in your cheek, which the blood has forsaken; in your hand, which you cannot steady. Come, Lucy, speak and tell me.«
    »You would laugh –?«
    »If you don't tell me you shall have no more letters.«
    »You are laughing now.«
    »I will again take away that single epistle: being mine, I think I have a right to reclaim it.«
    I felt raillery in his words: it made me grave and quiet; but I folded up the letter and covered it