"Ah!" said the lad, coloring with confusion.
"That is my cousin. I had no idea any person could be so beautiful.—Oh! thank God for giving me the faculty which enables me to see anything so lovely. Cousin Florentina, you are like the most lovely music—like the most perfect embodiment of some delicious harmony.—And Nela, where is she?"
"You will have time enough to see her," said Don Francisco delighted. "Try now to be calm."
"Florentina, Florentina!" repeated Pablo excitedly. "What is it in your face that makes me feel as if the spirit of God himself was shining through it? You stand in the midst of a glory which must, to be sure, be the sun. Beams, rays seem to shine from your face.—Ah! at last I know what the angels are like—and your dress, your hands, your hair, seem to fill me with some new and strange sensation. What is it?"
"He is beginning to see color," muttered Golfin to himself. "He perhaps perceives every object surrounded by the colors of the spectrum. But he cannot estimate degrees of distance."
"I seem to have you inside my eyes," Pablo went on. "You seem to have become part of my thoughts, and the sight of you comes upon me like a memory; but a memory of what? I never saw any thing or any body before. Can I have lived before I came into this world? I know not—but I knew your eyes. And you, father—where are you? I have seen you—yes I have pictured you too—you are just what I have loved. And now my uncle? You are very much alike.—And where, where is that dear good Golfin?—bless him!"
"Here, minding my patient," said the surgeon coming forward. "Here I am as ugly as sin.—As you have never seen a lion or a Newfoundland dog, you can have no idea of my style of beauty. They say I am exactly like those two noble beasts."
"All good kind souls!..." said Pablo.
"But my cousin is the prettiest—oh! infinitely the prettiest. But Nela, for pity's sake, where is Nela?"
They told him that his lazarillo never came to the house, and that they had been too busy to go to look for her, and he was extremely distressed at this intelligence. They succeeded in soothing him, and as they feared he might become feverish, they persuaded him to go to bed and try to sleep.