Then he bowed his head on my neck, and I felt hot tears gushing from his eyes, and sobs, like the deep, passionate sobs of childhood, convulsing his breast.
Yes, he was my father. I knew it,—I felt it, as if the voice of God had spoken from the clouds of heaven to proclaim it. He was my father, the beloved of my angelic mother, and he had never wronged her, never. He had not been the deceiver, but the deceived. Without a word of explanation I believed this, for it was written as if in sunbeams on his noble brow. The dreams of my childhood were all embodied in him; and overpowered by reverence, love, gratitude, and joy, I slid from his arms, and on bended knees and with clasped hands, looked up in his face and repeated again and again the sacred name of "Father."
It is impossible to describe such bewildering, such intense emotions. Seldom, except in dreams, are they felt, when the spirit seems free from the fetters of earth. Even when I found myself sitting by his side, still encircled in his arms and leaning on his heart, I could scarcely convince myself that the scene was real.
"And Richard, my brother!" I cried, beginning to feel bewildered at the mysteries that were to be unravelled; "joy is not perfect till he shares it with me."
"Will it make you unhappy, my darling Gabriella, to know that Richard is your cousin, instead of your brother?"
I pressed my hands on my forehead, for it ached with the quick, lightning-like thoughts that flashed through my brain.
"And he, the inmate of yon dismal cell?" I exclaimed, anticipating, as if by intuition, the reply,—
"Is my brother, my twin brother, whom in youth our mother could not distinguish from myself. This fatal resemblance has caused all my woe. Therésa la Fontaine was his wife and Richard is his son, not mine."
How simple, how natural, all this seemed! Why had not my mother dreamed of the possibility of such a thing! Knowing the existence of this brother, why had she not at once found in him the solution of the dark problem, which was the enigma as well as anguish of her life?
"My unhappy brother!" said he, while a dark shade rested on his brow; "little did I think, when I visited his dungeon this morning, of the revelation he would make! I have been an exile and a wanderer many years, or I might perhaps have learned sooner what a blessing Heaven has been guarding for my sad and lonely heart. I saw you as you passed out of the prison, and your resemblance to my beloved Rosalie struck me, as an electric shock."