“Very true; what difference would it make?” answered M. Goefle. “Perhaps you may not be worth the pains I have been taking this hour past to put you in the way of discovering your family. It is from a professional habit of mind: let us say no more about it; particularly as in all that you have told me there is not a single definite fact to serve as the basis for framing ingenious and learned deductions. Wait, however;—what was done with the money of the man in the mask?”
“My good parents, imagining that it may have been the hire of a kidnapper, or the reward of some other crime, and believing, therefore, that it could not bring me good fortune, hastened to deposit it in the box for the poor in the cathedral of Perugia.”
“But you mentioned that you yourself spoke some language when you were brought there.”
“Certainly; but I quickly forgot it, as there was no one for me to talk to in it. I only know that a German philologist, who was visiting us next year, tried to unravel the mystery, at which time I had a good deal of trouble to remember a few words of this old language of mine. The linguist said it was a northern dialect, and somewhat like Icelandic; but my black hair seemed in a measure to invalidate that conclusion. The attempt to discover the facts was given up. My adoptive mother wished to make me forget all about any other country or family. You may easily suppose she had little difficulty in accomplishing her object.”
“One question more,” said M. Goefle. “I cannot feel thoroughly interested in a story until I am well possessed of the beginning of it. These recollections, that faded of themselves so naturally, and which your friends tried, moreover, to help you lose—does there remain absolutely nothing of them?”
“There is something, but so vague that I cannot tell whether it is not merely a dream. It is a recollection of a strange, wild country, even grander in its features than this around me.”
“A cold country?”
“That I do not know. Children seldom feel the cold, and I was never very sensitive to it.”
“What else was there in your dream? Sunshine? snow?”
“I don’t know. Tall trees, herds of cows, I think.”