“Oh, Adèle!” continues Seguin, more earnest than ever, “look at me! look! Do you not remember? Look in my face! Oh, Heaven! Here, see! Here is your mother, Adèle! See! this is her picture: your angel mother. Look at it! Look, oh, Adèle!”
Seguin, while he is speaking, draws a miniature from his bosom, and holds it before the eyes of the girl. It arrests her attention. She looks upon it, but without any signs of recognition. It is to her only a curious object.
She seems struck with his manner, frantic but intreating. She seems to regard him with wonder. Still she repels him. It is evident she knows him not. She has lost every recollection of him and his. She has forgotten the language of her childhood; she has forgotten her father, her mother: she has forgotten all!
I could not restrain my tears as I looked upon the face of my friend, for I had grown to consider him such. Like one who has received a mortal wound, yet still lives, he stood in the centre of the group, silent and crushed. His head had fallen upon his breast, his cheek was blanched and bloodless; and his eye wandered with an expression of imbecility painful to behold. I could imagine the terrible conflict that was raging within.
He made no further efforts to intreat the girl. He no longer offered to approach her; but stood for some moments in the same attitude without speaking a word.
“Bring her away!” he muttered, at length, in a voice husky and broken; “bring her away! Perhaps, in God’s mercy, she may yet remember.”