“Mary,” I exclaimed. “My own little Mary!” and I pressed her violently against my breast, which was heaving with sobs. She uttered a little cry, and then said, “Oh, you hurt me, Sir.”
“Sir!” It is nearly a year since she has seen me, poor child! She has forgotten me, face, words, voice; and then who could know me with this beard, this dress, and this pallor?
What! already effaced from that memory,—the only one where I wished to survive! What! already, no longer a Father, am I condemned to hear no more that word, so soft in the language of children that it cannot remain in the language of men, “Papa”?
And yet to have heard it from that sweet mouth, once more,—only once more,—that is all that I would have asked in payment for the forty years of life they will take from me.
“Listen, Mary,” said I to her, joining her two little hands in mine. “Do you not know me?”
She looked at me with her bright beautiful eyes and answered,—
“Oh, no indeed.”
“Look at me well,” I repeated. “What! dost thou not know who I am?”
“Yes, Sir,” she answered. “You are a gentleman.”
Alas! while loving one being on earth, loving with all your deep affection, having that being before you, who sees and looks at you, speaks and answers you, and yet knows you not! You wish for consolation but from this one being, who is the only one that does not know that you require it because you are going to die!