‘It is a long way to Toulon,’ said I.
‘Yes,’ answered Alphonse, ‘it is a voyage.’
Captain Regnier addressed his nephew. ‘Superb! Admirable!’ cried the young Frenchman. ‘Ah, my uncle is a clever man! What do you think he proposes? That you shall look at the coast of England and read the names upon it, and if you are an English lady who, as my uncle says, has been blown away in a pleasure-boat from a port in England, why——’ and with great excitement he pulled the end of the chart out of his uncle’s hand, rolled it up until only that portion which contained the English Channel was left open, and then placed the chart thus rolled up upon my knees.
I looked, and the two Frenchmen stood viewing me. I trembled with eagerness and fear, for I thought to myself, ‘Here may be the spark that will flash up the whole of the blackened galleries of my memory—and yet it may not be here!’ and shiver after shiver ran through me as I looked.
‘Read aloud, madame; read aloud,’ exclaimed Alphonse.
I read aloud; name after name I pronounced, taking the towns one after the other, from the Thames to the Land’s End, and then with trembling finger and whispering lips I traced the coast on the western side, even to the height of Scotland; and then I continued to read down on the eastern coast until I came to the River Thames.
‘Ah, my God! my God!’ I cried, and I hid my eyes and sobbed. The chart rolled from my knees on to the deck.
‘Patience,’ exclaimed Captain Regnier. ‘The memory will return. Give her some wine, Alphonse.’
I drank, but though I recovered my composure there had happened such a deadly struggle within me, so fierce and rending a conflict—betwixt, what shall I say? the spirit, shall I call it, grappling with eyeless memory?—that I lay back in my chair, prostrated, incapable of speech. And how am I to convey to you, who are following my story, the effect produced by the words I read—by the names of the towns I read aloud—upon my mind? This was the difficulty I foresaw when I undertook to relate my experiences. But let me do my best. The effect was this: the names I uttered—that is to say, the names of those towns which I had heard of; for some little places which I had never heard of were marked upon the chart—the names, then, of places which I had heard of and known sounded as familiarly to my ear as my own name would have sounded before my memory went. But that was all. I could associate no ideas with them. They presented no images. They were perfectly familiar sounds and no more. Though the chart was of French, or at all events of foreign manufacture, all names in Great Britain were printed as they are spelt by us. Therefore I could not console myself with reflecting that the words I had read were spelt in the French way, and without suggestion to one whose memory was gone. No, every word was in English. Often have I since wondered whether Piertown was included in that chart. Probably it was not. So insignificant a place would not be deemed worth marking down.
‘The lady is undoubtedly English,’ said Captain Regnier to his nephew. ‘Only a native of her country could pronounce its tongue as she does.’