"Farewell, Raphael!"
CIV.
All the letters fell from my hands. I was sobbing without tears, when I
perceived another little note in the handwriting of the old man, her
husband; it had slid between the pages as I was unsealing the first
envelope.
There were only these words: "She breathed her last, her hand in mine,
a few hours after writing you her last farewell. I have lost my
daughter.... Be my son for the few days I have yet to live. She is
there upon her bed, as if asleep, with an expression on her features of
one whose last thought smiled at seeing something beyond our world. She
never was so lovely; and as I look on her I require to believe in
immortality.... I loved you through her; for her sake love me!"
CV.
How strange, and yet how fortunate for human nature, is the
impossibility of immediately believing in the complete disappearance of
a much-loved being! Though the evidence of her death lay scattered
around, I could not believe that I was forever separated from her. Her
remembrance, her image, her features, the sound of her voice, the
peculiar turn of her expressions, the charm of her countenance, were so
present, and, as it were, so incorporate in me, that she seemed more
than ever with me; she appeared to envelop me, to converse with me, to
call me by my name, as though I could have risen to meet her, and to
see her once more.
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