face of a young man.  The naive glances of the youthful pair expressed their mutual astonishment.  Marguerite and Emmanuel had no doubt seen each other in their dreams.  Both lowered their eyes and raised them again with one impulse; each, by the action, made the same avowal.  Marguerite took her mother’s arm, and spoke to her to cover her confusion and find shelter under the maternal wing, turning her neck with a swan-like motion to keep sight of Emmanuel, who still supported his uncle on his arm.  The light was cleverly arranged to give due value to the pictures, and the half-obscurity of the gallery encouraged those furtive glances which are the joy of timid natures.  Neither went so far, even in thought, as the first note of love; yet both felt the mysterious trouble which stirs the heart, and is jealously kept secret in our youth from fastidiousness or modesty.

The first impression which forces a sensibility hitherto suppressed to overflow its borders, is followed in all young people by the same half-stupefied amazement which the first sounds of music produce upon a child.  Some children laugh and think; others do not laugh till they have thought; but those whose hearts are called to live by poetry or love, listen stilly and hear the melody with a look where pleasure flames already, and the search for the infinite begins.  If, from an irresistible feeling, we love the places where our childhood first perceived the beauties of harmony, if we remember with delight the musician, and even the instrument, that taught them to us, how much more shall we love the being who reveals to us the music of life?  The first heart in which we draw the breath of love,—­is it not our home, our native land?  Marguerite and Emmanuel were, each to each, that Voice of music which wakes a sense, that hand which lifts the misty veil, and reveals the distant shores bathed in the fires of noonday.

When Madame Claes paused before a picture by Guido representing an angel, Marguerite bent forward to see the impression it made upon Emmanuel, and Emmanuel looked at Marguerite to compare the mute thought on the canvas with the living thought beside him.  This involuntary and delightful homage was understood and treasured.  The old abbe gravely praised the picture, and Madame Claes answered him, but the youth and the maiden were silent.

Such was their first meeting:  the mysterious light of the picture gallery, the stillness of the old house, the presence of their elders, all contributed to trace upon their hearts the delicate lines of this vaporous mirage.  The many confused thoughts that surged in Marguerite’s mind grew calm and lay like a limpid ocean traversed by a luminous ray when Emmanuel murmured a few farewell words to Madame Claes.  That voice, whose fresh and mellow tone sent nameless delights into her heart, completed the revelation that had come to her,—­a revelation which Emmanuel, were he able, should cherish to his own profit; for it often happens that the man whom destiny