Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
ages ago. What is your name, my gentle angel?”
Hailing his softened tone and manner, his daughter fell upon
her knees before him, with her appealing hands upon his breast.
“O, sir, at another time you shall know my name, and who my
mother was, and who my father, and how I never knew their hard,
hard history. But I cannot tell you at this time, and I cannot tell
you here. All that I may tell you, here and now, is, that I pray to
you to touch me and to bless me. Kiss me, kiss me! O my dear, my
dear!”
His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which
warmed and lighted it as though it were the light of Freedom
shining on him.
“If you hear in my voiceI don’t know that it is so, but I hope it
isif you hear in my voice any resemblance to a voice that once
was sweet music in your ears, weep for it, weep for it! If you touch,
in touching my hair, anything that recalls a beloved head that lay
on your breast when you were young and free, weep for it, weep
for it! If, when I hint to you of a Home that is before us, where I
will be true to you with all my duty and with all my faithful service,
I bring back the remembrance of a Home long desolate, while your
poor heart pined away, weep for it, weep for it!”
She held him closer round the neck, and rocked him on her
breast like a child.
“If, when I tell you, dearest dear, that your agony is over, and
that I have come here to take you from it, and that we go to
England to be at peace and at rest, I cause you to think of your
useful life laid waste, and of our native France so wicked to you,
weep for