Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II A HAPPY ACCIDENT The nobleman in whose service my father passed his life, had an only son who was about two months my senior. Unfortunately, he was born with a spinal malady which threatened to deform him, and made him suffer cruelly at times. All that medical and surgical skill could do to relieve his sufferings had been done; but he was unable to walk, and had to be wheeled about in an invalid's chair. But, as if nature had wished to recompense him for her injuries, he was gifted with a mind marvelously quick in receiving impressions, and tenacious in holding them; and, though his poor little body was twisted, his face was one of remarkable beauty, with its large, dark eyes, broad, full forehead, and sensitive mouth. I shall never forget the first time that I saw this beautiful head quite near me. It was a fine afternoon in May. I have shared with my older sister a certain vivacity of imagination more easily exercised in solitude than in company, to which I probably owe a strong inclination for rambling about in woods and solitary places. I had been sauntering this day along the edge of a stream which had cut its way at the foot of a steep, wooded hill. Having followed its course some distance, I climbed the hill at its steepest point, where the wood was thickest. There, in a small, open space, looking down on the ravine, I threw myself on my back among the grass and wild flowers, with my hands interlaced beneath my head, and my eyes fixed on the bit of blue sky above me. I was in the midst of one of those delightful reveries which only lovers and fanciful children know, when I suddenlyheard the murmur of voices and the sound of approaching steps. I rose with a bound, and ran to hide myself in a thick clump of bushes near by, in order to wait the departure of my...