How often John and I looked at each other, and how glad were our
hearts! My uncle was fast coming to himself! It was like watching the
dead grow alive.
One day he proposed taking a carriage and a good pair of horses, and
driving to Versailles to see the palace. We agreed, and all went well. I
had not, in my wildest dreams, imagined a place so grand and beautiful.
We wandered about it for hours, and were just tired enough to begin
thinking with pleasure of the start homeward, when we found ourselves in
a very long, straight corridor. I was walking alone, a little ahead of
the rest; my uncle was coming along next, but a good way behind me; a few
paces behind my uncle, came John with Martha, to whom he was more
scrupulously attentive than to myself.
In front of me was a door, dividing the corridor in two, apparently
filled with plain plate-glass, to break the draught without obscuring the
effect of the great length of the corridor, which stretched away as far
on the other side as we had come on this. I paused and stood aside,
leaning against the wall to wait for my uncle, and gazing listlessly out
of a window opposite me. But as my uncle came nearer to open the door for
us, I happened to cast my eyes again upon it, and saw, as it seemed, my
uncle coming in the opposite direction; whence I concluded of course,
that I had made a mistake, and that what I had taken for a clear plate of
glass, was a mirror, reflecting the corridor behind me.
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