Chapter 247

234 MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE the sons of earth and life — ah, more fair for the daughters of heaven and death !” I kissed her forehead, and she continued: “ I am dying, yet shall I live.,, “Morelia !” “The days have never been when thou couldst love me — but her whom in life thou didst abhor, in death thou shalt adore.” “Morelia !” “I repeat that I am dying. But within me is a pledge of that affection — ah, how little ! — which thou didst feel for me, Morelia. And when my spirit departs shall the child live — thy child and mine, Morelia’s. But thy days shall be days of sorrow — that sorrow which is the most lasting of impressions, as the cypress is the most enduring of trees. For the hours of thy happiness are over; and joy is not gathered twice in a life, as the roses of Psestum twice in a year. Thou shalt no longer, then, play the Teian with time, but, being ignorant of the myrtle and the vine, thou shalt bear about with thee thy shroud on earth, as do the Moslemin at Mecca.” “Morelia!” I cried, “Morelia! how knowest thou this?” but she turned away her face upon the pillow and a slight tremor coming over her limbs, she thus died, and I heard her voice no more. Yet, as she had foretold, her child, to which in dying she had given birth, and which breathed not until the mother breathed no more, her child, a daughter, lived. And she grew strangely in stature and intellect, and was the perfect resemblance of her who had departed, and I loved her with a love more fervent than I had believed it possible to feel for any denizen of earth. But, ere long the heaven of this pure affection became darkened, and gloom, and horror, and grief, swept over it in clouds. I said the child grew strangely in stature and intelligence. Strange, indeed, was her rapid