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Rh watched the shadows, less fantastic than the creations in which we have indulged; besides the table, we have read, worked and written. Over each and all is flung the strong link of habit—it is not to be broken without a pang.

"What numbers are passing by!" exclaimed Guido, who had been leaning in the window. "Good Heavens! to think that of all this multitude, not one will regret or even remember us! How hard it is to draw the ties of humanity together!—how strange the indifference with which we regard beings whose hopes, feelings, joys, and sorrows, are the same as our own! Perhaps there may be individuals who have never inspired or experienced affection;—should we pity or envy them?"

"Pity them—only that such a lot is impossible. Even the very robbers, of whose ferocity we were wont to hear such tales in our own land, have usually possessed some redeeming trait which arose out of a yearning towards their kind. Do you recollect a story my nurse told us of a Sicilian bandit, the terror of the country?—how he saved a young child from a cottage on fire, brought it up delicately, and far removed from his own pursuits; while, at his execution, his chief regret was the future provision for that boy?"