lf from the frail frame of its beloved body, which now lay in
my arms.

Our faithful servant--whose name has escaped my memory--being directed,
by the last wish of my father, to take me to my uncle, on my mother's
side, Etienne, held me by the hand when we were pacing through the dark
and narrow streets of the city of Nismes. I trembled. An involuntary
shudder seized upon my mind. "You are trembling, Colas," said the
servant; "you look pale and anxious; are you not well?"

"Alas!" exclaimed I, "do not bring me to this dark, stony labyrinth. I
am as terrified as if I were going to die here. Let me be a common
labourer in my verdant native village. Look only at these walls, they
stand here like those of a dungeon; and those men look as confused and
troubled as though they were criminals."

"Your uncle, the miller," replied he, "does not live in this city; his
house stands outside the Carmelite-gate in the open green fields."

Men are apt to believe that the soul possesses a secret faculty for
anticipating its future fate. When I became a fellow-sufferer in that
horrible misfortune, the history of which has filled with shuddering
every sensible heart of the civilised world, I remembered the first
apprehensive anxiety which I felt in the streets of the gloomy Nismes,
on entering the city, and which I then took for an omen. Even the most
enlightened man cannot entirely divest himself of a superstitious fear
when his despairing hope gropes about in vain for help in darkness.

The impression that Nismes had made upon me remained permanent within
me. This was natural. Accustomed to live in and with nature, solitary
and simple, the stirring crowd of the busy town had a terrifying effect
upon me. My mother had rocked me under the branches of the olive
trees, and my childhood I had dreamed away in the green, cheerful shade
of chesnut groves. How could I bear living within the narrow, damp,
walls, where only the thirst for money brings men together? In
solitude the passions die away, and the heart assumes the tranquillity
of rural nature. The first sight, therefore, of so many faces, in
which anger and care, pride and avarice, debauchery and envy, had left
behind their traces, and which were no more perceived by him who saw
them daily, made me tremble.

Outside the Carmelite-gate was the house of my uncle, and by the side
of it his mill. The servant pointed with his hand to the fine
building, and said, "M. Etie