flows and drowns us. Thus the flowers sometimes hang their
heads, oppressed by the too ardent rays of the sun, which is yet their
love and life. Oh, my friend! this sadness may be great, but it also
sweet!"

As she uttered these words, the voice of Adrienne grew fainter and
fainter, and her head bowed lower, as if she were indeed sinking beneath
the weight of her happiness. Djalma had remained kneeling before her,
his hands in hers--so that as she thus bent forward, her ivory forehead
and golden hair touched the amber-colored brow and ebon curls of Djalma.
And the sweet, silent tears of the two young lovers flowed together, and
mingled as they fell on their clasped hands.

Whilst this scene was passing in Cardoville House, Agricola had gone to
the Rue de Vaugirard, to deliver a letter from Adrienne to M. Hardy.

CHAPTER XLII. "THE IMITATION."

As we have already said, M. Hardy occupied a pavilion in the "Retreat"
annexed to the house in the Rue de Vaugirard, inhabited by a goodly
number of the reverend fathers of the Company of Jesus. Nothing could be
calmer and more silent than this dwelling. Every one spoke in whispers,
and the servants themselves had something oily in their words, something
sanctified in their very walk.

Like all that is subject to the chilling and destructive influences of
these men, this mournfully quiet house was entirely wanting in life
and animation. The boarders passed an existence of wearisome and icy
monotony, only broken by the use of certain devotional exercises;
and thus, in accordance with the selfish calculation of the reverend
fathers, the mind, deprived of all nourishment and all external support,
soon began to droop and pine away in solitude. The heart seemed to beat
more slowly, the soul was benumbed, the character weakened; at last,
all freewill, all power of discrimination, was extinguished, and the
boarders, submitting to the same process of self-annihilation as the
novices of the Company, became, like them, mere "corpses" in the hands
of the brotherhood.

The object of these manoeuvres was clear and simple. They secured the
means of obtaining all kinds of donations, the constant aim of the
skillful policy and merciless cupidity of these priests. By the aid of
enormous sums, of which they thus become the possessors or the trustees,
they follow out and obtain the success of their projects, even though
murder, incendiarism, revolt, and all the horrors of civil war, exci