le book--but one--was left, as if by chance,
within reach. This book was Thomas a Kempis' "Imitation." But as it
might happen that M. Hardy would not have the courage or the desire to
read this book, thoughts and reflections borrowed from its merciless
pages, and written in very large characters, were suspended in black
frames close to the bed, or at other parts within sight, so that,
involuntarily, in the sad leisure of his inactive dejection, the
dweller's eyes were almost necessarily attracted by them. To that fatal
circle of despairing thoughts they confined the already weakened mind of
this unfortunate man, so long a prey to the most acute sorrow. What
he read mechanically, every instant of the day and night, whenever the
blessed sleep fled from his eyes inflamed with tears, was not enough
merely to plunge the soul of the victim into incurable despair, but also
to reduce him to the corpse-like obedience required by the Society of
Jesus. In that awful book may be found a thousand terrors to operate
on weak minds, a thousand slavish maxims to chain and degrade the
pusillanimous soul.

And now imagine M. Hardy carried wounded into this house; while his
heart, torn by bitter grief and the sense of horrible treachery, bled
even faster than his external injuries. Attended with the utmost care,
and thanks to the acknowledged skill of Dr. Baleinier, M. Hardy soon
recovered from the hurts he had received when he threw himself into the
embers of his burning factory. Yet, in order to favor the projects
of the reverend fathers, a drug, harmless enough in its effects, but
destined to act for a time upon the mind of the patient, and often
employed for that purpose in similar important cases by the pious
doctor, was administered to Hardy, and had kept him pretty long in
a state of mental torpor. To a soul agonized by cruel deceptions, it
appears an inestimable benefit to be plunged into that kind of torpor,
which at least prevents one from dwelling upon the past.

Hardy resigned himself entirely to this profound apathy, and at length
came to regard it as the supreme good. Thus do unfortunate wretches,
tortured by cruel diseases, accept with gratitude the opiate which kills
them slowly, but which at least deadens the sense of pain.

In sketching the portrait of M. Hardy, we tried to give some idea of
the exquisite delicacy of his tender soul, of his painful susceptibility
with regard to anything base or wicked, and of his extrem