this moment,
Gabriel was leaning over the bed with a look of inexpressible grief.
With breaking heart, and face bathed in tears, he thought of the strange
destiny, which thus made him a witness of the death of these girls, his
relations, whom but a few months before he had rescued from the horrors
of the tempest. In spite of his firmness of soul, the missionary could
not help shuddering as he reflected on the fate of the orphans, the
death of Jacques Rennepont, and the fearful devices by which M. Hardy,
retired to the cloistered solitude of St. Herein, had become a member
of the Society of Jesus almost in dying. The missionary said to himself,
that already four members of the Rennepont family--his family--had been
successively struck down by some dreadful fate; and he asked himself
with alarm, how it was that the detestable interests of the Society of
Loyola should be served by a providential fatality? The astonishment of
the young missionary would have given place to the deepest horror, could
he have known the part that Rodin and his accomplices had taken, both
in the death of Jacques Rennepont, by exciting, through Morok, the evil
propensities of the artisan, and in the approaching end of Rose and
Blanche, by converting, through the Princess de Saint-Dizier, the
generous inspirations of the orphans into suicidal heroism.

Roused for a moment from the painful stupor in which they had been
plunged, Rose and Blanche half-opened their large eyes, already dull
and faded. Then, more and more bewildered they both gazed fixedly at the
angelic countenance of Gabriel.

"Sister," said Rose, in a faint voice, "do you see the archangel--as in
our dreams, in Germany?"

"Yes--three days ago--he appeared to us."

"He is come to fetch us."

"Alas! will our death save our poor mother from purgatory?"

"Angel! blessed angel! pray God for our mother--and for us!" Until
now, stupefied with amazement and sorrow, almost suffocated with sobs,
Gabriel had not been able to utter a word. But at these words of the
orphans, he exclaimed: "Dear children, why doubt of your mother's
salvation? Oh! never did a purer soul ascend to its Creator. Your
mother? I know from my adopted father, that her virtues and courage
were the admiration of all who knew her. Oh! believe me; God has blessed
her."

"Do you hear, sister?" cried Rose, as a ray of celestial joy illumined
for an instant the livid faces of the orphans. "God has blessed our
mother."