ercast,
and finally an awful thunder-storm swept over the Chateau des Anges. Her
heart sank within her at the inauspicious augury; but as the same
tempest, an hour later, rolled over other regions, it left one trifling
token of its passage, which, by a mysterious stroke of fate, was nearly
connected with her destiny.

Poor Gabriel, his head full of chimeras, his heart of true love, was
slowly walking through the woodlands of the Parcq de Charrebourg,
towards that haunted spot, the cottage in which the beautiful demoiselle
had passed her happiest days, when the storm began to mutter over the
rising grounds, and before he had made much way, the thunder burst above
his head with fury, and in a little time the rain descended with such
tropical violence as to arrest his further progress, under the dense
canopy of a chestnut-tree.

Here he waited until the thunder-clouds had quite passed away; and then,
amid red glances of western sunshine, he resumed that pilgrimage, to him
so full of melancholy, of ambition, and of tenderness.

"And now, dear, _dear_ Mademoiselle de Charrebourg, I come into your
presence, to learn how it fares with you."

He took off his hat, as if expecting to see her looking, as of old, from
the window of her little room. From the plants that hung from the walls,
and from the struggling bushes, the big rain-drops were trickling, in
the merry sunlight, like tears of joy. His heart was full as he turned
the corner of the cottage, and entered the little bowling-green. But,
alas! what a sight awaited him! The rose-tree, the emblem of his adored
mistress, was shivered: the casement, and the wall, and roof, were
shattered, and reduced to a mass of rubbish, by a stroke of lightning.

Gabriel had never felt real desolation before. He rushed to the wide
chasm which now admitted the winds and rains of heaven to the shrine
which his adoration and reverence had consecrated with a tenderness so
absorbing. Oh! what ruin--what profanation--what an irreparable havoc of
all his treasure! And the tree, too--gone, blasted. Tears of passionate
despair rained from his eyes: he wrung his hands, he stamped, raved, and
"cursed his day."

In a little while, however, his thoughts took a different turn. From the
material wreck they passed on to the dire significance which such
portent might indicate.

"Yes, I came to see how she fares, and behold what I find--torn by
storms--ruined--dead." He stooped, and took up a fragment