ll seated near the fisherman's fire, they looked round
in vain for their guide with the light about him. The sea washed up the
steersman at the base of the cliff on which the cottage stood; he was
clinging with might and main to the plank as a sailor can cling when
death stares him in the face; the MAN went down and rescued the almost
exhausted seaman; then he said, as he held out a succoring hand above
the man's head:

"Good, for this once; but do not try it again; the example would be too
bad."

He took the skipper on his shoulders, and carried him to the fisherman's
door; knocked for admittance for the exhausted man; then, when the door
of the humble refuge opened, the Saviour disappeared.

The Convent of Mercy was built for sailors on this spot, where for long
afterwards (so it was said) the footprints of Jesus Christ could be seen
in the sand; but in 1793, at the time of the French invasion, the monks
carried away this precious relic, that bore witness to the Saviour's
last visit to earth.

There at the convent I found myself shortly after the Revolution of
1830. I was weary of life. If you had asked me the reason of my despair,
I should have found it almost impossible to give it, so languid had
grown the soul that was melted within me. The west wind had slackened
the springs of my intelligence. A cold gray light poured down from the
heavens, and the murky clouds that passed overhead gave a boding look to
the land; all these things, together with the immensity of the sea, said
to me, "Die to-day or die to-morrow, still must we not die?" And then--I
wandered on, musing on the doubtful future, on my blighted hopes. Gnawed
by these gloomy thoughts, I turned mechanically into the convent church,
with the gray towers that loomed like ghosts though the sea mists.
I looked round with no kindling of the imagination at the forest of
columns, at the slender arches set aloft upon the leafy capitals, a
delicate labyrinth of sculpture. I walked with careless eyes along the
side aisles that opened out before me like vast portals, ever turning
upon their hinges. It was scarcely possible to see, by the dim light of
the autumn day, the sculptured groinings of the roof, the delicate and
clean-cut lines of the mouldings of the graceful pointed arches. The
organ pipes were mute. There was no sound save the noise of my own
footsteps to awaken the mournful echoes lurking in the dark chapels.
I sat down at the base of one of the