ingo and Mary personated the reapers.
Virginia followed their steps, gleaning here and there a few ears of corn.
She was interrogated by Paul with the gravity of a patriarch, and answered,
with a faltering voice, his questions. Soon touched with compassion, he
granted an asylum to innocence, and hospitality to misfortune. He filled
Virginia's lap with plenty; and, leading her towards us, as before the old
men of the city, declared his purpose to take her in marriage. At this
scene, Madame de la Tour, recalling the desolate situation in which she had
been left by her relations, her widowhood, the kind reception she had met
with from Margaret, succeeded by the soothing hope of a happy union between
their children, could not forbear weeping; and the sensations which such
recollections excited led the whole audience to pour forth those luxurious
tears which have their mingled source in sorrow and in joy.

"These dramas were performed with such an air of reality, that you might
have fancied yourself transported to the plains of Syria or of Palestine.
We were not unfurnished, with either decorations, lights, or an orchestra,
suitable to the representation. The scene was generally placed in an
opening of the forest, where such parts of the wood as were penetrable
formed around us numerous arcades of foliage, beneath which we were
sheltered from the heat during the whole day; but when the sun descended
towards the horizon, its rays, broken upon the trunks of the trees,
diverged amongst the shadows of the forest in strong lines of light, which
produced the most sublime effect. Sometimes the whole of its broad disk
appeared at the end of an avenue, spreading one dazzling mass of
brightness. The foliage of the trees, illuminated from beneath by its
saffron beams, glowed with the lustre of the topaz and the emerald. Their
brown and mossy trunks appeared transformed into columns of antique bronze;
and the birds, which had retired in silence to their leafy shades to pass
the night, surprised to see the radiance of a second morning, hailed the
star of day with innumerable carols.

"Night soon overtook us during those rural entertainments; but the purity
of the air, and the mildness of the climate, admitted of our sleeping in
the woods secure from the injuries of the weather, and no less secure from
the molestation of robbers. At our return the following day to our
respective habitations, we found them exactly in the same state in which