hen
carried her upstairs, and placed her in one of the beds, on which they
had spread clean sheets, which had been warmed with one of the heated
hearth-stones, according to the custom of the peasants of that country.
They tried in vain to make her swallow a few drops of wine and vinegar
to bring her to life; but finding all their efforts unavailing, gave
way to tears and lamentations, which soon recalled us into the house.
"The lady is dead! the lady is dead! We can only weep, and send for a
priest." The boatmen mingled their cries with those of the women, and
increased their confusion. I rushed up the ladder and entered the room.
The dim twilight still showed the bed over which I bent. I touched her
forehead; it was burning hot; I could distinguish the low and regular
breathing which made the coarse brown sheet alternately rise and fall
on the chest. I bid the women be quiet, and giving some money to one of
the boatmen, ordered him to fetch a doctor, who, I was told, lived two
leagues off, in a little village on the Mont du Chat. The boatman set
off at full speed; the others, comforted by the assurance that the lady
was not dead, sat down to eat. The women went and came from the parlor
to the cellar, and from the cellar to the poultry-yard, to make
preparations for supper. I remained seated on one of the bags of Indian
corn at the foot of the bed, my hands clasped on my knees, and my eyes
fixed on the inanimate face and closed eyelids of the sufferer. Night
had closed in. One of the young girls had fastened the shutter, and
suspended a small copper lamp against the wall; its rays fell on the
sheets and on the sleeping countenance like the light of holy tapers on
a death-bed. Since then, I have thus watched, alas, by other bedsides,
but the sleepers never woke!

XII.

Never perhaps was the heart of man absorbed for so many long hours in
one strange and overwhelming speculation. Suspended between death and
love, I was unable to divine, as I gazed on the angel form that lay
sleeping before me, whether this night in its mystery would bring-forth
endless anguish, or whether undying love would come in the morning,
with returning life and joy. In the convulsive movements of her
troubled sleep she had thrown the sheet off one of her shoulders upon
which fell the long luxuriant curls of her lustrous hair. The neck had
yielded to the weight of the head, which was thrown back on the pillow,
and slightly inclined towards