wreck of
their party with a stupid and stolid indifference.

For some time previous the delegates met at rare and irregular
intervals, and finally ceased to assemble altogether. The bolder portion
of the body, disgusted with the weak and temporizing views of the
others, withdrew first: and the less determined formed themselves into
a new Society, whose object was merely to get up petitions and addresses
unfavorable to the great project of the Government,--a Legislative Union
with England.

From the turn events had taken, my companion, as it may be supposed,
took no interest in their proceedings. Affecting to think that all was
not lost,--while in his heart he felt bitterly the disappointment of
his hopes,--a settled melancholy, unrelieved even by those flashes of
buoyancy which a Frenchman rarely loses in any misfortune, now grew upon
him. His cheek grew paler, and his frame seemed wasting away, while his
impaired strength and tottering step betrayed that something more than
sorrow was at work within him. Still he persevered in our course of
study, and notwithstanding all my efforts to induce him to relax in
his labors, his desire to teach me grew with every day. For some time
a short, hacking cough, with pain in his chest, had seized on him, and
although it yielded to slight remedies, it returned again and again.
Our night walks were therefore obliged to be discontinued, and the
confinement to the house preyed upon his spirits and shook his nerves.
Boy as I was, I could not look upon his altered face and attenuated
figure without a thrilling fear at my heart lest he might be seriously
ill. He perceived my anxiety quickly, and endeavored, with many a
cheering speech, to assure me that these were attacks to which he had
been long accustomed, and which never were either lasting or dangerous;
but the very hollow accents in which he spoke robbed these words of all
their comfort to me.

The winter, which had been unusually long and severe, at length passed
away, and the spring, milder and more genial than is customary in our
climate, succeeded; the sunlight came slanting down through the narrow
court, and fell in one rich yellow patch upon the floor. Charles
started; his dark eyes, hollow and sunk, glowed with unwonted
brightness, and his haggard and hollow cheek suddenly flushed with a
crimson glow.

"Mon cher," said he, in a voice tremulous with emotion, "I think if I
were to leave this I might recover."

The very