they are like children who have never put them on? Or was it that the
countess feeling herself on the borders of eternity, rejected every
human feeling except love?

"You will bring me health as you used to do, Felix," she said, "and our
valley will still be my blessing. How can I help eating what you will
give me? You are such a good nurse. Besides, you are so rich in health
and vigor that life is contagious beside you. My friend, prove to me
that I need not die--die blighted. They think my worst suffering is
thirst. Oh, yes, my thirst is great, dear friend. The waters of the
Indre are terrible to see; but the thirst of my heart is greater far.
I thirsted for thee," she said in a smothered voice, taking my hands in
hers, which were burning, and drawing me close that she might whisper
in my ear. "My anguish has been in not seeing thee! Did you not bid
me live? I will live; I too will ride on horseback; I will know life,
Paris, fetes, pleasures, all!"

Ah! Natalie, that awful cry--which time and distance render cold--rang
in the ears of the old priest and in mine; the tones of that glorious
voice pictured the battles of a lifetime, the anguish of a true love
lost. The countess rose with an impatient movement like that of a child
which seeks a plaything. When the confessor saw her thus the poor man
fell upon his knees and prayed with clasped hands.

"Yes, to live!" she said, making me rise and support her; "to live with
realities and not with delusions. All has been delusions in my life; I
have counted them up, these lies, these impostures! How can I die, I
who have never lived? I who have never roamed a moor to meet him!" She
stopped, seemed to listen, and to smell some odor through the walls.
"Felix, the vintagers are dining, and I, I," she said, in the voice of
a child, "I, the mistress, am hungry. It is so in love,--they are happy,
they, they!--"

"Kyrie eleison!" said the poor abbe, who with clasped hands and eyes
raised to heaven was reciting his litanies.

She flung an arm around my neck, kissed me violently, and pressed me to
her, saying, "You shall not escape me now!" She gave the little nod with
which in former days she used, when leaving me for an instant, to say
she would return. "We will dine together," she said; "I will go and tell
Manette." She turned to go, but fainted; and I laid her, dressed as she
was, upon the bed.

"You carried me thus before," she murmured, opening her eyes.

She was very lig