y, adieu my happiness; adieu
Helene, my child, adieu!"

"Monseigneur," said the man beside him, "you must pay for being a great
prince; and he who would govern others must first conquer himself. Be
strong to the end, monseigneur, and posterity will say that you were
great."

"Oh, I shall never forgive you," said the regent, with a sigh so deep it
sounded like a groan; "for you have killed my happiness."

"Ah! yes--work for kings," said the companion of this sorrowful man,
shrugging his shoulders. "'Noli fidere principibus terrae nec filiis
eorum.'"

The two men remained there till the carriage had disappeared, and then
returned to Paris.

Eight days afterward the carriage entered the porch of the Augustines at
Clisson. On its arrival, all the convent pressed round the suffering
traveler--poor floweret! broken by the rough winds of the world.

"Come, my child; come and live with us again," said the superior.

"Not live, my mother," said the young girl, "but die."

"Think only of the Lord, my child," said the good abbess.

"Yes, my mother! Our Lord, who died for the sins of men."

Helene returned to her little cell, from which she had been absent
scarcely a month. Everything was still in its place, and exactly as she
had left it. She went to the window--the lake was sleeping tranquil and
sad, but the ice which had covered it had disappeared beneath the rain,
and with it the snow, where, before departing, the young girl had seen
the impression of Gaston's footsteps.

Spring came, and everything but Helene began to live once more. The
trees around the little lake grew green, the large leaves of the
water-lilies floated once more upon the surface, the reeds raised up
their heads, and all the families of warbling birds came back to people
them again.

Even the barred gate opened to let the sturdy gardener in.

Helene survived the summer, but in September she faded with the waning
of the year, and died.

The very morning of her death, the superior received a letter from Paris
by a courier. She carried it to the dying girl. It contained only these
words:

"My mother--obtain from your daughter her pardon for the regent."

Helene, implored by the superior, grew paler than ever at that name, but
she answered:

"Yes, my mother, I forgive him. But it is because I go to rejoin him
whom he killed."

At four o'clock in the afternoon she breathed her last.

She asked to be buried at the spot where Gaston used to