hether he was
damned, if he was in purgatory, if I was in a state of grace, and if I
should soon follow him; he continued to discourse as if he had not
heard me, and as if he would not hear me.

"I approached him several times to embrace him, but it seemed to me
that I embraced nothing, and yet I felt very sensibly that he held me
tightly by the arm, and that when I tried to turn away my head that I
might not see him, because I could not look at him without feeling
afflicted, he shook my arm as if to oblige me to look at and listen to
him.

"He always appeared to me taller than I had seen him, and taller even
than he was at the time of his death, although he had grown during the
eighteen months in which we had not met. I beheld him always naked to
the middle of his body, his head uncovered, with his fine fair hair,
and a white scroll twisted in his hair over his forehead, on which
there was some writing, but I could only make out the word _in_, &c.

"It was his same tone of voice. He appeared to me neither gay nor sad,
but in a calm and tranquil state. He begged of me when his brother
returned, to tell him certain things to say to his father and mother.
He begged me to say the Seven Psalms which had been given him as a
penance the preceding Sunday, which he had not yet recited; again he
recommended me to speak to his brother, and then he bade me adieu,
saying, as he left me, _Jusques_, _jusques_, (_till_, _till_,) which
was the usual term he made use of when at the end of our walk we bade
each other good-bye, to go home.

"He told me that at the time he was drowned, his brother, who was
writing a translation, regretted having let him go without
accompanying him, fearing some accident. He described to me so well
where he was drowned, and the tree in the avenue of Louvigni on which
he had written a few words, that two years afterwards, being there
with the late Chevalier de Gotol, one of those who were with him at
the time he was drowned, I pointed out to him the very spot; and by
counting the trees in a particular direction which Desfontaines had
specified to me, I went straight up to the tree, and I found his
writing. He (the Chevalier) told me also that the article of the Seven
Psalms was true, and that on coming from confession they had told each
other their penance; and since then his brother has told me that it
was quite true that at that hour he was writing his exercise, and he
reproached himself for not havin