ften feel your eyes grow
moist, without being able to explain the cause of that sweet melancholy,
which I, too, have often felt, during those glorious nights passed in the
profound solitudes of America.

"But, alas! a painful incident disturbed the serenity of the picture.
Suddenly I heard Dagobert's wife say to him: 'My dear--you are weeping!'

"At these words, Agricola, Angela, and Magdalen gathered round the
soldier. Anxiety was visible upon every face. Then, as he raised his head
abruptly, one could see two large tears trickle down his cheek to his
white moustache. 'It is nothing, my children,' said he, in a voice of
emotion 'it is nothing. Only, to-day is the first of June--and this day
four years--' He could not complete the sentence; and, as he raised his
hands to his eyes, to brush away the tears, we saw that he held between
his fingers a little bronze chain, with a medal suspended to it. That is
his dearest relic. Four years ago, almost dying with despair at the loss
of the two angels, of whom I have so often spoken to you, my friend, he
took from the neck of Marshal Simon, brought home dead from a fatal duel,
this chain and medal which his children had so long worn. I went down
instantly, as you may suppose, to endeavor to soothe the painful
remembrances of this excellent man; gradually, he grew calmer, and the
evening was passed in a pious and quiet sadness.

"You cannot imagine, my friend, when I returned to my chamber, what cruel
thoughts came to my mind, as I recalled those past events, from which I
generally turn away with fear and horror. Then I saw once more the
victims of those terrible and mysterious plots, the awful depths of which
have never been penetrated thanks to the death of Father d'A. and Father
R., and the incurable madness of Madame de St.-D., the three authors or
accomplices of the dreadful deeds. The calamities occasioned by them are
irreparable; for those who were thus sacrificed to a criminal ambition,
would have been the pride of humanity by the good they would have done.
Ah, my friend! if you had known those noble hearts; if you had known the
projects of splendid charity, formed by that young lady, whose heart was
so generous, whose mind so elevated, whose soul so great! On the eve of
her death, as a kind of prelude to her magnificent designs, after a
conversation, the subject of which I must keep secret, even from you, she
put into my hands a considerable sum, saying, with her usual