ses in their
charming countenances were fading and turning blue before the icy blast
of death.

When the orphans met, tottering and hardly able to sustain themselves, a
cry of mutual horror burst from their lips. Each of them exclaimed, at
sight of the fearful change in her sister's features. "Are you also ill,
sister?" And then, bursting into tears, they threw themselves into each
other's arms, and looked anxiously at one another.

"Good heaven, Rose! how pale you are!"

"Like you, sister."

"And do you feel a cold shudder?"

"Yes, and my sight fails me."

"My bosom is all on fire."

"Sister, we are perhaps going to die."

"Let it only be together!"

"And our poor father?"

"And Dagobert?"

"Sister, our dream has come true!" cried Rose, almost deliriously, as she
threw her arms round Blanche's neck. "Look! look! the Angel Gabriel is
here to fetch us."

Indeed, at this moment, Gabriel entered the open space at the end of the
room. "Heaven! what do I see?" cried the young priest. "The daughters of
Marshal Simon!"

And, rushing forward, he received the sisters in his arms, for they were
no longer able to stand. Already their drooping heads, their half-closed
eyes, their painful and difficult breathing, announced the approach of
death. Sister Martha was close at hand. She hastened to respond to the
call of Gabriel. Aided by this pious woman, he was able to lift the
orphans upon a bed reserved for the doctor in attendance. For fear that
the sight of this mournful agony should make too deep an impression on
the other patients, Sister Martha drew a large curtain, and the sisters
were thus in some sort walled off from the rest of the room. Their hands
had been so tightly clasped together, during a nervous paroxysm, that it
was impossible to separate them. It was in this position that the first
remedies were applied--remedies incapable of conquering the violence of
the disease, but which at least mitigated for a few moments the excessive
pains they suffered, and restored some faint glimmer of perception to
their obscured and troubled senses. At this moment, Gabriel was leaning
over the bed with a look of inexpressible grief. With breaking heart, and
face bathed in tears, he thought of the strange destiny, which thus made
him a witness of the death of these girls, his relations, whom but a few
months before he had rescued from the horrors of the tempest. In spite of
his firmness of soul, the missionary could no