as! sleeping in the
very churchyard in which, in the shade of the evening, she first met her
seducer. Enough,--the heartless man of the world obtained the love of
the poor and simple Herminie,--and his whim, his heartless selfish whim
gratified,--he disappeared.

The fault, the fault of confiding woman, soon became public. Abandoned
and betrayed, the poor girl sought death as a refuge in her distress,
and threw herself into the river; but her father, who watched every
action of his daughter, was near, and saved her. A man of unusual
intelligence, and an excellent heart, his maledictions fell entirely
upon the head of him who had wronged her; for his child he had only
tears and consolation. Herminie became a mother; her sisters and friends
were earnest and devoted in their attentions, and anticipated her every
thought; but broken-hearted, she bent her head like some beautiful lily,
which has at the parent root some corroding worm. Her gaiety fled, her
songs ceased; pale and silent, she might be seen standing on some rock,
listening to the howling of the storm, or, her little boy on her lap,
seated for hours at her father's cottage door, picking some faded rose
to pieces leaf by leaf, and looking vacantly on the fragments as they
lay at her feet.

But at the bottom of her cup of grief was still one more bitter
drop,--oh! how much more bitter than the rest! Her child, as if
inheriting the melancholy of its mother, ceased to prattle, to smile; it
did not thrive, it sickened; and in spite of all her care and watchings,
of whole nights passed in prayers to the Virgin, to her patron Saint,
and God, in spite of many an hour of repentant and sorrowing tears,--it
died! Bowed to the earth by this fresh, this overwhelming misfortune,
Herminie complained not, but she became more pale: she was sometimes
found plunged in silent but profound grief, looking towards heaven as if
seeking there the little precious being the Almighty had taken from her;
as if she was anxious to follow,--to be at rest, united with her baby
boy again.

The _vendange_ returned once more; but the perfumed gentleman, the
villain from the capital, came not again. Herminie was desirous of
assisting in the labours of the season. "I am," said she, "strong
enough;" and though her sisters endeavoured to dissuade her, she
persisted in accompanying them to the vineyard, but there she found her
strength was unequal to the task, a smile to one, and a kind answer to
an