other, was all that she could give,--nevertheless it was remarked,
during the course of the day that she spoke several times out loud, as
if conversing with some invisible being. Evening arrived, and the
waggons carried off their ripe and luscious loads, leaving the young men
and girls racing up and down the pathways, and amongst the vines,
endeavouring to smear each other's faces with the purple fruit.

Behind these laughing groups came Herminie, the expression of her dark
blue eye floating in space, and, like the flight of the swallow, resting
on nothing. Onward she slowly stepped, idly pushing before her the first
faded leaves of autumn, withered by the hoar frost; and, instead of the
intoxicating grape, she carried in her hand a _bouquet_ of the arbutus
and the _alize_, fruits without perfume, like her own heart, now without
hope or love. Night came: every eye weary with toil was closed,--the
chimes alone telling the hours of the night vibrated on the air. Towards
morning a startling cry of horror was heard from a cottage on the banks
of the Cure--Herminie was dead! that is to say, her face was paler than
usual in her sleep; but she awoke no more! I shall ever remember that
beautiful face, for I had never till then contemplated the countenance
of one whose spirit had taken its way to that country from which no
traveller returns.

A few days, and the withered rose-leaves which the poor girl had pulled
at the cottage door were scattered by the wind; a few more, and the poor
old father followed his favourite child; and his surviving daughters,
half-crazed with grief and sorrow, left the neighbourhood. As to him who
was the original cause of this domestic tragedy,--rich, happy, perhaps a
deputy and making laws himself,--he lives, and is probably respected. We
call ourselves a civilized people; we throw into prison a man who
strikes another,--and we do not punish, we do not cast from society, we
do not even reproach the base hypocrite, who, with a smile on his lips,
and for the infamous gratification of his bad, ungovernable, selfish
passions, becomes the murderer of a whole family. Bad and rotten are the
laws which permit such infamous practices. Unworthy of trust are the
legislators who dream not--who never think of preventing these impure
and festering diseases of our social system. My friends, who had
listened attentively to the sad tale, turned from me to inspect more
closely the white cottage by the Cure, and no lo