She mounted
the stairs rapidly, though her strength seemed failing her; then she
opened the door, saw her son, and fell into his arms half dead,--

"Oh! my child! my child!" she cried, sobbing, and covering him with
kisses in a sort of frenzy.

"Madame!" said an unknown man.

"Ah! it is not he!" she cried, recoiling in terror, and standing erect
before the recruit, at whom she gazed with a haggard eye.

"Holy Father! what a likeness!" said Brigitte.

There was silence for a moment. The recruit himself shuddered at the
aspect of Madame de Dey.

"Ah! monsieur," she said, leaning on Brigitte's husband, who had entered
the room, and feeling to its fullest extent an agony the fear of which
had already nearly killed her. "Monsieur, I cannot stay with you longer.
Allow my people to attend upon you."

She returned to her own room, half carried by Brigitte and her old
servant.

"Oh! madame," said Brigitte, as she undressed her mistress, "must that
man sleep in Monsieur Auguste's bed, and put on Monsieur Auguste's
slippers, and eat the pate I made for Monsieur Auguste? They may
guillotine me if I--"

"Brigitte!" cried Madame de Dey.

Brigitte was mute.

"Hush!" said her husband in her ear, "do you want to kill madame?"

At that moment the recruit made a noise in the room above by sitting
down to his supper.

"I cannot stay here!" cried Madame de Dey. "I will go into the
greenhouse; there I can hear what happens outside during the night."

She still floated between the fear of having lost her son and the hope
of his suddenly appearing.

The night was horribly silent. There was one dreadful moment for the
countess, when the battalion of recruits passed through the town, and
went to their several billets. Every step, every sound, was a hope,--and
a lost hope. After that the stillness continued. Towards morning the
countess was obliged to return to her room. Brigitte, who watched her
movements, was uneasy when she did not reappear, and entering the room
she found her dead.

"She must have heard that recruit walking about Monsieur Auguste's room,
and singing their damned Marseillaise, as if he were in a stable," cried
Brigitte. "That was enough to kill her!"

The death of the countess had a far more solemn cause; it resulted, no
doubt, from an awful vision. At the exact hour when Madame de Dey died
at Carentan, her son was shot in the Morbihan. That tragic fact may
be added to many recorded observations on symp