f the blood did not
stop soon, she could not possibly live twenty-four hours.

When I saw the linen which she had concealed under her clothes to bring
it out, I could not disguise my horror, and I thought the sight would
kill me. I fancied myself in a slaughter-house! Laura, thinking of
consoling me, told me that I could rely upon the secret being well kept.

"Ah! what do I care!" I exclaimed. "Provided she lives, let the whole
world know that she is my wife!"

At any other time, the foolishness of poor Laura would have made me
laugh; but in such a sad moment I had neither the inclination nor the
courage to be merry.

"Our dear patient," added Laura, "smiled as she was reading your letter,
and she said that, with you so near her, she was certain not to die."

Those words did me good, but a man needs so little to console him or to
soothe his grief.

"When the nuns are at their dinner," said Laura, "I will go back to the
convent with as much linen as I can conceal about me, and in the mean
time I am going to wash all this."

"Has she had any visitors?"

"Oh, yes! all the convent; but no one has any suspicion of the truth."

"But in such hot weather as this she can have only a very light blanket
over her, and her visitors must remark the great bulk of the napkins."

"There is no fear of that, because she is sitting up in her bed."

"What does she eat?"

"Nothing, for she must not eat."

Soon afterwards Laura went out, and I followed her. I called upon a
physician, where I wasted my time and my money, in order to get from him
a long prescription which was useless, for it would have put all the
convent in possession of the secret, or, to speak more truly, her secret
would have been known to the whole world, for a secret known to a nun
soon escapes out of the convent's walls. Besides, the physician of the
convent himself would most likely have betrayed it through a spirit of
revenge.

I returned sadly to my miserable hole in Laura's house. Half an hour
afterwards she came to me, crying bitterly, and she placed in my hands
this letter, which was scarcely legible:

"I have not strength enough to write to you, my darling; I am getting
weaker and weaker; I am losing all my blood, and I am afraid there is no
remedy. I abandon myself to the will of God, and I thank Him for having
saved me from dishonour. Do not make yourself unhappy. My only
consolation is to know that you are near me. Alas! if I could see you but