before the new leaves should
have turned yellow. They are about to change; but love is faithful as
Nature. In a few days I shall see her once more.... I see her already;
for am I not here awaiting her? and thus to wait, is it not as though I
saw her again?

XCIX.

Then I pictured to myself the instant when, from the shady orchards
that slope down from the mountains behind the old doctor's house, I
should see at last that window of the closed room where she was
expected,--to see it open for the first time, and a woman's face,
half-hidden in its long dark hair, appear between the open curtains,
dreaming of that brother whom her eye seeks in the glorious landscape,
where she, too, sees but him.... And at that image my heart beat so
impetuously in my breast that I was forced to drive away the fancy for
an instant, in order to breathe.

In the meantime night had almost entirely descended from the mountain
to the lake. One could only see the waters through a mist that glazed
and darkened their wide expanse. Amid the profound and universal
silence which precedes darkness, the regular sound of oars which seemed
to approach land smote upon my ear. I soon saw a little speck moving on
the waters, and increasing gradually in size until it slid into the
little cove near the fisherman's house, throwing on either side a light
fringe of spray. Thinking that it might be the fisherman returning from
the Savoy coast to his deserted dwelling, I hurried down from the ruins
to the shore, to be there when the boat came in. I waited on the sand
till the fisherman landed.

C.

As soon as he saw me, he cried out, "Are you, sir, the young Frenchman
who is expected at Fanchette's, and to whom I have been ordered to give
these papers?" So saying, he jumped out of the boat, and, wading
knee-deep through the water, handed me a thick letter. I felt by its
weight that it was an enclosure containing many others. I hastily tore
open the first cover, and read indistinctly in the dim moonlight a note
from my friend L---, dated that same morning from Chambery. L----
informed me that my lodging was taken and prepared for me at
Fanchette's poor house in the Faubourg, and that no one had yet arrived
from Paris at our old friend the doctor's. He added, that, having
learned from myself that I should be that same evening at Haute-Combe
to spend the night and a part of the following day, he had taken
advantage of the departure of a trusty b