g the
enchantment of so divine a dream, the first rays of sun, which showed
the tears still glistening in my eyes,--all conspired to lend to my
countenance a power of expression, and a look of tenderness, which it
will doubtless never wear again in the course of a long life.

Unable to bear any longer the reaction of these feelings, and the
internal vibration of such silence, I called up the women. On entering
the room, they broke out into repeated exclamations of surprise at the
sight of a resurrection which appeared to them a miracle. At the same
moment the doctor made his appearance. He prescribed repose and an
infusion of certain plants of the mountain which allay the irregular
movements of the heart. He reassured every one by telling us that the
lady's malady was one of youth, produced by excessive sensibility, and
which time would mitigate; that it was but a superabundance of life,
although it often wore the appearance of death, and was never fatal,
except when inward grief or some moral cause changed its character into
one of habitual melancholy, or an unconquerable distaste to life. While
some of the women went out into the fields, to gather the samples
ordered by the doctor, and others were ironing out her damp clothes in
the lower room, I left the house to wander alone among the ruins of the
old Abbey.

XIV.

But my heart was too full of its own emotions to feel interested in the
anchorites of the Abbey. The enthusiasm and self-denial of the early
monasteries had subsided into a profession; and at a later period their
lives, unlinked with those of their fellow-beings, had fruitlessly
evaporated within these cloisters, and left no trace behind. I felt no
regret as I stood upon their tombs, but only wondered, as I noted how
speedily Nature seizes on the empty dwellings and deserted abodes of
man, and how superior is the living architecture of shrubs and briers,
waving ivy, wall-flowers and creeping plants, throwing their mantle on
the ruined walls, to the cold symmetry of stones, or the lifeless
ornaments of the chiselled monuments of men.

There was now more sunshine, music, and perfume, more holy psalmody of
the winds and waters, of birds, and sonorous echoes of the lakes and
forests, beneath the crumbling pillars, dismantled nave, and shattered
roof of the empty Abbey, than there had been holy tapers, fumes of
incense and monotonous chants in the ceremonies and processions that
filled it night an