ll know no termination,--by a
union which will be eternal. There I will calm your regrets, I will wipe
away your tears. Oh, my beloved friend! my youthful husband! raise your
thoughts towards the infinite, to enable you to support the evils of a
moment.'"

My own emotion choked my utterance. Paul, looking at me steadfastly,
cried,--"She is no more! she is no more!" and a long fainting fit
succeeded these words of woe. When restored to himself, he said, "Since
death is good, and since Virginia is happy, I will die too, and be
united to Virginia." Thus the motives of consolation I had offered,
only served to nourish his despair. I was in the situation of a man
who attempts to save a friend sinking in the midst of a flood, and who
obstinately refuses to swim. Sorrow had completely overwhelmed his
soul. Alas! the trials of early years prepare man for the afflictions of
after-life; but Paul had never experienced any.

I took him back to his own dwelling, where I found his mother and Madame
de la Tour in a state of increased languor and exhaustion, but Margaret
seemed to droop the most. Lively characters, upon whom petty troubles
have but little effect, sink the soonest under great calamities.

"O my good friend," said Margaret, "I thought last night I saw Virginia,
dressed in white, in the midst of groves and delicious gardens. She said
to me, 'I enjoy the most perfect happiness:' and then approaching Paul
with a smiling air, she bore him away with her. While I was struggling
to retain my son, I felt that I myself too was quitting the earth, and
that I followed with inexpressible delight. I then wished to bid my
friend farewell, when I saw that she was hastening after me, accompanied
by Mary and Domingo. But the strangest circumstance remains yet to be
told; Madame de la Tour has this very night had a dream exactly like
mine in every possible respect."

"My dear friend," I replied, "nothing, I firmly believe, happens in this
world without the permission of God. Future events, too, are sometimes
revealed in dreams."

Madame de la Tour then related to me her dream which was exactly the
same as Margaret's in every particular; and as I had never observed in
either of these ladies any propensity to superstition, I was struck with
the singular coincidence of their dreams, and I felt convinced that
they would soon be realized. The belief that future events are sometimes
revealed to us during sleep, is one that is widely diffus