bling of the
birds, the hum and echo of the insects, the voices of the waters,
the plaintive cry of the tree-frog,--all country things were bidding
farewell to the loveliest lily of the valley, to her simple, rural life.
The religious poesy of the hour, now added to that of Nature, expressed
so vividly the psalm of the departing soul that our sobs redoubled.

Though the door of the chamber was open we were all so plunged in
contemplation of the scene, as if to imprint its memories forever on our
souls, that we did not notice the family servants who were kneeling as
a group and praying fervently. These poor people, living on hope, had
believed their mistress might be spared, and this plain warning overcame
them. At a sign from the Abbe Birotteau the old huntsman went to fetch
the curate of Sache. The doctor, standing by the bed, calm as science,
and holding the hand of the still sleeping woman, had made the confessor
a sign to say that this sleep was the only hour without pain which
remained for the recalled angel. The moment had come to administer the
last sacraments of the Church. At nine o'clock she awoke quietly, looked
at us with surprised but gentle eyes, and we beheld our idol once more
in all the beauty of former days.

"Mother! you are too beautiful to die--life and health are coming back
to you!" cried Madeleine.

"Dear daughter, I shall live--in thee," she answered, smiling.

Then followed heart-rending embraces of the mother and her children.
Monsieur de Mortsauf kissed his wife upon her brow. She colored when she
saw me.

"Dear Felix," she said, "this is, I think, the only grief that I shall
ever have caused you. Forget all that I may have said,--I, a poor
creature much beside myself." She held out her hand; I took it and
kissed it. Then she said, with her chaste and gracious smile, "As in the
old days, Felix?"

We all left the room and went into the salon during the last confession.
I approached Madeleine. In presence of others she could not escape me
without a breach of civility; but, like her mother, she looked at
no one, and kept silence without even once turning her eyes in my
direction.

"Dear Madeleine," I said in a low voice, "What have you against me?
Why do you show such coldness in the presence of death, which ought to
reconcile us all?"

"I hear in my heart what my mother is saying at this moment," she
replied, with a look which Ingres gave to his "Mother of God,"--that
virgin, already