tter, and has been saying his prayers outside without
thinking of me. But who would be so bold as to express such wishes and
utter such a prayer as I had just heard?

"Curiosity, the only passion and amusement permitted in a cloister, now
entirely possessed me, and I advanced towards the window. But I had not
made a step when a black shadow, as it seemed to me, detaching itself
from the praying-desk, traversed the room, directing itself towards the
window, and passed swiftly by me. The movement was so rapid that I had
not time to avoid what seemed a body advancing towards me, and my fright
was so great that I thought I should faint a second time. But I felt
nothing, and, as if the shadow had passed through me, I saw it suddenly
disappear to my left.

"I rushed to the window, I pushed back the blind with precipitation, and
looked round the sacristy: I was there, entirely alone. I looked into
the garden--it was deserted, and the mid-day wind was wandering among
the flowers. I took courage, I examined all the corners of the room; I
looked behind the praying-desk, which was very large, and I shook all
the sacerdotal vestments which were hanging on the walls, everything was
in its natural condition, and could give me no explanation of what had
just occurred. The sight of all the blood I had lost led me to fancy
that my brain had, probably, been weakened by the haemorrhage, and that
I had been a prey to some delusion. I retired to my cell, and remained
shut up there until the next day."

I don't know whether the reader has been as much struck with the above
mysterious scene as the writer has; but the fancy of it strikes me
as very fine; and the natural SUPERNATURALNESS is kept up in the best
style. The shutter swaying to and fro, the fitful LIGHT APPEARING over
the furniture of the room, and giving it an air of strange motion--the
awful shadow which passed through the body of the timid young
novice--are surely very finely painted. "I rushed to the shutter, and
flung it back: there was no one in the sacristy. I looked into the
garden; it was deserted, and the mid-day wind was roaming among the
flowers." The dreariness is wonderfully described: only the poor pale
boy looking eagerly out from the window of the sacristy, and the hot
mid-day wind walking in the solitary garden. How skilfully is each of
these little strokes dashed in, and how well do all together combine
to make a picture! But we must have a little more about Spi