on of the House of Claes, in
other parts of which many scenes of this history will occur: at present,
it is enough to make known its general arrangement.

CHAPTER II

Towards the end of August, 1812, on a Sunday evening after vespers, a
woman was sitting in a deep armchair placed before one of the windows
looking out upon the garden. The sun's rays fell obliquely upon the
house and athwart the parlor, breaking into fantastic lights on the
carved panellings of the wall, and wrapping the woman in a crimson halo
projected through the damask curtains which draped the window. Even an
ordinary painter, had he sketched this woman at this particular moment,
would assuredly have produced a striking picture of a head that was full
of pain and melancholy. The attitude of the body, and that of the
feet stretched out before her, showed the prostration of one who loses
consciousness of physical being in the concentration of powers absorbed
in a fixed idea: she was following its gleams in the far future, just as
sometimes on the shores of the sea, we gaze at a ray of sunlight which
pierces the clouds and draws a luminous line to the horizon.

The hands of this woman hung nerveless outside the arms of her chair,
and her head, as if too heavy to hold up, lay back upon its cushions. A
dress of white cambric, very full and flowing, hindered any judgment
as to the proportions of her figure, and the bust was concealed by the
folds of a scarf crossed on the bosom and negligently knotted. If the
light had not thrown into relief her face, which she seemed to show
in preference to the rest of her person, it would still have been
impossible to escape riveting the attention exclusively upon it. Its
expression of stupefaction, which was cold and rigid despite hot tears
that were rolling from her eyes, would have struck the most thoughtless
mind. Nothing is more terrible to behold than excessive grief that is
rarely allowed to break forth, of which traces were left on this woman's
face like lava congealed about a crater. She might have been a
dying mother compelled to leave her children in abysmal depths of
wretchedness, unable to bequeath them to any human protector.

The countenance of this lady, then about forty years of age and not
nearly so far from handsome as she had been in her youth, bore none of
the characteristics of a Flemish woman. Her thick black hair fell in
heavy curls upon her shoulders and about her cheeks. The forehead,