an--and crowned.

"Then, Natalie, thou wilt read this message from the living
dead, for from that time on Paul Verdayne will need thee. He
is my true lover, sweetheart, and when his son is set apart
from his life forever by the necessities of state--then will
he know his hour of greatest need. Search him out, Natalie,
my sister--Paul Verdayne, the Englishman.

"Go to Lucerne, in May (and here followed the name of the
Swiss hotel Paul knew so well) and there thou wilt find him,
without fail.

"Comfort him, I charge thee. It must ever be for thee a
sacred duty. And, child! I would not have my lover left
alone, to go through life with the shadow of his great grief
hanging ever over him. There will still be sunlight in the
world--and love. And Paul will be in his prime.

"Then will it be the high noon of his life. But what of
love, for him? Ah! I scarce dare dream that dream. But
believe this, sweet Natalie, Death would lose half its dread
could I but know that Paul and thou couldst love."

Paul sat like one who saw a vision. Unknowingly he plucked the young
buds from the rose-tree by the bench--and crushed them. Far away
mourned a delirious nightingale; and a weeping willow softly shivered.
The moon looked down from the midst of heaven; the infinite celestial
vault increased until it became yet more infinite; it burned and
breathed; all the earth gleamed with silvery lustre; the air was
wonderful, at once fresh and overpowering, full of sweetness; it was
an ocean of perfumes.

Divine night! Magical night! The forests, full of shade, were
motionless, and cast their vast shadows. The pools were calm; the cold
and darkness of the waters lay mournfully enclosed in the dark walls
of the garden. The virgin thickets of young cherry trees timidly
stretched their roots into the chill earth, and from time to time
shook their leaves, as if they were angry and indignant that the
beautiful Zephyr, the wind of night, glided suddenly toward them and
covered them with kisses.

All the landscape slept. On high all breathed--all was
beautiful--solemn. The vastness and wondrousness possessed Paul's
soul; and crowds of silvery visions emerged softly from their hiding
places. Divine night! Magical night!

Suddenly all came to life; the forests, the pools, the _steppes_. The
majestic voice of the nightingale burst forth again, now in a paeon of