though she seemed less pale
than usual, though she said she did not suffer, yet her health
gives me the most mortal alarm.

Alas! This morning, when I saw beneath the veil those noble
features, I could not refrain from thinking how beautiful she
looked the day of our marriage; it seemed that our happiness was
reflected on her face.

As I told you, I saw her this morning. She does not know that
to-morrow the Princess Juliana resigns her abbatical dignity,
and that she has been unanimously chosen to succeed her.

Since the beginning of her novitiate there has been but one
opinion of her piety, her charity, and the exactitude with which
she fulfils all the rules of the order; she even exaggerates
their austerity. She exercises in the convent that authority she
exercised everywhere, but of which she herself is ignorant. She
confessed to me this morning that she is not so absorbed by her
religious duties as to forget the past.

"I accuse myself, dear father," said she, "because I cannot help
reflecting that, had Heaven pleased to spare me the degradation
that has stained my life, I might have lived happily with you
and my husband. Spite of myself, I reflect on this, and on what
passed in the Cite. In vain I beseech Heaven to deliver me from
these temptations,--to fill my heart with himself; but he does
not hear my prayers, doubtless because my life has rendered me
unworthy of communion with him."

"But," cried I, clinging to this faint glimmer of hope, "it is
not yet too late; your novitiate is only over to-day; you are
yet free. Renounce this austere life, dwell again with us, and
our tenderness shall soften your grief."

Shaking her head sorrowfully, she replied:

"The cloister is, indeed, solitary for me, accustomed as I have
been to your tender care; doubtless cruel recollections come
over me, but I am consoled by the knowledge that I am performing
my duty. I know that everywhere else I should be liable to be
placed in that position in which I have already suffered so
much. Your daughter shall do what she ought to do, suffer what
she ought to suffer."

Without founding any great hopes on this interview, I yet said
to myself, "She can renounce the cloister. But as she is
determined, I can but repeat her words, 'God alone can offer me
a refuge worthy of h