Very dreary was the moaning of the night storm; but it was not more dreary than the thoughts which now occupied him in his solitude—­thoughts darkened and distorted by the terrible superstitions of his country and his race.  Ever since the period of his mother’s death he had been oppressed by the conviction that some curse hung over the family.  At first they had been prosperous, they had got money, a little legacy had been left them.  But this good fortune had availed only for a time; disaster on disaster strangely and suddenly succeeded.  Losses, misfortunes, poverty, want itself had overwhelmed them; his father’s temper had become so soured, that the oldest friends of Francois Sarzeau declared he was changed beyond recognition.  And now, all this past misfortune—­the steady, withering, household blight of many years—­had ended in the last, worst misery of all—­in death.  The fate of his father and his brother admitted no longer of a doubt; he knew it, as he listened to the storm, as he reflected on his grandfather’s words, as he called to mind his own experience of the perils of the sea.  And this double bereavement had fallen on him just as the time was approaching for his marriage with Perrine; just when misfortune was most ominous of evil, just when it was hardest to bear!  Forebodings, which he dared not realize, began now to mingle with the bitterness of his grief, whenever his thoughts wandered from the present to the future; and as he sat by the lonely fireside, murmuring from time to time the Church prayer for the repose of the dead, he almost involuntarily mingled with it another prayer, expressed only in his own simple words, for the safety of the living—­for the young girl whose love was his sole earthly treasure; for the motherless children who must now look for protection to him alone.

He had sat by the hearth a long, long time, absorbed in his thoughts, not once looking round toward the bed, when he was startled by hearing the sound of his grandfather’s voice once more.

“Gabriel,” whispered the old man, trembling and shrinking as he spoke, “Gabriel, do you hear a dripping of water—­now slow, now quick again—­on the floor at the foot of my bed?”

“I hear nothing, grandfather, but the crackling of the fire, and the roaring of the storm outside.”

“Drip, drip, drip!  Faster and faster; plainer and plainer.  Take the torch, Gabriel; look down on the floor—­look with all your eyes.  Is the place wet there?  Is it the rain from heaven that is dropping through the roof?”

Gabriel took the torch with trembling fingers and knelt down on the floor to examine it closely.  He started back from the place, as he saw that it was quite dry—­the torch dropped upon the hearth—­he fell on his knees before the statue of the Virgin and hid his face.

“Is the floor wet?  Answer me, I command you—­is the floor wet?” asked the old man, quickly and breathlessly.

Gabriel rose, went back to the bedside, and whispered to him that no drop of rain had fallen inside the cottage.  As he spoke the words, he saw a change pass over his grandfather’s face—­the sharp features seemed to wither up on a sudden; the eager expression to grow vacant and death-like in an instant.  The voice, too, altered; it was harsh and querulous no more; its tones became strangely soft, slow, and solemn, when the old man spoke again.