We had longed with inexpressible earnestness to reach Dijon, since we had fixed on it, as a kind of station in our progress.  But now we entered it with a torpor more painful than acute suffering.  We had come slowly but irrevocably to the opinion, that our utmost efforts would not preserve one human being alive.  We took our hands therefore away from the long grasped rudder; and the frail vessel on which we floated, seemed, the government over her suspended, to rush, prow foremost, into the dark abyss of the billows.  A gush of grief, a wanton profusion of tears, and vain laments, and overflowing tenderness, and passionate but fruitless clinging to the priceless few that remained, was followed by languor and recklessness.

During this disastrous journey we lost all those, not of our own family, to whom we had particularly attached ourselves among the survivors.  It were not well to fill these pages with a mere catalogue of losses; yet I cannot refrain from this last mention of those principally dear to us.  The little girl whom Adrian had rescued from utter desertion, during our ride through London on the twentieth of November, died at Auxerre.  The poor child had attached herself greatly to us; and the suddenness of her death added to our sorrow.  In the morning we had seen her apparently in health—­in the evening, Lucy, before we retired to rest, visited our quarters to say that she was dead.  Poor Lucy herself only survived, till we arrived at Dijon.  She had devoted herself throughout to the nursing the sick, and attending the friendless.  Her excessive exertions brought on a slow fever, which ended in the dread disease whose approach soon released her from her sufferings.  She had throughout been endeared to us by her good qualities, by her ready and cheerful execution of every duty, and mild acquiescence in every turn of adversity.  When we consigned her to the tomb, we seemed at the same time to bid a final adieu to those peculiarly feminine virtues conspicuous in her; uneducated and unpretending as she was, she was distinguished for patience, forbearance, and sweetness.  These, with all their train of qualities peculiarly English, would never again be revived for us.  This type of all that was most worthy of admiration in her class among my countrywomen, was placed under the sod of desert France; and it was as a second separation from our country to have lost sight of her for ever.

The Countess of Windsor died during our abode at Dijon.  One morning I was informed that she wished to see me.  Her message made me remember, that several days had elapsed since I had last seen her.  Such a circumstance had often occurred during our journey, when I remained behind to watch to their close the last moments of some one of our hapless comrades, and the rest of the troop past on before me.  But there was something in the manner of her messenger, that made me suspect that all was not right.  A caprice of the imagination caused me to conjecture