evening, with the perfume of the woods and wild flowers wafted on the breeze—­this deep silence, only broken by the murmur of the neighboring rill—­all affected me with one of these passing fits of vague and sweet emotion, which one feels but cannot express.  You well know it, my friend, who, in your solitary walks, in the midst of your immense plains of flowering heath, surrounded by forests of fir trees, often feel your eyes grow moist, without being able to explain the cause of that sweet melancholy, which I, too, have often felt, during those glorious nights passed in the profound solitudes of America.

“But, alas! a painful incident disturbed the serenity of the picture.  Suddenly I heard Dagobert’s wife say to him:  ‘My dear—­you are weeping!’

“At these words, Agricola, Angela, and Magdalen gathered round the soldier.  Anxiety was visible upon every face.  Then, as he raised his head abruptly, one could see two large tears trickle down his cheek to his white moustache.  ‘It is nothing, my children,’ said he, in a voice of emotion ’it is nothing.  Only, to-day is the first of June—­and this day four years—­’ He could not complete the sentence; and, as he raised his hands to his eyes, to brush away the tears, we saw that he held between his fingers a little bronze chain, with a medal suspended to it.  That is his dearest relic.  Four years ago, almost dying with despair at the loss of the two angels, of whom I have so often spoken to you, my friend, he took from the neck of Marshal Simon, brought home dead from a fatal duel, this chain and medal which his children had so long worn.  I went down instantly, as you may suppose, to endeavor to soothe the painful remembrances of this excellent man; gradually, he grew calmer, and the evening was passed in a pious and quiet sadness.

“You cannot imagine, my friend, when I returned to my chamber, what cruel thoughts came to my mind, as I recalled those past events, from which I generally turn away with fear and horror.  Then I saw once more the victims of those terrible and mysterious plots, the awful depths of which have never been penetrated thanks to the death of Father d’A. and Father R., and the incurable madness of Madame de St.-D., the three authors or accomplices of the dreadful deeds.  The calamities occasioned by them are irreparable; for those who were thus sacrificed to a criminal ambition, would have been the pride of humanity by the good they would have done.  Ah, my friend! if you had known those noble hearts; if you had known the projects of splendid charity, formed by that young lady, whose heart was so generous, whose mind so elevated, whose soul so great!  On the eve of her death, as a kind of prelude to her magnificent designs, after a conversation, the subject of which I must keep secret, even from you, she put into my hands a considerable sum, saying, with her usual grace and goodness:  ’I have been threatened with ruin, and it might perhaps come.  What I now confide to you will