“Did you hear?”
“No. What?”
“Oh! it was awful. Something like a deep sigh, but so loud and so sad! It came from the room below.”
They listened. Without, the rain was falling in torrents, with the dreary rustling of leaves that makes the country seem so lonely.
“That is only the wind,” said Planus.
“I am sure not. Hush! Listen!”
Amid the tumult of the storm, they heard a wailing sound, like a sob, in which a name was pronounced with difficulty:
“Frantz! Frantz!”
It was terrible and pitiful.
When Christ on the Cross sent up to heaven His despairing cry: ‘Eli, eli, lama sabachthani’, they who heard him must have felt the same species of superstitious terror that suddenly seized upon Mademoiselle Planus.