Fly the Fiend of Care.
Son of Sin and Sorrow
Despair by earth was given;
Child of the bright to-morrow,
Hope was born of Heaven.
What could it mean? Marie de Clairvaut asked herself. The words seemed directly addressed to her, and applicable to her own situation: yet the voice, as far as she could judge, she had never heard before. But still every note, every word, appeared to counsel hope. "Can I have been deceived?" she thought. "Can the Abbé de Boisguerin and Gaspar de Montsoreau have combined for their own dark purposes to cheat me, to induce me to believe that the one I love so well is dead?"
But, alas no! The Abbé had left, inclosed in his own, the brief note which he had received from Paris, announcing the event, and that note bore every appearance of being an ordinary matter of business, passing regularly through the post-office of the capital. Could the song that she had heard, she asked herself, again--could it have been accidental; could it have been sung at that moment through one of those strange combinations, which sometimes arise out of entirely indifferent circumstances, to give zest to our joy, or poignancy to our sorrow? She determined, if possible, to ascertain; and raising her voice a little above its ordinary tone, she said, "Who is there? To whom do you sing?"
She did not seem to have made herself heard, however, for a moment after the same voice demanded, "Is there any one that listens?"
"Yes, yes!" she exclaimed, eagerly, "I listen; speak on!"
"Well then, hearken," said the voice, and again a new air and a new song began.