“As she was not of the sisterhood I was allowed to see her daily, and converse with her through the grate, and I need not tell you that I loved her madly. She confessed that her heart was mine, and promised to leave the convent and become my wife. I was now obliged to go on business into Germany. I told Adela that I would be back in eight weeks.
“I wrote to her frequently, and at length despatched a letter naming a day for our meeting. Soon after I had mailed it, I fell on the ice and broke my leg, beside injuring my head so severely that I was unconscious of my own existence for nearly three weeks. As soon as I was sufficiently recovered I wrote an account of the accident to Adela, and continued to write at short intervals until I was able to travel.
“I arrived at home after an absence of four months, and flew to the convent to see my soul’s delight once more. Judge of my agony when I was told that I could not see her, and that she had taken the veil. I felt as if the whole beautiful world had become a miserable chaos, amid the horrors of which I was eternally lost. At length I began to hope. I got a letter conveyed to her, in which I pictured as forcibly as language could, the distraction of my mind, and besought her to give me some consolation. She sent me an agonising reply. She had ever been taught that men were false, and that love was sin. When I failed in my return these precepts were enforced, and she gave them renewed credence. She saw no letter from me afterward, and being urged to join the sisterhood, in her despair and agony consented, and was now lost to me forever. But I could not so resign her. I plead with her that her promise to me being prior made her monastic vows null; and I urged her to elope with me to America.
“She at length gave a reluctant consent. I gathered up a large sum of money, and we soon found ourselves on ship-board, and plying from our native land. Think you that I was then happy? Alas for human hopes and passions! I was in possession of my adored and beautiful Adela, but I was a fugitive from my country, I was fleeing like a felon from my father’s house, and I felt that I had left mourning and bitterness in the places where I should have been diffusing peace and joy. Of the rank and wealth that I had relinquished I thought little, for poverty and contempt had not then taught me to value them. But I was sad even in the hour in which I had attained that for which I would freely have given life itself. Adela and I were united by the chaplain of the ship, on board of which we sailed, but he was a Protestant. Poor Adela scrupled at the validity of a ceremony thus performed; and the prejudices of her education, with the vows she had broken, were persecuting spirits ever torturing her heart, and mixing gall and venom forever with the cup of joy. Her eyes lost their lustre, and her smile was sorrowful; I saw it, and my heart grew sad. I had one hope left, that she would regain her spirits when we should arrive amid the novel and beautiful scenes of the New World; and then I hoped that she would become a Protestant, in which case she would cease to agonise over her monastic vows. The chaplain, at my request, used every argument with her in vain; her distress augmented and ere we had been one month at sea she was attacked by a violent fever.
“Oh! the bitter, dreadful agony with which I watched beside her couch. Her pains of body were intense, but her distress of mind was more terrible still. At length her reason failed her, and her death-bed scene was indeed agony. But as death approached more nearly, her pains remitted, and her phrenzy passed away. She said that she was forgiven, and ready to appear before God, leaning on the mercy of her Redeemer. She besought me to seek His consolations, and bidding me a fond farewell, her young spirit passed away.
“And now what remained to me of all my treasures? I had bartered every thing for her; and a cold and rigid form was all that I had left. Terrible and hideous as death had come to her, I longed to feel his hand upon me also. But he turned from me. I was obliged to live and see my poor Adela cast into the deep sea, almost as soon as her spirit had departed. My misery was now overflowing. I was bereft, and alone in the world. I dared not return to France, for I feared the power of the religion whose sanctuaries I had feloniously invaded. I assumed the name which I and all my descendants bear, and landed in Philadelphia a heart-broken and sorrowing stranger. I was greatly disappointed; for I had been taught to believe America a beautiful paradise, in which wealth and happiness awaited every adventurer who was so fortunate as to set his foot upon its shores. But I learned in time to procure a decent livelihood; the romance of youth was dissipated; I became a reasonable creature; I married your good grandmother with rational expectations, and now I am an old man, surrounded by a numerous progeny, and almost ready to depart in peace. And now girls that I have told you the story of my life, which you have entreated of me so often, I hope you will find instruction in it, and learn to value the frail and evanescent things of time, less than the peace of others, and the approbation of your own mind. Now go, and leave me to seek the repose which agitation of mind occasioned by retracing the scenes of my youth renders so necessary for me.”
THE PARSONAGE GATHERING.
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BY MRS. E. C. STEDMAN.