Once more he seemed to enwrap her in a look overflowing with tenderness; then returned to Dorot, and took his hand.

—"I bequeath her to you, cousin," said he, moved in the extreme; "no one knows what may happen. Only ... I can trust in your kindly heart, and if ever the child should become an orphan...."

—"Now God preserve her from it!" the sergeant took him up; "but if such misfortune should occur to her, Mathieu, you know well that she would become Michael's sister."

—"Thanks!" abruptly broke in the seaman; "that's exactly what I was longing to hear.... And now I set out calmly. I am prepared for every thing."

—"But you shan't set out thus, shivering and pulled down," objected the sergeant; "you must take something to cheer up your spirits."

—"Nothing," said Ropars, eagerly; "you have given me all that can give me strength, in giving me the assurance that the child will not remain unaided. Providence will do the rest. Your hand! and good-bye till we meet—here, or elsewhere!"

They heartily embraced; then Mathieu went down to the shore, and committed himself again to the waters. Although the tide had begun to rise, the passage was effected without overmuch danger. He reached, unharmed, the high rock of Trébéron which the floodtide had already encroached upon, and he ran to the place where he had left Geneviève. She was there no longer.

Astonished that she should not have awaited his return, he rapidly mounted the foot-path, reached his door, and called aloud. There was no reply. The darkness did not allow him to distinguish any thing. He groped his way to the hearth, and threw around him the trembling light of a lamp hurriedly lighted. Attracted to the alcove, his glance soon made out, beside the white form of the dead sewed up in its shroud, the outline of another and a larger form, extended without moving. Mathieu approached in agony. It was Geneviève in a swoon.

IV.

Thanks to the Surgeon's skill, Ropars' wife at length regained her senses; but it was to fall into convulsive spasms, followed by the annihilation of all her faculties. The whole day passed without her shaking off the torpor that belonged at once to sleep and to death. One might have said that so many shocks had snapped asunder her existence, and that the quiverings of life, still flitting across her state of languor, were but the movements of a machine on the point of stopping. However, towards evening, the fever declared itself. The patient passed insensibly from lethargy to delirious agitation; she did but recognize Mathieu at intervals; and falling back, with her senses, upon her sorrows, she soon fell again into wandering.