passing moment. Some of my former military friends in the garrison came to me, and would have introduced me to certain of the English officers with whom they had formed an acquaintance. I told them I wished for no society, I had renounced war, and wanted neither to have any part in its movements, to hear anything of its fortunes, or to continue any intimacy with its professors. They stared at me, and one laughed in my face, when I made this blunt declaration. I left them, and they spread a report that I was mad.

66

Night by night I paced the environs of the convent, still hoping that my wife would find some means of conveying to me a word or a line-but no, I received neither. Gradually I became convinced that I had nothing to hope, unless from some desperate act. I thought of the Indians on my estate. I went to one of their villages in Rougemont, and succeeded in buying the services of six of their stoutest men. We hastened to Quebec, and I presented myself at the door of the St. Clare convent, followed by them. An aged sister inquired our pleasure; she was silenced by threats; and the Red-men burst into the interior of the building, raising their horrible war-whoop. My heart was full of one name-one image.

"Marie!-Marie!' I cried; my voice rang through the cloisters, and I heard her shrill responsive cry. That fired me-I felt as if I could have driven back a world of giants if they had attempted to hinder me from reaching her.

"Marie !-Marie!' I again called louder than before; again I heard her thrilling cry. That sound was repeated nearer-and still nearer-and then she was

locked in my arms. Gracious Father of spirits! what were my pangs to see her a mere skeleton !-wasted to skin and bone!-her delicate frame ill-protected from the bitter cold of the period by sackcloth merely !-her head shaven!-her eyes red, dilated, and swelled!-her cheeks hollow and stained with the traces of many tears! -her hands-but I cannot bear to dwell on the frightful alteration I saw in her! Yet I would have you know the truth, only an instant was she in my arms-but in that instant she had shown me the marks of the terrible penances to which she was condemned, and had conveyed to me in a few frantic words the whole of her unexampled sufferings.

on coarse cakes and my prison, I lie with

"I live, my Louis,' said she, water; in a stone cell, which is scarce any thing to cover me on the damp ground. And oh, how horrible are my nights! I am kept barefoot; and when I cry out for you, and implore for mercy, I am answered with penance. But it would soon have ended if you had not come to take me away. I have suffered one deed of barbarity which it was not possible I could long have outlived. I will not tell you now what it is-oh, my precious love! I dare not!-if I did, you would rave so loud, that heaven would send its lightnings down to avenge us!'

Is there any one

"The noise of conflict succeeded. in the convent who can fight? I abruptly asked of Marie. She replied, I heard the nuns talking outside my cell of soldiers who had volunteered to guard it.' She stood listening with her hand to her ear, then clinging to me wildly, cried, in a loud voice- Take me away, Louis!-oh, take me from this den of cruelty!' I

caught her up and reached the outer door, but started back on finding a bayonet presented to my breast.

"Yield her, or you are a dead man!' cried the soldier who opposed my progress. Marie griped my shoulders, and in distraction implored me not to forsake her.

"Be calm, my precious wife!' I exclaimed: we will never part more!-mine you are, and, by eternal truth, I will never again quit you but in death!' When I would have gone forwards the soldier repeated his demand. I tried expostulation with him-entreaty—but he was deaf.

“She is a nun-yield her or die!' he repeated. I put Marie from me, and sprang on him with such violence as to throw him down. While we struggled on the ground together I called on my wife to fly. Had she done so we might have been happy to this day; but believing that my contest with the armed soldier would terminate fatally for one of us, she remained standing by, insensible to my entreaties, immersed in the mortal anxiety of love. The shouts of the soldier brought three of his comrades to the spot, and I was soon covered with blood from the wounds I gave and received. The Indians, raising their savage whoops, mingled in the affray, carrying me off by main force from the ensanguined spot, mortally wounded as they supposed, while the death-scream of Marie, whom the English soldiers surrounded, penetrated my swooning senses. She had received a sword stroke that had been meant for me, and the life-blood of my murdered wife sprinkled my face.

"There have been times when I have fancied tha the injuries I received in that conflict, and the agony o

my mind, impaired my reason. Certainly I could never think, feel, or act, afterwards, as I had done before. The whole world was as one sepulchre to me, in which my ill-fated love lay entombed, and in which I was a solitary and unpitied mourner. A report was current, that the runaway nun of St. Clare had been privately buried in the neighbourhood of the convent church ; once only I dragged my enfeebled limbs there, and my wretched heart poured itself out on her grave. She lay in unconsecrated ground, but I rather rejoiced at this than otherwise. I was glad that those who tyrannised over her had not the care of her loved ashes. She had been put into the earth by night, without the performance of any burial service, and no stone marked her place of rest. I had the body exhumed, and, bearing it to Rougemont, interred it under that large tree which fronts my chamber window, beneath which, you, my son, have so often seen me sit, when I have been meditating over my wrongs. Yes, there she lies-and for her sake I have remained, and will still remain, in a state of widowhood. No other mistress of Rougemont shall ever, while I live, be heard or seen in this abode of mine. The memory of Marie shall remain here with undivided dominion.

"And strange have been the concatenation of events which have taken place with regard to yourself. Little did I think, when, moved with your infant sufferings, I took you from Baptista Cercy, that it was the child of Marie-my own child—whom I befriended; and as you grew up to maturity, and I set my heart upon you, and made you my heir, little did I imagine that in my exclusive affection, and in my wealth, you were only re

ceiving your proper birthright. You had left me after our unfortunate disagreement, and some little time had passed, wearily enough for me, who felt a second time bereaved, when I received a message from an aged vicaire, that he wished to see me on a matter of extreme importance. As the cottage in which he lay ill was situate beyond my estates, I refused to go, for I had taken a vow, when Marie died, never to quit these limits unless by the most urgent necessity. The vicaire contrived to come to me, and informed me that while Marie was in the convent, only a brief period before her death, she had given birth to a male infant, which had been taken from her by the orders of the superior. When my poor wife found her oppressor inexorable to her prayer that she might retain the child, she entreated that it might be entrusted to no other than Paul and Joan Levi, a young and kind-hearted labourer and his wife living on my estate, at whose cottage, I told you in this sad story, Marie had stopped when first I introduced her into Rougemont. No doubt her hope was that they would make its existence known to me, and that I should receive it beneath my own roof. But her petition was only granted on the cruel condition that the Levi's should never make known to any living person its identity, but should adopt it as their own, to which they were induced to take oath, kneeling before the high altar of St. Clare, and holding each a crucifix. They received from the convent a small sum of money for the maintenance of the infant for one year, and that sum was to be repeated yearly. But in a few months they died suddenly of fever, and the vicaire knew not how it happened that the poor relative of Paul Levi who