The soubrette, however, made up for her mistress's want of appetite, and ate plentifully of all that was set before her. When she had done, Isabel bade her retire to rest, and, at the same time, ordered the food to be taken away. The soubrette at once obeyed, and left the room; and the kind-hearted hostess remarking that the young lady had taken nothing, was pressing her at least to drink some wine, for the excellence of which she vouched, when Isabel de Brienne, whose face was towards the window, gave a slight start, and replied almost immediately, "No, my good dame; the first thing that will do me good is a little quiet reflection. I think," she added, "that I saw just now a good monk, seemingly a pilgrim by the scallop on his shoulder pass close to the window, as if to sit down on the bench at the door. Give him that dish of meat, and tell him a lady sent it who begs a prayer of him, as she has been in some trouble since last night." The worthy dame of the cabaret gladly took up the dish with her own hands and carried it forth to the wanderer. She then returned to remove some other things, and Isabel asked, somewhat eagerly, "What did he say?" "Oh! madam, he sent you thanks," replied the hostess, "and took out a rosary, which he said had hung up at Loretto for many years, and began immediately to repeat as many paters and aves as would cost a score of crowns from our parish priest." "Did he say nothing else?" asked Isabel, with a somewhat disappointed look. The hostess replied in the negative, and shortly after left the young lady alone to repose. A deeper shade of melancholy then came over her. She sat and leaned her head upon her hand, and again and again the thoughts of her own situation, and that of him she loved, came across her mind with the painful, fruitless reiteration which is the most wearying, perhaps, of all the forms of care. To know and feel that activity and exertion are absolutely necessary; to have hope only just sufficient to deprive one of the courage of despair; to believe that there is a possibility of changing our situation, yet not to know how that change can be by any means effected, how exertion should be directed, or where hope would guide; such is the state into which, from time to time, we fall in our passage through life, and stand like men in one of those thick, impervious mists which are not absolutely darkness, but which are worse than darkness itself, from not being, like it, dissolvable by light.