Sir Robert, wishing to attend Lord Hay as King James’s ambassador at his audiences in Paris with Henry IV., begged Donne to accompany him. But the poet refused, his wife being at the time near her confinement and in poor health, and saying that “her divining soul boded some ill in his absence.” But Sir Robert growing more urgent, and Donne unwilling to refuse his generous friend a request, at last obtained from his wife a faint consent for a two months’ absence. On the twelfth day the party reached Paris. Two days afterwards Donne was left alone in the room where Sir Robert and other friends had dined. Half an hour afterwards Sir Robert returned, and found Mr. Donne still alone, “but in such an ecstasy, and so altered in his looks,” as amazed him. After a long and perplexed pause, Donne said, “I have had a dreadful vision since I saw you; I have seen my dear wife pass by me twice in this room with her hair hanging about her shoulders and a dead child in her arms;” to which Sir Robert replied, “Sure, sir, you have slept since I saw you, and this is the result of some melancholy dream, which I desire you to forget, for you are now awake.” Donne assured his friend that he had not been asleep, and that on the second appearance his wife stopped, looked him in the face, and then vanished. The next day, however, neither rest nor sleep had altered Mr. Donne’s opinion, and he repeated the story with only a more deliberate and confirmed confidence. All this inclining Sir Robert to some faint belief, he instantly sent off a servant to Drury House to bring him word in what condition Mrs. Donne was. The messenger returned in due time, saying that he had found Mrs. Donne very sad and sick in bed, and that after a long and dangerous labour she had been delivered of a dead child; and upon examination, the delivery proved to have been at the very day and hour in which Donne had seen the vision. Walton is proud of this late miracle, so easily explainable by natural causes; and illustrates the sympathy of souls by the story of two lutes, one of which, if both are tuned to the same pitch, will, though untouched, echo the other when it is played.