"Gentle perhaps, and surely inoffensive, but I repeat melancholy. Why does this sadness continue? Alas, it is the law of God. Do not look at me, I beg you, as on one of those women whom I have seen and of whom I have read, who create imaginary misfortunes for themselves, and deck themselves with ideal suffering and melancholy. I have neither sorrow nor passionate regrets and I do not know the meaning of deception. "My life has passed without storms, but without noise, like the spring which bubbles from the hill. Father and mother have sought to make me happy, and no untimely event has interrupted the course of my life. Melancholy, however, I was born, and will die. That is all. "Listen to me," added she, fixing on Ireneus a look impressed with strange grief and affection. "Heaven which denied me a brother seemed to supply its neglect in yourself. The attachment you evince toward me appeals to my heart, and I will make you a confession. "When I say nothing has troubled my thoughts, I do not say all. There is one impression which to me has been an event, a circumstance, the influence of which I cannot speak of. I wish, however, to ask you, if you believe in presentiments?" "What a question!" replied Ireneus, "no one ever addressed me thus before, and I do not know what to say." "You do not"--said Ebba, with as much evidence of surprise, as if she had said you do not believe in the sun or moon. "I do, and I think this matter plain and evident as the existence of God, to whom we are indebted for all our faculties. God endows us with that intuition of secret events, that species of devotion, sometimes as an act of mercy to prepare us for a misfortune which will overtake us, sometimes in mercy to point out to us the consequences of the concealed peril in which we are engaged.