Here I am, then, back in my cell. How cold, dark, and gloomy it seems! The sky also has gone into mourning. Since my arrival in this neighborhood, and in spite of the season, I had seen none but summer days and nights. To-night a cold autumnal storm has burst over the valley; the wind howls among the ruins, blowing off fragments that fall heavily upon the ground. A driving rain is pattering against my window-panes. It seems to me as if it were raining tears! Tears! my heart is overflowing with them--and not a single one will rise to my eyes. And yet, I have prayed, I have long prayed to God--not, my friend to that untangible God whom we pursue in vain beyond the stars and the worlds, but the only true God, truly kind and helpful to suffering humanity, the God of my childhood, the God of that poor woman! Ah! I wish to think now only of my approaching meeting with you, the day after to-morrow, dear friend, and perhaps before this letter-- * * * * * Come, Paul! If you can leave your mother, come, I beseech you, come to uphold me. God's hand is upon me! I was writing that interrupted line when, in the midst of the confused noises of the tempest, I fancied I heard the sound of a voice, of a human groan. I rushed to my window; I leaned outside to pierce the darkness, and I discovered lying upon the drenched soil a vague form, something like a white bundle. At the same time, a more distinct moan rose up to me. A gleam of the terrible truth flashed through my brain like a keen blade. I groped through the darkness as far as the door of the mill; near the threshold, stood a horse bearing a side-saddle. I ran madly around to the other side of the ruins, and within the inclosure situated beneath the window of my cell, and which still retains some traces of the former cemetery of the monks, I found the unhappy creature. She was there, sitting on an old tomb-stone, as if overwhelmed, shivering in all her limbs under the chilling torrent of rain which a pitiless sky was pouring without interruption over her light party-dress. I seized her two hands, trying to raise her up. "Ah! unhappy child! what have you done!" "Yes, most unhappy!" she murmured, in a voice as faint as a breath. "But you are killing yourself." "So much the better--so much the better!" "You cannot remain there! Come!--" I saw that she was unable to stand up alone. "Ah! _Dieu bon! Dieu puissant!_ what shall I do? What's to become of you now? What do you wish with me?"