Unable to bear any longer the reaction of these feelings, and the internal vibration of such silence, I called up the women. On entering the room, they broke out into repeated exclamations of surprise at the sight of a resurrection which appeared to them a miracle. At the same moment the doctor made his appearance. He prescribed repose and an infusion of certain plants of the mountain which allay the irregular movements of the heart. He reassured every one by telling us that the lady's malady was one of youth, produced by excessive sensibility, and which time would mitigate; that it was but a superabundance of life, although it often wore the appearance of death, and was never fatal, except when inward grief or some moral cause changed its character into one of habitual melancholy, or an unconquerable distaste to life. While some of the women went out into the fields, to gather the samples ordered by the doctor, and others were ironing out her damp clothes in the lower room, I left the house to wander alone among the ruins of the old Abbey. XIV. But my heart was too full of its own emotions to feel interested in the anchorites of the Abbey. The enthusiasm and self-denial of the early monasteries had subsided into a profession; and at a later period their lives, unlinked with those of their fellow-beings, had fruitlessly evaporated within these cloisters, and left no trace behind. I felt no regret as I stood upon their tombs, but only wondered, as I noted how speedily Nature seizes on the empty dwellings and deserted abodes of man, and how superior is the living architecture of shrubs and briers, waving ivy, wall-flowers and creeping plants, throwing their mantle on the ruined walls, to the cold symmetry of stones, or the lifeless ornaments of the chiselled monuments of men.