While I was thus lingering on the shore, it seemed as if a mysterious voice invited me to bury myself in the current before me. A terrible struggle took place between my reason, the instinct that restrained me, and the hallucination that kept drawing me nearer the bank. Reason failed me. In a fit of despair, I cast myself into the stream. As soon as I felt the cold water, my reason, my faith, awoke as ardent as in the days of my boyhood. A cry issued from the very depths of my soul: “O Mary, save me!” It would be impossible to tell you with what fervor, what terror, I uttered this short prayer—impossible, also, to express the immense joy that filled my heart when I realized I was saved. But what confusion mingled with this joy—what gratitude, too, what admiration of the designs of God, when I saw it was you who had rescued me at the peril of your life! CHAPTER IX. BROTHER AND SISTER. M. Louis Beauvais had finished his story. “And now,” said Victor, in the cheering, confidential tone of one friend who wishes to encourage another, “what are you going to do?” “That is precisely the question that preoccupies me. In fact, I see no way of solving it. Were you to ask me what I am not going to do, oh! then I should not be embarrassed for a reply. At all events, had I even the means, I should not wish to continue the life I have led. Nor do I any longer desire to escape from the trying position I am in by having recourse to the cowardly, criminal means I took in a moment of madness. Suicide fills me with horror! One must behold death face to face, as I have to-day, to realize how easily a man can deceive himself. I had really arrived at such a state of indifference and insensibility that it seemed as if I had never had any religion; but the terrible thought no sooner sprang up in my soul that I was about to appear before God, than I found myself as sincere a believer as on the day of my first communion. My whole life passed in review before me, and I condemned myself without awaiting the divine sentence. When I recall the inexpressible terror of that moment; when I remember if God had not sent you to my assistance, and that, had it not been for your heroism, I should have been for ever lost, there springs up in my heart a continually increasing gratitude to my heavenly Father, and to you who were the agent of his mercy.” “Then, my friend,” replied Victor gravely, “you will allow me to make one request.” “Consider whatever you would ask of me granted in advance.” “Then, forget the past six or eight years of your life, and become again what you were under your mother’s influence.” “I pledge you my word to do so, and hope by the divine assistance never to break my promise—a promise I make with inexpressible joy. But that is not all. What course do you advise me to take?”