Louis engaged, should he not meet him at Madrid, to forward her letter to Don Ferdinand, and to inclose it in one from himself, enforcing her entreaties with his arguments; and giving his thoughts on the subject, as became his relationship to her, and fraternal regard for her happiness. He assured her, he would do it with a scrupulous attention not to irritate the feelings which had excited her lover to deprive him of her sisterly affection. Aware that her self-accusing state of mind, could not bear up against the representation he would fain have made of Ferdinand's entire selfishness in thus binding her, Louis contented himself with advising Alice, as a restitution she owed to her family for all the misery her melancholy and illness had made them suffer, to dismiss as much as possible all painful retrospections; and to console herself with the conviction that she was now re-treading her steps to the path of duty. "Cheer yourself with this thought," said he, "till the tidings shall arrive which will take the seal from your lips. Then you may confess all, and reconciled, by pardon, to your family and yourself, you will again become the happy Alice." She wept as he spoke. But it was no more the stormy grief of despair; she shed the balmy tears of penitence and hope. It was the genial shower upon the thirsty ground. "You have spoken comfort to me, Louis. I have not been so happy, since the dawn of the fatal morning, when my impious adjuration called down these months of misery upon my wretched head.--Oh, if Ferdinand could have guessed this, would he have denied me such a comforter!"