Benedict pressed her to his heart and broke into sobs. "How weak you are!" said she. "Look how calm _he_ is; so calm that one would think he was happy." And as Benedict was about to answer, she added: "Go, go; to-morrow at eight." * * * * * As Helen had foretold, the night was stormy; with morning a terrible tempest broke out; rain fell in torrents, accompanied by such flashes of lightning as are only seen in storms that announce or cause great misfortunes. At six o'clock the women who were to perform the last offices for Karl arrived. Helen had looked out the finest sheets she could find, and had spent a part of the night in embroidering them with Karl's monogram and her own. Then, when her pious task was completed she did as she had said, lay down beside Karl on his bed and encircled by the double row of lighted candles, slept with as sound a sleep as though she were already in her grave. The two women, knocking at the door, awoke her. Seeing them come in, the material aspect of death was forcibly presented to her, and she could not abstain from shedding tears. Stolid as these poor creatures who live by the services that they render to the dead generally are, when they saw the young girl so beautiful, so adorned, so pale, they could not help feeling an emotion unknown to them until then. They trembled as they took the sheets from Helen's hands and asked her to withdraw while they fulfilled their funeral office. Helen uncovered Karl's face, over which the two Ministers of Fate had already thrown the shroud, kissed his lips, murmured into his ear some words that the women did not hear, then, addressing one of them, said: "I am going to pray for my husband in the Church of Notre Dame de la Croix. If between now and eight o'clock a young man named Benedict comes here, please give him this note." She drew from her bosom a paper already folded, sealed, and addressed to Benedict, and went away. The storm was roaring in all its violence. At the door she found Lenhart's carriage and Lenhart himself. He was astonished to see her coming out so early, dressed in so elegant a costume; but when she had directed him to the church of Notre Dame de la Croix, to which he had driven her two or three times before, he understood that she was going to pray at her usual shrine. Helen entered the church. The day was so dark that it would have been impossible to find one's way if the flashes of lightning had not shot their snakes of fire through the coloured panes.