"’Justine!’ said I, laying down my basket, ’come hither. You never saw such flowers as these for freshness and beauty, and I have been employed the whole day in culling them for you. Here are anemonies, crimson and lilac, and blue and white pinks, carnations, gillyflower, auriculas with eyes of scarlet edged with green, violets as large as lilies, and tulips and roses such as were never before seen in Besançon. Justine! come here, girl. Why, where are you?’ But no Justine answered my call. Her little room, the room in which her mother died, was deserted, and my heart swelled in my breast with an inward presentiment of evil, as I went forth to seek her by the river side. Here I met the steward of Quinsay, Pierre Raoul, a surly fellow, whose addresses she had rejected. He informed me, with what I thought a grin of triumph and malice, that my daughter, with Monsieur Maurice, had just swept through Besançon in a travelling-carriage, and were off for Paris as fast as four horses could take them. As he spoke the earth swam around me, and I saw his lips moving, although I heard not his conclusion; there was a hissing sensation in my ears,—the cords of my heart felt as if riven asunder, and I sunk on the turf at the feet of Pierre. "When I returned to consciousness, he was bathing my brow and hands in the cool water of the river; but he soon left me, and oh! monsieur, what a sense of loneliness and desolation came upon me. That my daughter should desert me thus heartlessly,—that the little creature I had cherished in my bosom should turn upon me and sting me thus! I raved like a madman, and tore the hair from my head and the grass from the earth in handfuls. When this fit passed away, all was silence and stillness around me: the moon was shining brightly in the sky, and silvered the boughs of the trees my own hands had trained, and the petals and buds of the flowers that it had been my delight to attend; but they were unheeded now, and I turned to where appeared, in the strong light and shadow, the old château de Quinsay, with its battlemented towers and elevated turrets. I prayed deeply for my erring Justine, and implored Heaven and the spirit of her mother to sustain me under so heavy a dispensation. I would rather have seen the child of Suzette laid dead by her side, than the dishonoured mistress of Maurice de Mesmai. But my prayers were impious, as I mingled them with the bitterest maledictions upon her accomplished seducer. At the château the servants, some with pity, some with the malice felt by little minds, corroborated the blasting information given me by Pierre Raoul, and that very night I set out for Paris in pursuit of my lost sheep. I set out on foot on my sorrowful pilgrimage, almost heart-broken, and without a sous to defray my expenses by the way. How I reached the capital—a distance of two hundred and thirty-five miles from Besançon—I know not. But He who fed the children of Israel in the desert surely assisted me