I received a letter from my mother, who had heard of me at last through Henryet, and who had fallen dangerously ill just as she was starting to join me. She implored me to go to take care of her, and promised to welcome me with gratitude and without reproaches. That letter was a thousand times too gentle and too kind. I bathed it with my tears; but, argue with myself as I would, it seemed to me not what it should be; it was so mild and humble in tone and expression as to be undignified. Must I say it?--it was not the pardon of a noble and loving mother, alas! but the appeal of a sick and bored woman. I started at once and found her dying. She blessed me, pardoned me and died in my arms, requesting me to see that she was buried in a certain dress of which she had been very fond. XXI So much fatigue of body and mind, so much suffering had almost exhausted my sensibility. I hardly wept for my mother; I shut myself up in her room after they had taken her body away, and there I remained, crushed and despondent, for several months, occupied solely in reviewing the past in all its phases, and never bethinking myself to wonder what I should do in the future. My aunt, who had greeted me very coldly at first, was touched by this mute grief, which her character understood better than the more demonstrative form of tears. She looked after my welfare in silence, and saw to it that I did not allow myself to die of hunger. The melancholy aspect of that house, which I had known so cheerful and bright, was well adapted to my frame of mind. I saw the old furniture, which recalled the numberless trivial events of my childhood. I compared that time, when a scratch on my finger was the most terrible catastrophe that could disturb the tranquillity of my family, with the infamous and blood-stained life I had subsequently led. I saw, on the one hand, my mother at the ball, on the other, the Princess Zagarolo dying of poison in my arms, perhaps by my hand. The music of the violins echoed in my dreams amid the shrieks of the murdered Henryet; and, in the seclusion of the prison, where, during three months of agony, I had seemed to hear a sentence of death each day, I saw coming toward me, amid the glare of candles and the perfume of flowers, my own ghost clad in silver crêpe and covered with jewels. Sometimes, tired out by these confused and terrifying dreams, I walked to the window, raised the curtains and looked out upon that city where I had been so happy and so flattered, and on the trees of that promenade where so much admiration had followed my every step. But I soon noticed the insulting curiosity which my pale face aroused. People stopped under my window or stood in groups talking about me, almost pointing their fingers at me. Then I would step back, drop the curtains, sit down beside my mother's bed and remain there until my aunt came with her silent face and noiseless step, took my arm and led me to the table. Her manner toward me at that crisis