[Footnote 7: 'True, my dear friend, true! thy history, thy misfortunes, can never be terrible, never be lacerating like mine! Thou hast not yet known the bliss of being a mother;--how, then, canst thou have experienced the most overwhelming of calamities! a suffering that admits of no description! a woe that makes all others seem null--the loss of a being pure, spotless as a cherub--and wholly our own!'] The fond embraces, and fast flowing tears of Ellis, evinced the keen sensibility with which she participated in the sorrows of this afflicted mother, whom she strove to draw away from the fatal spot; reiterating the most urgent enquiries upon every other subject, to attract her, if possible, to yet remaining, to living interests. But these efforts were utterly useless. 'Restons, restons ou nous sommes!' she cried: 'c'est ici que je te parlerai; c'est ici que je t'ecouterai; ici, ou je passe les seuls momens que j'arrache a la misere, et au travail. Ne crois pas que de pleurer est ce qu'il y a le plus a craindre! Oh! qu'il ne t'arrive jamais de savoir que de pleurer, meme sur le tombeau de tout ce qui vous est le plus cher, est un soulagement, un delice, aupres du dur besoin de travailler, la mort dans le coeur, pour vivre, pour exister, lorsque la vie a perdu toutes ses charmes!'[8] [Footnote 8: 'Here, here let us stay! 'tis here I can best speak to thee! 'tis here, I can best listen;--here, where I pass every moment that I can snatch from penury and labour! Think not that to weep is what is most to be dreaded; oh never mayst thou learn, that to weep--though upon the tomb of all that has been most dear to thee upon earth, is a solace, is a feeling of softness, nay of pleasure, compared with the hard necessity of toiling, when death has seized upon the very heart, merely to breathe, to exist, after life has lost all its charms!'] Seated then upon the monument which was nearest to the little grave, Gabriella related the principal events of her life, since the period of their separation. These, though frequently extraordinary, sometimes perilous, and always touchingly disastrous, she recounted with a rapidity almost inconceivable; distinctly, nevertheless, marking the several incidents, and the courage with which she had supported them: but when, these finished, she entered upon the history of the illness that had preceded the death of her little son, her voice tremblingly slackened its velocity, and unconsciously lowered its tones; and, far from continuing with the same quickness or precision, every circumstance was dwelt upon as momentous; every recollection brought forth long and endearing details; every misfortune seemed light, put in the scale with his loss; every regret seemed concentrated in his tomb!