Forcing herself, then, from the fatal but cherished spot, she must hasten, she said, to her daily labour, lest night should surprise her, without a roof to shelter her head. But Juliet now detained her; clung and wept round her neck, and could not even endeavour to resign herself to the keen woes, and deplorable situation of her friend. She had come over, she said, buoyed up with the exquisite hope of joining the darling companion of her earliest youth; of sharing her fate, and of mitigating her hardships: but this softening expectation was changed into despondence, in discovering her, thus, a prey to unmixt calamity; not alone bowed down by the general evils of revolutionary events; punished for plans in which she had borne no part, and for crimes of which she had not even any knowledge;--not only driven, without offence, or even accusation, from prosperity and honours, to exile, to want, to misery, and to labour; but suffering, at the same time, the heaviest of personal afflictions, in the immediate loss of a darling child; the victim, in all probability, to a melancholy change of life, and to sudden privation of customary care and indulgence! The task of consolation seemed now to devolve upon Gabriella: the feelings of Juliet, long checked by prudence, by fortitude, by imperious necessity; and kept in dignified but hard command; having once found a vent, bounded back to nature and to truth, with a vivacity of keen emotion that made them nearly uncontrollable. Nature and truth,--which invariably retain an elastic power, that no struggles can wholly subdue; and that always, however curbed, however oppressed,--lie in wait for opportunity to spring back to their rights. Her tears, permitted, therefore, at length, to flow, nearly deluged the sad bosom of her friend. 'Helas, ma Julie! soeur de mon ame!' cried Gabriella, 'ne t'abandonne pas a la douleur pour moi! mais parles moi, ma tendre amie, paries moi de ma mere! Ou l'a tu quitte? Et comment? Et a quelle epoque?--La plus digne, la plus cherie des meres! Helas! eloignee de nous deux, comment saura-t-elle se resigner a tant de malheurs?'[11] [Footnote 11: 'Alas, my Juliet! sister of my soul! abandon not myself to sorrow for me! but speak to me, my tender friend, speak to me of my mother! where didst thou leave her? And how? And at what time? The most precious of mothers! Alas! separated from us both,--how will she be able to support such accumulation of misfortunes!']