I should not have permitted him to depart in that disposition; but, as soon as I saw him weep and heard your endearing name come from his lips with so much tenderness, I was no longer in apprehensions for his life; for nothing is less tender than despair. The soft emotions of his heart now dictated an objection which I did not foresee. He spoke to me of the condition in which you lately suspected yourself to be; protesting he would rather die a thousand deaths than abandon you to those perils that threatened you. I took care to say nothing about the accident of your fall; telling him only that your expectations had been disappointed, and that there were no hopes of that kind. To which he answered with a deep sigh, there will remain then no living monument of my happiness; it is gone, and---- Here his heart seemed too full for expression. After this, it remained only for me to execute the latter part of your commission; and for which I did not think, after the intimacy in which you lived, that any preparation or apology was necessary. I mildly reproached him, therefore, for the little care he had taken of his affairs; telling him that you feared it would be long before he would be more careful, and that in the mean time you commanded him to take care of himself for your sake, and to that end to accept of that small present which I had to make him from you. He seemed neither offended at the offer, nor to make a merit of the acceptance; telling me only that you well knew nothing could come from you that he should not receive with transport; but that your precaution was superfluous: a little house, which he had sold at Grandson, the remains of his small patrimony, having furnished him with more money than he ever had at any one time in his life. Besides, added he, I possess some talents from which I can always draw a subsistence. I shall be happy to find, in the exercise of them, some diversion from my misfortunes; and, since I have seen the use to which Eloisa puts her superfluities, I regard it as a treasure sacred to the widow and the orphan, whom humanity will never permit me to neglect. I reminded him of his former journey to the Valois, your letter, and the preciseness of your orders. The same reasons, said I, now subsist----The same! interrupted he, in an angry tone. The penalty of my refusal then, was never to see her more; if she will permit me now to stay, I will use it on those conditions. If I obey, why does she punish me? If I do not, what can she do worse than banish me?----The same reasons! repeated he, with some impatience. Our union then was just commenced; it is now at an end; and I part from her perhaps for ever; there is no longer any connection between us, we are going to be torn asunder. He pronounced these last words with such an oppression of heart that I trembled with the apprehensions of his relapsing into that disposition of mind, out of which I had taken so much pains to extricate him. I affected