Page:Clermont - Roche (1798, volume 2).djvu/185

 ration I could use would mitigate them to you; but what I find it impossible to do, your own reason and religion will, I trust, perform.

"Heaven has been pleased to recall our estimable friend, my dear and lamented benefactress, to itself. The dawn of yesterday saw the seal of death impressed upon those eyes which scarcely ever opened but to cheer her family, or witness some good deeds of her own performing. So short was her illness, so unexpected her dissolution, that I feel myself at times quite bewildered by the shock, and tempted to think, that what has lately happened is but the dream of my own disordered imagination.

"Is she dead? I repeatedly ask myself;—the Countess de Merville dead? she whom but a few days ago I beheld so apparently well and happy? Alas! the gloom of every surrounding object gives a fatal affirmative to those self-questions.

"I wander to her favourite apartments, as if to seek for her, who never more will