Page:Tales of the Dead.djvu/84

 bably occupied Florentina before their arrival was the Canticle on Death. The three friends separated, overcome and almost weeping, as if they were never to meet again.

Amelia and Maria awaited with the greatest impatience the hour of returning to Florentina.—They embraced her with redoubled satisfaction, for she seemed to them more gay than usual.

“My dear girls,” said she to them, “pardon, I pray you, my abstraction of this morning. Depressed by having passed so bad a night, I thought myself on the brink of the grave; and fancied it needful to make up my accounts in this world, and prepare for the next. I have made my will, and have placed it in the magistrate’s hands: however, since I have taken a little repose this afternoon, I find myself so strong, and in such good spirits, that I feel as if I had escaped the danger which threatened me.”

“But, my dear,” replied Maria, in a mild yet affectionate tone of reproach, “how could one sleepless night fill your mind with such gloomy thoughts?”

“I agree with you on the folly of permitting it so to do; and had I encouraged sinister thoughts, that dreadful night would not have been the sole cause, for it found me in such a frame of mind that its influence was not at all necessary to add to