entrust that which was dearest to her to the Lord; and for a long
while she prayed, with uplifted eyes and a face wet with tears.
The city was sleeping; some customs officials were taking the air;
and the water kept pouring through the holes of the dam with a
deafening roar. The town clock struck two.

The parlour of the convent would not open until morning, and
surely a delay would annoy Madame; so, in spite of her desire to
see the other child, she went home. The maids of the inn were just
arising when she reached Pont-l'Evêque.

So the poor boy would be on the ocean for months! His previous
trips had not alarmed her. One can come back from England and
Brittany; but America, the colonies, the islands, were all lost in
an uncertain region at the very end of the world.

From that time on, Félicité thought solely of her nephew. On warm
days she feared he would suffer from thirst, and when it stormed,
she was afraid he would be struck by lightning. When she harkened
to the wind that rattled in the chimney and dislodged the tiles on
the roof, she imagined that he was being buffeted by the same
storm, perched on top of a shattered mast, with his whole body
bent backward and covered with sea-foam; or,--these were
recollections of the engraved geography--he was being devoured by
savages, or captured in a forest by apes, or dying on some lonely
coast. She never mentioned her anxieties, however.

Madame Aubain worried about her daughter.

The sisters thought that Virginia was affectionate but delicate.