me! Will he prevent me from flinging myself into the sea?--will he
prevent me from following her by swimming? The sea cannot be more fatal
to me than the land. Since I cannot live with her, at least I will
die before her eyes, far from you. Inhuman mother!--woman without
compassion!--may the ocean, to which you trust her, restore her to you
no more! May the waves, rolling back our bodies amid the shingles
of this beach, give you in the loss of your two children, an eternal
subject of remorse!"

At these words, I seized him in my arms, for despair had deprived him
of reason. His eyes sparkled with fire, the perspiration fell in great
drops from his face; his knees trembled, and I felt his heart beat
violently against his burning bosom.

Virginia, alarmed, said to him,--"Oh, my dear Paul, I call to witness
the pleasures of our early age, your griefs and my own, and every thing
that can for ever bind two unfortunate beings to each other, that if I
remain at home, I will live but for you; that if I go, I will one day
return to be yours. I call you all to witness;--you who have reared me
from my infancy, who dispose of my life, and who see my tears. I swear
by that Heaven which hears me, by the sea which I am going to pass, by
the air I breathe, and which I never sullied by a falsehood."

As the sun softens and precipitates an icy rock from the summit of
one of the Appenines, so the impetuous passions of the young man were
subdued by the voice of her he loved. He bent his head, and a torrent of
tears fell from his eyes. His mother, mingling her tears with his,
held him in her arms, but was unable to speak. Madame de la Tour, half
distracted, said to me, "I can bear this no longer. My heart is quite
broken. This unfortunate voyage shall not take place. Do take my son