He brought us orders to change our residence; within three days we were to join other condemned persons, and be removed with them four hundred leagues further north.
Thus, after fifteen years of exile, they redoubled in cruelty towards your mother." "Why did they thus torment her ?" "One would think that some evil genius was at work against her.

A few days later, the traveller would no longer have found us at Milosk; and if he had joined us further on, it would have been too far for the medal and papers to be of use--since, having set out almost immediately, we shall hardly arrive in time at Paris.

'If they had some interest to prevent me and my children from going to France,' said your mother, 'they would act just as they have done.

To banish us four hundred leagues further, is to render impossible this journey, of which the term is fixed.' And the idea overwhelmed her with grief." "Perhaps it was this unexpected sorrow that was the cause of her sudden illness." "Alas! no, my children; it was that infernal cholera, who arrives without giving you notice--for he too is a great traveller--and strikes you down like a thunderbolt.

Three hours after the traveller had left us, when you returned quite pleased and gay from the forest, with your large bunches of wild-flowers for your mother, she was already in the last agony, and hardly to be recognized.