I can bear it, for it can't be worse than I expect.

Is he--is he alive ?" Father Jerome had been in the midst of the hottest part of the battle at Cholet, sometimes encouraging the troops by his words, and at others leading them on by his example, charging at their head, with his huge crucifix lifted high in the air.

He had been close to de Lescure when he fell, and had seen him in his litter after he was carried from the field of battle.

He could, therefore, have said at once that he had seen him alive after the battle was over, but he had no wish to deceive Madame de Lescure; and at the moment of which we are speaking, he most undoubtedly believed that the wound had been fatal, and that her husband was no more.
A musket-ball had entered just below the eye, and making its way downwards, had lodged itself in the back of his neck.

A surgeon had examined the wound before Father Jerome left the army; and though he had not positively said that it would prove mortal, he had spoken so unfavourably of the case, as to make all those who heard him believe that it would be so.
Had Father Jerome expected to see the two nearest and dearest relations of the man whom he thought to be now no more, he would have prepared himself for the difficult task which he would have had to undertake, and no one would have been better able to go through it with feeling, delicacy, and firmness; but such was not the case.