"You must compose yourself before I can speak calmly to you, my daughter--before you can even understand what I shall say to you.

I will not even speak to you till you are again seated, and then I will tell you everything.
There--remember now, I will tell you everything as it happened, and, as far as I know, all that did happen.

You must summon up your courage, my children, and show yourself worthy to have been the wife and sister of that great man whom you loved so well." "He is dead!" said Marie, speaking for the first time, and almost in a whisper.

"I know now that it is so," and she threw herself into her sister's lap, and embraced her knees.
The priest did not contradict her, but commenced a narrative, which he intended to convey to his listeners exactly the same impressions which were on his own mind.

In this, however, he failed.