How cold, dark, and gloomy it seems! The sky also has gone into mourning.

Since my arrival in this neighborhood, and in spite of the season, I had seen none but summer days and nights.
To-night a cold autumnal storm has burst over the valley; the wind howls among the ruins, blowing off fragments that fall heavily upon the ground.
A driving rain is pattering against my window-panes.

It seems to me as if it were raining tears! Tears! my heart is overflowing with them--and not a single one will rise to my eyes.

And yet, I have prayed, I have long prayed to God--not, my friend to that untangible God whom we pursue in vain beyond the stars and the worlds, but the only true God, truly kind and helpful to suffering humanity, the God of my childhood, the God of that poor woman! Ah! I wish to think now only of my approaching meeting with you, the day after to-morrow, dear friend, and perhaps before this letter-- * * * * * Come, Paul! If you can leave your mother, come, I beseech you, come to uphold me.

God's hand is upon me! I was writing that interrupted line when, in the midst of the confused noises of the tempest, I fancied I heard the sound of a voice, of a human groan.