I did not see her before going to bed, but I expected her early the next morning, when lo! instead of her pretty face brightening my eyes, I see standing before me a fat, ugly servant-girl! I enquire after the gatekeeper's family, but her answer is given in the peculiar dialect of the place, and is, of course, unintelligible to me.
I wonder what has become of Lucie; I fancy that our intimacy has been found out, I fancy that she is ill--dead, perhaps.

I dress myself with the intention of looking for her.

If she has been forbidden to see me, I think to myself, I will be even with them all, for somehow or other I will contrive the means of speaking to her, and out of spite I will do with her that which honour prevented love from accomplishing.

As I was revolving such thoughts, the gate-keeper comes in with a sorrowful countenance.

I enquire after his wife's health, and after his daughter, but at the name of Lucie his eyes are filled with tears.
"What! is she dead ?" "Would to God she were!" "What has she done ?" "She has run away with Count Daniel's courier, and we have been unable to trace her anywhere." His wife comes in at the moment he replies, and at these words, which renewed her grief, the poor woman faints away.