The Steam-Packet: A Tale of the River and the Ocean — page 154: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE STEAM PACKET. 113 And Marie remembered the fate of that father whom her fall from virtue had sent in sorrow to the grave before his time; and the broken heart of that kind mother, who, when the partner of her youth had gone, would not linger upon the way ;—and then she thought of her child—that well-beloved boy, whose corpse, with the mark of the murderer’s fingers upon it, was interred in the cold earth beneath the very recess in which it breathed its last. : But the capability of 2 calm though intensely melancholy meditation, upon any subject infused comparative tranquillity to her mind; and its delirium and ravings ceased. Misfortunes were not, however, with her, destined to have a long interval between them. A few days after Count Hyacinth’s departure from Saint Omers, a letter was received by De Renal from the unfortunate priest, who had been arrested at Calais, to which port he was compelled by circumstances to fly. He had been condemned to death by one of the summary tribunals of the period; and the letter received by De Renal had been written only an hour previous to the execution of that sentence. © The archdeacon was no more; and a frenzied joy filled the soul of the surgeon, when he read the last mandates of him whose departure to another world seemed the removal of an important ebstacle to the happiness of De Renal in this. He shut himself up in his chamber—that chamber which the generosity of the priest had filled with every comfort —and literally laughed aloud in the wildness of his delight. Then he bethought himself of all that still remained for him to perform ; and he hurried to communicate the appalling tidings to Marie. She re- ceived the announcement with a dull and dumb despair, but without much surprise: a presentiment—in which she firmly believed—had already told her that she was destined to meet her lover never more in this life. Weeks flew away—months rolled past; fr a year elapsed since the death of Count Hyacinth Saint Honoré upon the scaffold. Marie had recovered her composure ; but her happiness was gone never to return. And yet—for she was still surpassingly beautiful—De Renal had dared to talk of love to that crushed and broken heart, and to plead his cause to that soul whose single niche was filled with the image of the departed—an image, an idol, which she worshipped with a fervour more enthusiastic than that shown towards her God. For some time Marie did not comprehend the meaning of the impassioned language of the surgeon; and at length, when a perpetual recurrence to the same subject, accompanied by increasing ardour, compelled her to pay attention to his addresses, she treated him with contempt. At r (EONMIE OOOL<S (E(0)