Page:Clermont - Roche (1798, volume 2).djvu/197

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"I see (said Madame D'Alembert, in the hollow voice of despair, and raising her hands towards heaven) I see that all is over—she is gone, and it is a stroke too heavy for me to bear."

She tottered, and would have fallen, had not some of the attendants timely caught her; they conveyed her into an adjoining apartment, but it was many minutes ere she showed any signs of returning sense. When recovered, instead of heeding Father Bertrand, who hung over her, like the delegate of heaven, to administer compassion, instead of regarding Madeline, who knelt beside her, and whose tears evinced her sympathy in her distress, or the domestics who surrounded her with looks of love and pity: she wildly started up, and demanded whether they had yet interred her mother. When answered in the negative, she insisted on going to her chamber: any opposition Father Bertrand was convinced, would