Page:Clermont - Roche (1798, volume 2).djvu/73

ling upon every Saint in heaven to preserve her, bore the fainting Caroline into it, the sailors crowded in numbers after them, and it almost directly upset. The shock of that moment separated Bertrand and Caroline for ever in this world,—the waves cast him upon a rock, from whence, almost lifeless, he was taken up by some fisherman and conveyed to a hut; here his friends, whom the expectation of his arrival had drawn to the coast, discovered him. Their care, their assiduity, soon restored his senses—but with what horrors was that restoration accompanied,—the deepest moans, the most piercing, the most frantic cries, were all, for a long time, he had the power of uttering: he then insisted on being taken to the waterside, and here attention alone prevented his committing an act of desperation, by plunging himself amidst the waves which had entombed his love! one day and one night, he sought her on the "sea beat shore;" the second morning her body was discovered on the strand; but how altered, by the