Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1870-10-07
still more vehemently

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'Look you, is this not as fair face p
This foot and hand as dainty? Is not this
arm as round and this bosom as much like
snow? Wherein do they differ ? But why
do waste breath! Ma mignon Ma mig
n!' and she cast herself down again ano
began her piteous wailing. eyes, thou arr
dead, my darling. These tender limbs arc
stifened and motionless, and these dear
hands will never clasp mine again. and these
white lilies that float near thy side are more
conscious and life-likc than thou! And
these DEAR beautiful ayes-O! I shall &C
mad-wil never unelose again at my call,
and the cold moonbeams gather in thy
bonny hair and wrap thee as in white
shroud, ma mignon
"Help me, ma petite file, to tell him
that the seasons may come and go, and
years roll along until he is three,score, and
his hair as white and his strong frame as
trembling as mine but lie will see bat oac
fair face, and that is thine, now purer and
winter than the moonlight /; that he will hear
but one sweet voice, and that is thine, my
poor child of my child !'
The wretched man could endure no more
Every word was like dagger driven into
his heart. He stopped and bent his body
close to the PROSTATE one, touched the color
less lips with his own The ice chilled him,
and he rushed wildly away, and left the old
woman, as she had requested, "alone with
the dead" But half-hour later his valet
came out from the room with his master--
the one to seek his living bride, the other
the bride of death
The valet found the old women still
moaning and weeping and wringing her
hands, and tenderly lifted the dead girl and
bore her to the nearest house, telling that
she had died suddenly of heart disease while
on her way to seek some friends.
With desperate effort Lavasier managed
to appear cheerful explained, as best suited
him, the interruption and when he started
upon his wedding tour the dead Nathalie,
her grandmother and the valet were also
crossing the ocean. And soon the coffined
dead found an earthly resting beside tho riv-
CT she had loved so well-a resting place in
one of the sunny valleys of her own beau
tiful land
"But lily is her tombstone,
And dew-drop, pure and bright,
Is the epitaph an angel wrote
In the stiffness Of the night.'
A lew years after the first flowers had
bloomed upon the lonely grave, a man
prematurely old, aged before his time, with
the prophetic curse that had been sounded
in his ears upon the banks of tho Mississip-
pi, wandered that way His cold, dead
heart had refused to respond to that Of his
petted, spoiled and fashionable wife, and he
awoke one morning to find his home desert
ed and his name dishonored--the father of
Estelle was dead, the grandmother of Natha-
lie was dead, his valet had robbed him and
aed, and he was left alone with his poverty
and shame
He wandered away in search of the guilty
pair, when vision came to him Of the
dead girl by the little lake, never to leave
him again. Go where he would, be saw
but one pale, sweet face hearken as he
would hear brit one musical voice The
curse that had fallen upon him was being
fulfilled to the end. He reached the desert
cd cottage of his dead love and took up his
abode there, visiting the grave daily. OIL
his wife he knew nothing, for he cared
nothing. His sole employment was to
gather ter-lilies and deck the resting place
Of Nathalie; and one morning he was found
lying dead upon it, with bunch of the
snowy blossoms crushed in his withercd
hands, and smile upon his face, as if the
curse had passed away and his troubled soul
had found peace.