St. Aubert lingered till about three o’clock in the afternoon, and,
thus gradually sinking into death, he expired without a struggle, or a
sigh. Emily was led from the chamber by La Voisin and his daughter, who did
what they could to comfort her. The old man sat and wept with her. Agnes was more erroneously officious. CHAPTER VIII

O’er him, whose doom thy virtues grieve,
Aerial forms shall sit at eve,
and bend the pensive head. COLLINS


The monk, who had before appeared, returned in the evening to offer
consolation to Emily, and brought a kind message from the lady abbess,
inviting her to the convent. Emily, though she did not accept the
offer, returned an answer expressive of her gratitude. The holy
conversation of the friar, whose mild benevolence of manners bore some
resemblance to those of St. Aubert, soothed the violence of her grief,
and lifted her heart to the Being, who, extending through all place and
all eternity, looks on the events of this little world as on the
shadows of a moment, and beholds equally, and in the same instant, the
soul that has passed the gates of death, and that, which still lingers
in the body. “In the sight of God,” said Emily, “my dear father now
exists, as truly as he yesterday existed to me; it is to me only that
he is dead; to God and to himself he yet lives!”

The good monk left her more tranquil than she had been since St. Aubert
died; and, before she retired to her little cabin for the night, she
trusted herself so far as to visit the corpse. Silent, and without
weeping, she stood by its side. The features, placid and serene, told
the nature of the last sensations, that had lingered in the now
deserted frame. For a moment she turned away, in horror of the
stillness in which death had fixed that countenance, never till now
seen otherwise than animated; then gazed on it with a mixture of doubt
and awful astonishment. Her reason could scarcely overcome an
involuntary and unaccountable expectation of seeing that beloved
countenance still susceptible. She continued to gaze wildly; took up
the cold hand; spoke; still gazed, and then burst into a transport of
grief. La Voisin, hearing her sobs, came into the room to lead her
away, but she heard nothing, and only begged that he would leave her. Again alone, she indulged her tears, and, when the gloom of evening
obscured the chamber, and almost veiled from her eyes the object of her
distress, she still hung over the body; till her spirits, at length,
were exhausted, and she became tranquil. La Voisin again knocked at the
door, and entreated that she would come to the common apartment. Before
she went, she kissed the lips of St. Aubert, as she was wont to do when
she bade him good night. Again she kissed them; her heart felt as if it
would break, a few tears of agony started to her eyes, she looked up to
heaven, then at St. Aubert, and left the room. Retired to her lonely cabin, her melancholy thoughts still hovered
round the body of her deceased parent; and, when she sunk into a kind
of slumber, the images of her waking mind still haunted her fancy. She
thought she saw her father approaching her with a benign countenance;
then, smiling mournfully and pointing upwards, his lips moved, but,
instead of words, she heard sweet music borne on the distant air, and
presently saw his features glow with the mild rapture of a superior
being. The strain seemed to swell louder, and she awoke. The vision was
gone, but music yet came to her ear in strains such as angels might
breathe. She doubted, listened, raised herself in the bed, and again
listened. It was music, and not an illusion of her imagination. After a
solemn steady harmony, it paused; then rose again, in mournful
sweetness, and then died, in a cadence, that seemed to bear away the
listening soul to heaven. She instantly remembered the music of the
preceding night, with the strange circumstances, related by La Voisin,
and the affecting conversation it had led to, concerning the state of
departed spirits. All that St. Aubert had said, on that subject, now
pressed upon her heart, and overwhelmed it. What a change in a few
hours! He, who then could only conjecture, was now made acquainted with
truth; was himself become one of the departed! As she listened, she was
chilled with superstitious awe, her tears stopped; and she rose, and
went to the window. All without was obscured in shade; but Emily,
turning her eyes from the massy darkness of the woods, whose waving
outline appeared on the horizon, saw, on the left, that effulgent
planet, which the old man had pointed out, setting over the woods. She
remembered what he had said concerning it, and, the music now coming at
intervals on the air, she unclosed the casement to listen to the
strains, that soon gradually sunk to a greater distance, and tried to
discover whence they came. The obscurity prevented her from
distinguishing any object on the green platform below; and the sounds
became fainter and fainter, till they softened into silence. She
listened, but they returned no more. Soon after, she observed the
planet trembling between the fringed tops of the woods, and, in the
next moment, sink behind them. Chilled with a melancholy awe, she
retired once more to her bed, and, at length, forgot for a while her
sorrows in sleep. On the following morning, she was visited by a sister of the convent,
who came, with kind offices and a second invitation from the lady
abbess; and Emily, though she could not forsake the cottage, while the
remains of her father were in it, consented, however painful such a
visit must be, in the present state of her spirits, to pay her respects
to the abbess, in the evening. About an hour before sunset, La Voisin showed her the way through the
woods to the convent, which stood in a small bay of the Mediterranean,
crowned by a woody amphitheatre; and Emily, had she been less unhappy,
would have admired the extensive sea view, that appeared from the green
slope, in front of the edifice, and the rich shores, hung with woods
and pastures, that extended on either hand. But her thoughts were now
occupied by one sad idea, and the features of nature were to her
colourless and without form. The bell for vespers struck, as she passed
the ancient gate of the convent, and seemed the funereal note for St.
Aubert. Little incidents affect a mind, enervated by sorrow; Emily
struggled against the sickening faintness, that came over her, and was
led into the presence of the abbess, who received her with an air of
maternal tenderness; an air of such gentle solicitude and
consideration, as touched her with an instantaneous gratitude; her eyes
were filled with tears, and the words she would have spoken faltered on
her lips. The abbess led her to a seat, and sat down beside her, still
holding her hand and regarding her in silence, as Emily dried her tears
and attempted to speak. “Be composed, my daughter,” said the abbess in
a soothing voice, “do not speak yet; I know all you would say.