Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 344: what you’re looking at

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

336 HER ROYAL LOVER. By a happy privilege of Heaven, almost for once to this poor unfortunate, he was one of those priests too rare, alas! gentle and merciful. This man, whose race, like the good in all things, seems to be extinguished, remained a long time with his penitent ; the unction of his indulgent and compassionate language fortified this fainting soul, to which only a little love had been necessary to attach it anew to existence. But life seemed to retire gradually from this body so enfeebled, her health changed day by day. Crushed by disquietude, sleep obstinately fled from her poor eyes swollen by tears. The months, however, were flowing; thus, like the erief in her soul, winter was gradually invading the earth. Hitherto the luxuriant vegetation of the environing hills had lent some gayety to the retreat, wherein Najeska Ivanowna had come to bury her shame and her outrage. Now this immense park, surrounded by thick and high walls, offered nothing but a dismal spectacle. The long avenues, so shady still, since some days now have presented nothing but the aspect of a forest of trees with long branches despoiled of their leaves, and which appear like so many skeletons raising their arms toward Heaven to demand the aid and succor for this nature that death seems to embrace. It is in one of these somber and long alleys that Najeska Ivanowna loves to come and lose herself. In this solitude where the icy wind somewhat re- freshed her brow, burning with fever, in the pro- found quietude of these woods with their trees half denuded by autumn, where sometimes in the great silence, according to the sublime expression of Byron, “the winds even retained their breath,” she GEomichooks.com