He shrieked his despair aloud, he was half mad, he
wished to kill himself, saying that he was the murderer and that he ought
to have prevented Rose from so rashly riding home through the storm! He
had to be led away and watched for fear of some fresh misfortune. His
sudden frenzy had gone to every heart; sobs burst forth and lamentations
arose from the woful parents, from the brothers, the sisters, from the
whole of stricken Chantebled, which death thus visited for the first
time.
Ah, God! Rose on that bed of mourning, white, cold, and dead! She, the
fairest, the gayest, the most loved! She, before whom all the others were
ever in admiration--she of whom they were so proud, so fond! And to think
that this blow should fall in the midst of hope, bright hope in long life
and sterling happiness, but ten days before her wedding, and on the
morrow of that day of wild gayety, all jests and laughter! They could
again see her, full of life and so adorable with her happy youthful
fancies--that princely reception and that royal procession. It had seemed
as if those two coming weddings, celebrated the same day, would be like
the supreme florescence of the family's long happiness and prosperity.
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