But
nowhere was this contrast so keen as in their domestic arrangements.
The bleak apartments, the campbed, the iron washstand, and the rough
cuisine contrasted sadly with the magnificence of their father's
splendid mansion in Paris. No wonder our young heroines wept when
alone over the memories of the past.
Charles and Henry kept together; they avoided all society; they loved
to ramble along the beautiful beach that ran for some miles on the
north side of the town, and there, in floods of tears, seek relief
for their broken hearts. Oh! how memory will on these occasions
wake up the happy past lost and gone, and the wicked past yet to be
atoned for. What heart weighted with the agony of remorse will not
feel the sting of guilt more keen in the rememberance of the blissful
days of innocence and childhood? Many a blue wave has wrapt in its
icy shroud the child of misfortune who was unable to bear the shame
and reproof of her own conscience. It was in the recollection of
virtuous childhood that Charles and Henry felt their greatest sorrows.
Every tender admonition of their dying mother; the instruction of the
aged abbe who prepared them for their first confession and communiun;
and the piety and noble example of their little brother, Louis Marie,
who had fled in his childhood from the world they now hated, were
subjects often brought up in their lonely rambles.
At night Charles would often awake with frightful dreams.
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