To these recitals their children
listened with eager sensibility, and earnestly begged that Heaven would
grant they might one day have the joy of showing their hospitality towards
such unfortunate persons. At length the two families separated and retired
to rest, impatient to meet again the next morning. Sometimes they were
lulled to repose by the beating rains, which fell in torrents upon the roof
of their cottages; and sometimes by the hollow winds, which brought to
their ear the distant murmur of the waves breaking upon the shore. They
blessed God for their personal safety, of which their feeling became
stronger from the idea of remote danger.
"Madame de la Tour occasionally read aloud some affecting history of the
Old or New Testament. Her auditors reasoned but little upon those sacred
books, for their theology consisted in sentiment, like that of nature: and
their morality in action, like that of the gospel. Those families had no
particular days devoted to pleasure, and others to sadness. Every day was
to them a holiday, and all which surrounded them one holy temple, where
they for ever adored an Infinite Intelligence, the friend of human kind. A
sentiment of confidence in his supreme power filled their minds with
consolation under the past, with fortitude for the present, and with hope
for the future. Thus, compelled by misfortune to return to a state of
nature, those women had unfolded in their own bosoms, and in those of their
children, the feelings which are most natural to the human mind, and which
are our best support under evil.
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