Corilla received a
pension from Russia. Russia has always promptly and liberally paid those
who have sold themselves and rendered services to her. Russia is very
rich, and can always send so many thousands of her best and noblest to
work in the mines of Siberia, that she can never lack means for paying
her spies and agents.
THE RUSSIAN OFFICER
With Carlo's death, Natalie had lost her last friend; with the stolen
money and diamonds, Marianne was robbed of her last pecuniary means. But
Natalie paid no attention to Marianne's lamentations. What cared she for
poverty and destitution--what knew she of these outward treasures, of
this wealth consisting in gold and jewels? Natalie knew only that she
had been robbed of a noble, spiritual possession--that they had murdered
the friend who had consecrated himself to her with such true and devoted
love, and, weeping over his body, she dedicated to him the tribute of a
tear of the purest gratitude, of saddest lamentation.
But so imperfect is the world that it often leaves no time for
mourning--that in the midst of our sorrow it causes us to hear the
prosaic voices of reality and necessity, compelling us to dry our eyes
and turning our thoughts from painfully-sweet remembrances of a lost
happiness to the realities of practical life.
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