I will not undertake to dwell upon that coenam divorum, as Horace would have described it, nor of the long and confidential talks of that evening, during which Ines, with a countenance radiant as an angel's, sat between her father and me, granting a hand to each. All the dykes and dams of cold formality and dull commonplace had been swept away in the joy of this meeting. The fountains in the deep places in our hearts were broken up. Theodore was possessed of a nature too intrinsically noble and disinterested, to refuse to enter into the fulness of the joy, through any touch of the meanness of jealousy, and seemed as happy as the rest. Such hours are worth an age of the dull indifference of ordinary existence.

At ten an aged priest came in, and we followed him to a chapel fitted up in keeping with the mansion and the place. Fifty domestics, who entered with the confidence of members of the family, shared the service. All joined in the vesper hymn to the accompaniment of an organ. The tones of the voice of Ines went to my heart, and as, during the thanksgiving responses, she folded her hands, apparently returning thanks to God for our visit, her countenance radiated with a celestial brilliance, and I inly determined, that I would vacillate in my thoughts about a union with her no more. We returned to the dining hall, and there, it being late, Ines, wishing us bon repos with the graceful salutation of her country, retired. Montano asked us, if we too, after such a fatiguing journey, chose to retire? For himself he admitted, that he never felt less inclined to sleep. Theodore and I declared ourselves too happy to expect sleep. Refreshments of every kind, coffee, wine, and fruits were prepared, and we reseated ourselves at the table. Excited to unwonted frankness, our host asked us, if we were disposed to listen to some brief passages of his life, which might serve to account for some eccentricities in his deportment, which he had often felt disposed to explain to us. We felt, and expressed the honor, which this unexpected confidence did us.

'There is little,' he resumed, in my history to gratify ordinary curiosity. I am aware, that millions have suffered, perhaps as severely as myself. Some passages may be useful to you, as solemn monitions, as beacons and watchtowers along the shoals of youthful passions. To relate parts of my story inflicts the bitterest humiliation; but this is a penance due, which I have seldom paid. I offer the remembrance and the humiliation as due from me to my Creator, and will relate with the unshrinking and unsparing plainness, which I have used to my confessor.

'I need make no further mention of my family, who are republicans, like myself, except to say, that I am descended, on my mother's side, from what the prejudices of the age called one of the noblest families in France. My father's was one of the most ancient and distinguished in Spain, and not remotely allied to the crown. I was trained to hold all these distinctions in derision by my French master, a man of the rarest endowments, and the only master who won my youthful confidence and respect. He imbued my young mind with the sternest doctrines of the republican school of France. It was a strange germ planted in my young thoughts, that, I an only child of one of the proudest and most ancient families in Europe, should have adopted, as a fixed principle, the absolute equality of mankind with respect to rank and rights, and that I should regard as puerile prejudices most of the prescribed usages of society.

My paternal uncle had been viceroy of Peru, and here acquired those estates, and this among them, which, at an early period of my youth, he left to me on his decease, as the only surviving representative of his family. I was, moreover, heir expectant of the rank and title of my father with one of the first fortunes in Spain. The only hope and pride of the family, I was reared and mismanaged as became such expectations. Arrived at maturity, possessed of all the advantages of birth and fortune, and I have often been told, though you will scarcely believe it, of person, I travelled, and deported myself as one who had nothing to acquire or fear, and ought to have nothing to wish without obtaining. My supple tutor contrived to have no one about me who was not subservient to him, and interested alike in catering for all my passions, and deceiving my parents. Self condemnation does not call on me to withhold the fact, that I possessed some traits of native feeling and unpolluted honor, the germs of which must have been deep laid, or such pernicious influences, such a train of circumstances would have poisoned, and eradicated all, and I should have been utterly left of my good angel. But on my imperious inclinations and passions, no parental discipline, no early training, had imposed the slightest restraint. Being such, I first visited Rome, and had, in addition to all other facilities of introduction to society, that of being a near relative to the Pontiff. Here I tasted pleasure with all the gust of novelty and unsated freshness. Every thing of beauty and voluptuousness seemed formed only for me, and to invite me to indulgence. When the pleasures of Rome began to pall, I hurried to find others of new piquancy in Paris, where I was distinguished in the court of the young and beautiful Marie Antoinette. Here I plunged anew in the gulf, until I was cloyed with Parisian indulgence. I hurried to London, to search for enjoyment and delight in novel forms of licentiousness. Oh! that I could dethrone memory from her seat, and blot all those years from the book of my life! The unchangeable laws of our nature, in their terrible reaction, soon brought satiety, hopeless, and morbid satiety; and the desponding persuasion, that life could offer nothing more, brought with it disgust with every thing, attended with the adder sting of remorse and the scorpion whip of repentance. Such a cloud rose upon the very dawn of one, who seemed born only for enjoyment.

Happily disease and my physician prescribed a rustication in a village remote from London. Charity to a sick young man brought the widow and daughter of the late curate of the village to my bed side. Perhaps I was indebted for this

charitable visit, to the circumstance that the widow was Spanish by birth. Her daughter's name was Ines, and I shall describe her in no other way, than to say, that my Ines is her living transcript. The mother was straitened in her circumstances, and the daughter, secluded as she was, annoyed by admirers of whom no one suited her condition; or, if any one did, he desired not marriage. I was sick and alone, and not bereft of some touches of nature and heart. As a distinguished Spaniard, I easily won the confidence of the mother, who had forgotten neither her country nor religion. She told me her brief story, the only incident of which, belonging to my present narrative, was, that her late husband was chaplain of a British ship of war at Havana, and had there become ac quainted with her, and had married her without the consent of her parents. I bestowed gold; and having won the mother, found little difficulty in gaining the affections of the daughter. I loved, reasoned not, regarded no consequences. Prudence! what could that avail with the headlong passion of a person who had never attempted to curb a single inclination, or denied himself a single indulgence that could be obtained! The easy mother consented, and I married Ines according to the rites of the English church; and, strange to relate, loved her a hundred times more three months after marriage than before. A change came over me, and I wished for nothing more than that quiet dream of secluded enjoyment with Ines. One year I thus passed in a happiness so perfect, that except my wife and mother, and a walk with them in a beautiful wood hard by their cottage, every thing else on the earth was an illusion.

'Unhappily, forgetting all did not cause me to be forgotten. When I was plunging in the depths of voluptuousness, I heard no complaints. Now that I was virtuous and happy, I was annoyed with reproachful and even menacing letters from my father's family. Heeding them not, they soon assumed a new tone. I was aware that I was beset by espionage, and was assured that, if I did not soon return voluntarily and alone to my country, a mandate from the king would be despatched to bring me back by compulsior Judge the effect of such language upon a person of habits like mine. All this was the more painful, as I was obliged to conceal it from my wife and her mother. At length I received a message to attend my dying father. This was legitimate information to be imparted, and to furnish my apology with my wife for asking her permission to visit Spain. She gave it without suspicion; and I assured her I should hurry back on the wings of love, as soon as the duties of filial piety should be fulfilled.

'I hurried to Madrid, and found my father on the verge of the grave. The prescription of aristocratic ambition had lost none of its force upon his mind, even in death. Among his prominent dying charges one was to marry the daughter of a nobleman, between whom and himself a contract for our marriage had been pledged even from our infancy, adding, that it was sanctioned by the mandate of the king, and that the first fruits would be, that I should be appointed to one of the most honorable foreign missions. I had heard from my infancy of this affiance between the young lady and me, as a thing of utter indifference. But the scene and the communication now astounded me to silence. My father interpreted my silence as dutiful assent, and gave me his blessing, and I left the bed chamber. My mother! But let me not unveil her character. Filial piety exacts not the whole truth. She was stern, ambitious, unfeeling, in

flexible. Soon after my father's death, with a frankness and nonchalance that amazed me, she convinced me, in a moment of confidential conversation, that she knew every circumstance of my English marriage, though she was inscrutable in regard to the means whence she had obtained the information. Her determined coolness seemed to preclude wavering on her part, or reply on mine. 'The connexion,' she said, 'beside being utterly improper and inadmissible, was illegitimate both by the laws of England and Spain.' She bade me remain, and marry according to my father's dying charge, and think of that union as of a thing that had not been. I defended the step I had taken with all the energy of love. My mother coolly smiled, as I finished my eulogy of my wife, rejoining, that she was too well informed in regard to her principles and character, which nothing but the blindness of a youthful passion could have hindered me from seeing. She had been all along surrounded by lovers, and now, in my absence, she had undeniable proof that she had yielded to one of them with the same easy folly as she had done to me. The very suggestion kindled infernal fires within me; but I saw that my mother was trying my feelings. I dissembled and retired, through fear that my rage would extort a reply of impiety. I took my own measures, and ny mother, aware of iudulged and impetuous passions, too well took hers.

'My maternal uncle, her only brother, was Spanish ambassador to England. His eldest son, a perfect Lothario, and who had the character of the most accomplished and successful gallant in Spain, accompanied his father, holding an office in the mission. We had often met in London, on the customary footing of cousins, though there was no real liking between us. Immediately on my arrival in England, where I hurried from this interview with my mother, circumstances instructed me that this cousin was the channel of communication with my mother, in regard to my wife. I repaired to the hotel of my uncle, the ambassador. His son was absent, and, as I easily learned, on a visit to my wife. I bribed his confidential servant, who happened not to have accompanied him, to confession. My cousin, during my absence had made frequent visits to my wife. Was he then the guilty rival of whom my mother spoke? I had always disliked his cool and crafty character. This thought, connected with the baseness of his being a spy against me for my mother, roused me to the purposes of fury. I cautiously drew from his servant, that he was at that moment engaged by my mother in a negociation with my wife, to induce her, for a specified sum of money, to disavow her marriage with me; and, to crown the negociation, that he intended, if it were successful, to take her into his own keeping. This conversation took place at midnight. I took the fleetest horse I could procure, and put him to his utmost speed on the way to my wife. I gained the wood, in which we used to walk, with early dawn. I made for a private gate in the rear of the cottage garden. My cousin was coming from the cottage towards this gate, in an undress, as though he had just risen from bed, and humming a French air, the burden of which was guilty and successful love. A servant with a carriage appeared to be waiting for him in the highway a little distance from the gate. My brain was maddened, and the fires of hell raged within me. I fiercely challenged him, 'What does my gallant cousin here?' He coolly answered, 'To bring thee tidings of thy chaste and fair wife.' Base spy, villain, and seducer draw! I exclaimed. He drew at the word; and though

perfectly cool, and one of the most adroit swordsmen in Europe, and I a madman, and an unpractised fencer, it was ordained, that I should run him through the body. As I saw him gasping on the sword, the blood spouting from his wound and his mouth, the infernal rage within me yielded to a remorse and despair as acute and agonizing. His servant, who had witnessed the affray, ran up. The dying youth extended his hand. 'Cousin Balthazer, God is just, and you are avenged. I have this night written a letter, which will explain all, and thou wilt see, what thy madness has done.' Then, turning to the servant, with accents faultering in death, he added, 'Testify, that I forgive my cousin, and that he is innocent.' A few moments after, in spasms and agonies, which even yet haunt my dreams, he expired.

'Alas! I was soon after in prison. My wife and her mother flew to the celi of the murderer. In my embrace my wife fell into strong convulsions, during which Ines was born, and the mother expired. Her mother, driven to furious madness by the spectacle, was forcibly borne from my cell; but found means to escape from the hands of those who were attempting to bind her, dashed her head against the wall of the prison, and in a few moments was brought back to my cell a corpse, all covered with blood, a spectacle of ineffable horror! * ***. Behold me changed from what I was but a few hours before, to a murderer, with my wife and mother stretched before me in this mansion of felons. A feeble and wailing infant in the arms of a squalid old woman were my only living companions. Do you wonder that I raved, and cursed love, and wrath, and sword, and all that used them! Fever and madness delivered me from my intolerable agony. More than a month was completely blotted from the tablet of my memory. My first perception of consciousness and returning sanity was a sense of infantine weakness, and the recognition of my mother's countenance in my apartment. For another month I received food, when brought me, with the docility of a child, but spake not, nor asked or answered questions, and took no more interest in any thing about me, than would a statue. A thousand efforts were made to arouse me without effect. My infant was brought to my bed, and its wail aroused me to perception. A current of recollections whirled through my brain, tears gushed, and my head became cool and relieved. Another, and another month elapsed, and no other spectacle recalled me to the living world, but the sight of my babe. It was near a year, before I remembered all that I had been, and what I was. I was gradually informed of what I have just related, and that during my insanity I had been tried for the murder of my cousin. The tears and entreaties of my mother, aided by the dying forgiveness of my cousin, and the testimony of his servant, softened the ambassador, and I was acquitted. The letter, to which my dying cousin alluded, was read to me. It had been written the evening before that fatal morning, and was addressed to my mother. It purported in brief, that my wife was Spanish on the mother's side, and nobly descended; and that he had found her so intelligent, beautiful, and incorruptible, that he wondered not at the fervor and constancy of my love. He earnestly recommended to my mother to receive her as a daughter, and to influence me to bring her to Spain, and there resolemnize the marriage. He closed by admitting, that this homage to virtue had been extorted from him by his acquaintance with my wife; that he had He had made the acquaintance on the plea of affinity, and that I wished it.