University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XVIII.

Lavalle had directed his servant to appoint a meeting
with Claude, as soon as he should have finished his
ride, at his own lodgings. On arriving there as the
cool afternoon shadows began to descend upon the
earth, he found the groom waiting for the horse; and
he understood the delicacy which had induced Lavalle
to leave him the first few hours of his freedom to his
own reflections, or rather sensations. He now longed
for the meeting with his friend with impatience.
There was much which he had to ask. He had been
completely cut off from the world. He knew nothing
of the great political changes going on around him.
He was ignorant of what had occurred in Berlin during
his absence. Where was General St. Hillaire?
Where was Kühl? He had heard nothing more of
him, nor of the fortunate owner of the purse. Not one
of all his acquaintances had come to see him, so much
had his reputation been injured by the misrepresentations
of Elkington—the statements of Carolan—the
blow which he had received unresistingly—and his
sudden fall from a state of independence to utter poverty.
He learned of Lavalle all that he required.
General St. Hillaire had been, ever since his imprisonment,
ill in bed. Of Kühl Lavalle could state nothing,
except that very probably he was ignorant of the fact
that Claude was confined. Plans were now arranged
for the future. Claude positively refused to accept
of the money as a loan, or that he might advance it to
Carolan, but that he would wait till he had earned it
by his own labour. He had no hope of being able to
resume his station in society, and he determined to accommodate
himself at once to the new one to which
Providence had destined him. He avoided making
any inquiry of Ida, and Lavalle did not touch upon that
subject, thinking, perhaps, that he had already said

more than he had a right to in the hurry of his joy.
He promised Claude a class of five every evening, at
a thaler an hour; and five at separate hours during the
day, also at a thaler, making ten thalers a day, or sixty
thalers a week; a princely income for a poor professor
of languages; but Lavalle was an able patron, and
put a heart into his undertakings which did not allow
them to fail. He determined to call on Kühl, and procure
also his aid; and they calculated that, in a short
time, he could pay his debt to Carolan and the London
banker, entirely extricate himself from pecuniary embarrassment,
and be in the receipt of a comfortable income
till circumstances should offer an occupation
more agreeable to his taste. It was decided that he
should go into a plain lodging the next day, call in all
his bills, and Lavalle would state the prospect of a
speedy settlement to the few creditors for their remaining
small balance. The next morning, accordingly,
Claude found a single plain room, kept by a
poor old widow lady, who agreed to board, as well as
lodge him, at a moderate price. Lavalle took the
watch out of the jailer's hands and bought it himself,
allowing for it the sum it originally cost; and undertook
himself to superintend all the affairs of his friend,
while the latter should devote himself to his new avocations.
In less than a week, the whole number of
scholars was procured. Mr. Kühl had heard nothing of
Claude; and concluding, from his nonappearance, that
he had left town for the summer, he made no inquiries
after him. He was shocked to learn of his vicissitudes,
and delighted to be able to render him any assistance.
His whole family entered into his plan, and
agreed to become pupils in English; and Claude soon
found himself completely established in his new vocation,
with the most pleasing prospects of success. His
room was plain, but, after his period of probation in
the prison, truly comfortable. The furniture was ordinary,
but neat. The good woman supplied his meals
in the house; but finding that it would be more convenient
for her, as well as less expensive for himself, he
offered to eat at the same table with her, and he requested
her to make no change in her usual fare, except
in the addition of the quantity necessary for another
person.

Poor Claude was now, from necessity, excluded
from the society where he had before been received
with so much attention; and, had this not been the
case, he would by no means have sought it. There
were not wanting several—and they the most cultivated
and distinguished people—whom, had a selection
been in his power, he would, from the first, have chosen
for his friends; who seemed to take a kind of interest
in him, inspired partly by his history as recounted by
Lavalle, and partly by his personal manners and character.
The incident of the purse of gold and his refusing
the reward, at the moment when he had just
heard of his ruin, had been everywhere related by
Mr. Kühl, and had reached royal ears. Expressions
of admiration had been repeated from lips whose opinions
were not likely to be gainsaid; and his character
as an honest man was made apparent, and was growing
every day more so. His presence in Berlin, his
lowly occupation, his unintermitting industry, and the
nature of the employment he had adopted, brought
him in contact with many people, who were struck
with the modesty and yet quiet dignity of his manners,
the plainness of his dress, and the punctuality and
cheerful conscientiousness which he put into his labours.
There was a general harmony and consistency
in his life, which spoke for him against calumny; and
the mild yet steady firmness with which he met, when
accidentally they crossed his path, those whom he had
once known on terms of equality, and who knew he
had not only descended from the rank in which he had
first appeared, but had unresistingly received a blow
rather than fight a duel, engaged their respect and altered
their unfavourable opinion of him. Rumours,
too, of the assassin who had twice attempted his life,

had awakened all the watchfulness of the police, and
was now generally and implicitly believed, although
at first doubted. This threw a new sympathy around
Claude, and produced another curious effect. The
character of Elkington had begun to be whispered
about; his affair with the officer—his exposure at
cards—the displeasure of his father, etc. The fierce
brutality with which he had conducted himself in the
quarrel with Denham began now to be more coolly
canvassed, even by those who at first thought it excusable.
Although, in the interview with his mother,
where his passions, roused to their highest fury by her
narrative and the dangers impending over him, he had
so far forgotten himself as to inflict a blow upon the
author of his being; although, during that interview,
the outer doors had been locked and doubly locked,
the incident had transpired, the occurrence was reported
and credited. Indeed, anything would have
been credited of Elkington; and now the attempts
upon Claude's life were laid to his charge. It is thus
that such a character at length becomes an object of
universal distrust and suspicion.

It had been before stated in the journals—but Claude,
in his prison, knew nothing of it—that the death of the
Earl of Beverly had been announced pematurely. He
had fallen into a fit from which no human skill could
save him, and it was improbable that he could ever
have the use of his senses again, at least until the
moment of his death. Elkington therefore remained
longer in a state of suspense, and had gone to London
with his mother. The Digbys had also gone. Nothing
more had been heard of them in Berlin, or of
their unfortunate daughter.

Under these circumstances, Claude began to be regarded
as at least an honest man, and a man of principle.
All who had dealings with him acknowledged
even that, when they were not paid, he had made
every possible sacrifice to satisfy their demands. His
very presence in the streets, where he might be occasionally

seen passing to and from the various houses
of his pupils, was an answer to the principal charges
against him. His hard labour—his self-deprivation of
all the luxuries and amusements of life—the simple
and even rude dress which he now wore, if without
pride, at least without shame—and the constant friendship
and praises of Lavalle, were all in his favour.
He was not unfrequently invited, poor and unfashionable
as he now was, to dine at the tables of Monsieur
de N— and General St. Hillaire, as well as two or
three others, who believed him to have made the great
sacrifice of his passions and his reputation as a man
of courage—that treasure which an honourable mind
would purchase with life—to a conscientious principle
of action. These invitations he however declined,
from a feeling that the poor and those in debt should
indulge in no pleasures which might lead to the slightest
expense. Besides, satisfied with the purity of his
actions, he shrank from the attention which they excited;
and his life, in the midst of a great city, surrounded
by moving armies and a glittering court, was
almost as solitary and simple as that of Robinson Crusoe
in his island. He had steeled his heart to meet
the world; and, strange to say, notwithstanding his
fall, he was happier than before. He seemed to have
regained his independence. Occupation gave him
wholesome spirits. The direction of his energies to
a single purpose excluded weak reveries and idle apprehensions
from his mind. He thought of Ida sometimes,
but it was as one dead. Respecting her sentiments
towards him he was still uncertain. It had happened
two or three times that she had seen him in the
street: sometimes when he was walking alone, thoughtful
and sad, in the Park, sometimes hastening along
the street to his daily toils. He could not but remember
that at Monsieur de N—'s, the last time
they had met in society, when he sought her eye, she
turned away, as if unwilling to address him. He knew
this was an act of obedience to an arbitrary father,
but it was enough to keep him from intruding upon
her again, even with a look; and on the occasions of
these accidental encounters, he cast his eyes to the
ground with an humble pride, of which he could not
know the effect upon this young girl. Often, in his
walks, too, he met the various persons of the societé;
and, although at first it pained him, after a little time
he was only amused to see the unfeelingness with
which some met him. At first he had, from an unpremeditated
sense of courtesy, bowed to the still
happy acquaintances of his former hours. But so
many among them discovered a disinclination to receive
even a passing recognition, that he determined to
address no one first. Some had bowed in return, but
hastened by as if afraid to be addressed by him; some
returned his salutation with a stately air of superiority;
some replied with an inclination so slight and
cool, and a look so soon averted, as to indicate plainly
how offensive they found the impertinence of recognising
them; while others, with an ostentatious care,
dropped their eyes to the ground, lifted them to the
sky, or turned them away till he had passed. There
were not wanting some who stared in his face, without
thinking it necessary to use ceremony in gratifying
their curiosity, but who, on his civil bow on meeting
their glances, only opened their eyes and mouths a
little wider, and, with a steady gaze of astonishment,
suffered his courtesy to remain unanswered, or to be
replied to exactly as would have been the case had
they been unexpectedly addressed by an entire stranger.
It would be paying a poor compliment to these
gay circles to say that the class we have described
formed the majority. Often he was stopped by the
gentle, the cultivated, and the refined, with kind and
affable inquiries after his health and prospects. Some
distinguished him thus in his altered fortunes with
more marks of respect than they had bestowed before.
And there were ladies—young and old—who, by the
simplest acts of affability, meeting him with exactly
the same charming familiarity with which they had
always greeted him, appeared to his grateful and impressionable
mind in such a fair light—the old so good,
the young so graceful and lovely—that surely, had
the proud, the conceited, and the narrow-minded known
how strong a feeling of admiration could be produced
by such simple sacrifices, there would have been no
superciliousness and arrogance among them; if not natural
sweetness of character, good sense would have
made them less pretending. But there are people who
have neither. If the limits of the story would permit,
we could find materials for a goodly volume in the experience
of our hero from the receipt of the fatal letter
withdrawing his income, to that when he found
himself the possessor of sufficient money to discharge
the amount of Carolan's debt, as well as all else that
he owed in the world. There are two or three episodes
narrated at large, and an edifying succession in
the manuscript of the king's library, from which this
history is drawn, which it would gratify us to lay before
the reader, did time and space permit. One refers
to the illness of a little boy, the son of the poor
old lady with whom Claude boarded, and who, being
ill of a contagious disorder, was attended in person by
Claude, at the peril of his life and against the warnings
of the physician. The poor little fellow, notwithstanding
this service, died; and a part of Claude's
earnings were appropriated to paying the mournful
expenses attending the committal of his sweet little
body to the earth. The old lady knew no one to tell
this to. The doctor said the gentleman was a fool,
and always spoke of him as such, without always giving
the reasons on which that flattering epithet was
founded. Claude himself was not in the habit of making
his own acts the topic of conversation, and therefore
this affair was never known till the doctor one day,
on finding that Claude had employed a more eminent
physician, let it out in revenge, and to ruin his character
as a man of sense.

Another of these episodes describes how old Mr.
Kühl had a daughter, Mademoiselle Kühl—how she
was about eighteen years of age—that her charms of
person were equalled only by her heart and mind—
and how she spent so much time in studying the irregular
verbs, adjectives, and conjunctions of the English
tongue, under the tutelage of her handsome and
melancholy young professor, that, before she was aware
of the progress she was making, she found she had acquired
a considerable knowledge upon other subjects
besides syntax and prosody. She grew so reserved
and cool to Mr. Wyndham, that that young gentleman,
entirely engaged with his grammars and dictionary,
concluded she had taken offence against him. With
a simplicity rather violent in a youth who, however
fond of rural beauty, had not spent all his life in the
country, he addressed old Mr. Kühl upon the subject,
and was made to open his very interesting eyes
wider than he had done for some time by a frank explanation
of the sudden cause from Kühl, and an offer
of a furnished house in the Linden, near the Thiergarten—a
banker would hold payable to his order the
sum of 100,000 thalers, Prussian money — and the
young lady herself, with a pair of eyes as full of tenderness
as a star is of light; and all these on no more
difficult a condition than the utterance of the little monosyllable
“Yes.” But that word, short and easy as it
may be, is often the source of profound consequences,
and is often found the most difficult, and sometimes,
also, the most dangerous in the dictionary.

Claude was astonished at the proposal of this offer,
but his astonishment was not greater than that of Mr.
Kühl upon hearing him respectfully but firmly decline
it.

“What! zounds! hey! refuse a fortune of 100,000
thalers, with such a girl as my Emily! and you scarcely
out of prison? Refuse my Emily? what! hey!”

“My esteemed friend,” said Claude, with a delicacy
and tact which his kind patron perfectly understood

and deeply felt, “I can never refuse what the young
lady has herself never offered, and perhaps would not
sanction; but I may tell you, in confidence, that long
before I knew you—I—I—”

“Ah, keh!” said the old gentleman. “It is so—is
it? Well—I—she—we had better say no more about
it.”

“I may add,” said Claude, “that even when I commenced
with your family, their knowledge of English
was so good that they scarcely required my services;
and now they are almost in a state to teach it themselves.
Let me therefore withdraw as a tutor, and
meet you and them hereafter only as a friend. I have
already more than I can attend to, for I believe everybody
in Berlin has undertaken to learn English.”

“Be it so,” said Mr. Kühl. “I should feel awkward
in my present position with any other person,”
added he, gravely, and with some confusion; “but
you—in every breath, in every glance—are a man of
honour; a man,” he added, with some feeling, “whom
a father can trust with the sacredest secret of his
daughter's soul.”

The manuscript goes on to say, that for a period
Claude continued his visits to the house, but they
gradually grew fewer and farther between, and at
length entirely ceased.

The third circumstance, which, however useful it
would be in swelling our history to the required size,
had we not on hand “metal more attractive,” is the
conduct of Monsieur Rossi. He recovered, and resumed
his toils as a French teacher; but he was pale,
melancholy, and distrait. He lived almost on the
bounty of Claude. His manner was strange and unsocial.
He exhibited no gratitude for the favours he
had received and was daily receiving; but demanded
more money as if of his banker. Claude tried to sooth
him into some kind of companionship, but his efforts
were fruitless. He was taciturn and gloomy in society.
When they met in the street, this singular being
often avoided him. In all cases of want, however, he

did not hesitate to seek him and solicit his aid, and to
coolly apply the gratuity to luxuries which the giver
denied to himself. With a spirit which a blow had
irritated to madness, he did not hesitate to live on the
charity of another, and to spend in selfish follies his
friend's hard-earned gains. Claude at length perceived
that he was not, after all, an object of real merit, and
one day he frankly refused to give him money. His
demeanour on the occasion was cold, ungrateful, and
mean. He at first begged, and then knelt down and
implored for a few thalers. Disgusted and astonished,
Claude refused positively, and told him to seek elsewhere
his living hereafter. He offered to exert himself,
if he wished, to procure him scholars, but not to
give him the means of living in idleness and intemperance.
He told him he had just enough to pay his
debts, and that he was now about to pay Carolan.

“Ah, oh!” said Rossi. “You remember, perhaps,
what I told you about Ida. It was a lie. It was all
my own fabrication.”

“Be it so,” said Claude. “I did not speak of it.”

“But you think of it often,” said Rossi. “I am not
blind. I have seen you—in the night even—lingering
by her house.”

“Do you dog my steps, sir?” said Claude, sternly.

“Yes—yours and hers,” said Rossi. “Many an
hour I have watched you both unseen, undreamed of.
She must not suppose I have forgotten the vile blow
I received in her presence and on her account, and
that she touched afterward, in friendship, the hand
that struck me. As for you, sir—what if she does love
you? what if she has been ill—to death almost? what
if her health is gone—her beauty fading—her heart
heavy—her eyes, even, full of misery? Does she think
I pity her? Not a bit. I gloat on these signs of despair!”

“Rossi,” said Claude, “what madness is this? Who
told you the Countess Ida was ill?”

“My own eyes—my own heart; and not only that

she is ill, but that she is ill for—you. And you, who
have stolen her from me—you deny me the poor means
to live! Look to it! you and she too. I have waited
and waited, and paused and paused! I have been
by her in hours when she thought herself alone—in the
day—in the night—in the crowd—in solitude—watching—gazing—Weak
fool! the scene must close. The
fire is lighted on the altar—the high-priest attends—
the victim is bound. Look to it! sir!”

He stamped his foot fiercely. His features were
pale and haggard, his eye flashed with a fearful expression,
and he withdrew, slamming the door violently
after him. This conduct confirmed a suspicion,
which had glanced across Claude's mind before, that
the poor being had moments of insanity, and to that
he ascribed the vague threats which he uttered; but
whether they were directed against himself or Ida, he
could not tell.

At length, however, the money was in his hand to
pay the demand of Carolan, who, through his lawyer,
had demanded the highest rate of interest, and all the
costs of the suit and his imprisonment. The other
debts were already paid. He accordingly met the
lawyer and paid the judgment. It was on a pleasant
morning in the latter part of the summer that he set
off to demand a personal interview with Carolan, the
last, richest, and hardest of his creditors. It was his
intention to ask of Carolan a retraction of the suspicions
he had expressed against him. He went, therefore,
to his magnificent palace, from which he was now
excluded as an inferior being. He was much altered
by the constant labours, events, and feelings of the
last few months. His health was enfeebled. His
cheeks were pale and thin, and his once smooth face
showed lines of care and sorrow. Poverty, which did
not break his spirit, had worn upon his body. The
thought of debt had caused him many a bitter day
and sleepless night. It seemed even as if he were
sinking gradually into the grave; a fact of which, by

the sadness on his brow, he might have been conscious.
His clothes, too, were poor and faded. The money
necessary to dress himself better, he had, even from
his slender earnings, bestowed on Rossi, or the little
boy who had perished from the earth like an early
flower, and whom he had ardently loved. He had
sent some, also, to his banker, to be paid to Mrs. Denham,
without receiving any answer from or news of
her; and the resolution to pay all his debts before
Carolan's demand had obliged him to spend nothing
on his own person.

As he approached the palace of Carolan there was
about it an air of grandeur which contrasted singularly
with his own humble sphere. Two or three serving
men in livery were lounging at the door, and several
equipages were drawn up in front—the panels glittering
with the ostentatious arms of the owners; the
chasseurs, in their gorgeous dresses, lounging about;
and the coachmen asleep on their boxes, exhausted
with late hours and hard work. As he entered the
hall, the servants did not move from their careless attitudes—the
very men who once, at the sight of him,
sprung up with the violent respect they were taught
to pay alone to the rich and great. Cards were an
expense he had long laid aside, and he had written his
name on a piece of paper.

“Well,” said one of the men, with a round face and
goggle eyes, and bursting with good feed and lazy
living, “what do you want?”

“To see Monsieur le Comte Carolan.”

“I don't think it likely you'll succeed in doing that
at present,” replied the man, taking the paper unceremoniously
from his hand, and looking at him from
head to foot. “Monsieur le Comte is engaged; you'd
better call to-morrow.”

“Do me the favour to take my name in,” said
Claude.

“Why, monsieur, he is with company now; and as
he goes to France the day after to-morrow, he has no

time to lose. Hadn't you better leave your business
with me?”

“To France? With his family?”

“Ay, with Mademoiselle Ida.”

“With Mademoiselle Ida?”

Claude's heart felt an old twinge of a malady which
he had striven hard to overcome.

“I must see him, then, to-day, and I will only pay
it into his own hands.”

“Well, if the man insists on it,” said the other footman,
“you'd better let him go into the study and wait.
I'll take your name, monsieur. Walk up into the
study.”

The two men mounted the broad flight of steps,
whose velvet carpet felt strange beneath his feet. One
went in with the name. The other passed through
three or four of the spacious and gorgeous rooms into
a smaller and most exquisitely furnished cabinet, the
walls clothed with richly-bound books and priceless
paintings, and full of all the thousand elegances and
luxuries of the rich and great. He sat down on a
chair in the embrasure of one of the windows, half
concealed by stands of flowers, curtains, and statues.
He had not been there a minute when a step was heard.
The door opened, and Ida entered. Claude did not
move either to conceal or reveal himself, but he perceived
at once she did not see him, and was not aware
that any one was present. She passed to a bookcase
and took out a book. Her face was pale and sad.
She was not at all the same careless and happy girl
whom he had seen in the portrait. The time which
had passed over her had left its marks, and she was
really changed. Yet, as he gazed again, with a rapture
that almost suspended his being, he thought her
more beautiful than ever. There was in her countenance
more thought and character. It had that
sweetness which patient grief gives, and which Raphael
has portrayed with such an inspired hand.
Claude could not wholly exclude the idea that the

changes in her face might have been occasioned partly
by him. The fervour of his own love rose again in
his bosom; and to have thrown himself at her feet,
and said one farewell, he would have consented to
die the same hour. But he restrained himself. He
remembered his promise, his duty, and her happiness,
and he sat silent. She was passing out again with
the book she had taken down, when, by some strange
chance, she returned to look at a tuberose, recently
brought in, which she had not seen before. The flower,
with a number of others, stood on a large stand
between her and himself, and had hitherto prevented
her seeing him. As she advanced, he rose. His eyes
were bent to the ground, his face was pale. He
scarcely knew whether he felt more pain or pleasure,
and he could not repress or hide his agitation. She
knew him instantly; but at the sight of him—his pale,
thin face, his mean clothes, his dusty boots, and all
the apparel of poverty—a half-uttered shriek and shudder
escaped her, and she sank into a chair covering
her face with her hands. Yes! it was love—ingenuous,
artless love—unused to the womanly power of concealment;
and the deep crimson which succeeded the
pallor of her forehead and neck, and all that those
trembling and beautiful hands sought in vain to hide,
taught her as well as him, that, without words, the
sacred secret of her soul was betrayed.

It seems that, with the innate dignity and purity of
her nature, she recovered her self-possession almost
instantly, for she rose and said, extending her hand
frankly,

“Mr. Wyndham—you have been so long absent—
you—you are so greatly altered—that the sight of you
startled me.”

“Let me hope,” said Claude, and once more she
listened to the tones of a voice so much loved, so long
unheard, and now touched with a tremour that betrayed
irresistible agitation, “that neither my absence, nor
anything that has occurred during it, has deprived me
of the—esteem—of—of—so valued a friend.”

It was mutually clear to both the lovers—for so we
trust the sagacious reader has long since found them
—that this accidental meeting was to be reduced as
soon as possible from the tone of high feeling which it
had first awakened, to the safer and less embarrassing
courtesy of ordinary society. Both wished it, and
both intuitively felt the delicacy and propriety which
demanded it.

“Indeed, Mr. Wyndham, I should do myself but
poor justice if I did not say how clearly I have perceived
the propriety of your conduct, and how little I
have shared the errors of others respecting you.”

“You make me happy,” said Claude; and with a
deeper fervour, which he could not repress, and perhaps
was not aware of, he added,

“The approbation of such as you is all I dare hope;
and yours—is all I desire.”

“We are about visiting France!” said Ida, somewhat
hastily. “My father, in doing so, acts against
the advice of all his friends; but he is very firm in his
determinations. My uncle, Colonel St. Marie, proposed
to leave Paris; but my father is hastening there
to prevent him, and has offered to aid him in the cause
of the king. The strange revolution going on there
my father thinks will be put down very soon; and he
is willing, if his majesty wishes, to enter into his service.
You know he spent his youth in the army.”

“It is a very dangerous journey,” said Claude.

“But he expects a high office from the king—and
is determined to go immediately.”

“We shall not see you again, then!” said Claude.

“No; and I am very fortunate in this opportunity
to bid you farewell. My father will be disengaged, I
believe, in a moment.” She held out her hand. “I
wish you all happiness, Mr. Wyndham.”

This was the weak moment which Claude had
scarcely the strength to resist. He took the hand extended
to him. He attempted to speak, but after the
first word his utterance failed. To have indicated by

the slightest pressure of that hand the feelings of his
bosom—to have expressed with a gesture what words
refused to utter—to have raised those soft fingers to
his lips, as they yet lingered in his, were the impulses
of his soul. But he was one of those men who had
learned to govern himself, to make sacrifices, to resist
impulses, and to act with honour in all the most minute
and secret affairs of life. He dropped the hand
almost coldly; but all his prudence could not prevent
the thought which swelled his heart from finding utterance,

“Is it for ever—?”

Her eyes met his, and she replied,

“It is for ever.”

There was a step. She was gone; and he rose and
hastily dashed the drops from his eyes, to meet the
conceited and unrelenting father of the being whom he
now loved with more fervour than ever, and who was to
bless his eyes no more.

“Well, sir,” said Carolan, sitting down by a table,
without asking his visiter to follow his example, “what
procures me the honour of this visit?”

“Count Carolan,” said Claude, advancing quietly,
and even respectfully, to the table, for he had now not
even the desire to retaliate the rudeness of this weak
man, “I have come to state to you that the sum for
which you imprisoned me is paid.”

“I have no time myself to arrange these affairs with
you, but my lawyer will.”

“No, monsieur, it is already arranged; but I wish,
before separating from you, without the probability of
our ever meeting again, to inform you, that the debts
which, by a very peculiar accident, I found myself unable
to pay in the commencement of the summer, are
now all discharged; not by any arrangement or any
accident, but by the results of my personal labour.”

“I have nothing to do with all this, sir. It may be
true or not. I have neither the time nor the inclination
to inquire, as your character and yourself are equally
indifferent to me.”

“Could no proof make you publicly unsay, at least,
that part of the aspersions which I learn you have cast
on my honesty in pecuniary matters?”

“I know nothing of you or your affairs, sir; and I
wish to know nothing of them. When a man has deceived
me once, I find it quite enough. My hospitality
is sometimes abused by persons whom I take up on
too slight grounds—”

“Take up! Count Carolan.”

“But I am a little too well read in human nature to
suffer myself to be betrayed twice by the same person;
one of the servants will show you out, sir; and,
our mutual affairs being now settled, I hope—” He
rose and rang the bell.

“Adieu, sir,” said Claude; “if I thought you capable
of distinguishing between right and wrong, I would
ask you to reflect hereafter that you have refused to
do justice to the character which you have proofs is
free from reproach, and that you have not thought it
unworthy of your courage to insult a person who mildly
claimed your good opinion, and whom you know to be
without the defence usually possessed by gentlemen
under the same circumstances.”

“I can't remain listening to you, sir, all day; and
you will excuse me—”

They were interrupted by a loud shriek. It was
sudden and piercing, and announced extreme terror.
It was followed by a confusion of various noises, an
opening of doors, a treading of feet, and several voices
calling out.

“What can that be?” said the count, his pompous
manner leaving him entirely; and they both hastened
out, Claude as much agitated as he, for he thought he
recognised the voice which had uttered the scream as
Ida's. They ran across two or three rooms, which
seemed to their eager suspense interminable, and
reached, at length, the large hall used sometimes as a
dining and sometimes as a ball room. At the farther
end a sight met their view which wellnigh deprived
them of the power of motion. Ida, her hands

extended, her face struck with terror, stood shrinking
from the fury of a stranger, apparently in a delirium
of rage and revenge. He held a large pistol in each
hand, of which one was presented at the breast of
the fainting girl. The servants, called by her shrieks,
had crowded the doors; but as the maniac—for it
was Rossi, in a fearful paroxysm of insanity—turned
his dreadful eye and levelled weapon upon them,
they crowded and shrunk back with hasty terror.
Never was a more frightful object than the unhappy
young man at this moment. His livid face wore
the hideous grin of a lunatic. His thick hair was
wild about his head. He mowed and chattered to
himself, and pointed first his long finger and then the
pistol at the terrified being whose charms had driven
his senses awreck. At the same time, he made wry
faces, sometimes at her, and sometimes at beings who
seemed to be hovering around him in the air; and his
motions were so sudden and fantastic, that no one could
have seen him thus abandoned to all the ecstasy of
madness, even in chains, without horror and fear. But
now, thus armed, all gave up Ida as lost. It was a moment
of most intense and agonizing expectation, and
the wretched being went on mowing and chattering to
himself till the foam stood upon his lips.

“Rossi,” said Claude, advancing upon him cautiously,
while Carolan stood petrified in motionless
despair.

The terrible intruder turned at the sound of his
voice, and laughed till the hall echoed again.

“Ah ha!” said he, “where is Elkington now? He
struck me once—oh God—the dog! the reptile! But
the sacrifice is prepared! Why does he not come to
claim his wife?”

“Rossi, my kind friend,” said Claude, in a soothing
voice, but one which trembled with horror, lest, ere he
could succeed in grasping him, he might fire upon the
sweet girl, upon whose bloody sacrifice he seemed so
determined.

“What!” cried Rossi, “you will come forward?
Stir an inch—stir one hair's breadth, and she dies!”
and he levelled both his pistols at Ida.

Carolan started to rush forward, but Rossi extended
his arm with a gesture which arrested at once the advance
of the agonized father.

“Keep his attention this way,” said Claude to Carolan,
in a low tone, “and I will secure him!”

“I will,” murmured Carolan, shaking in every limb;
“I will, I will. Here you have not the courage to
look at me, you foul madman,” he continued.

“Not the courage?” echoed Rossi; and he darted
upon Carolan, but suddenly he stopped. With the
shrewdness of a madman, he suspected a connivance,
and he turned to look for Claude. He perceived him
now fairly in the middle of the floor, alone, and completely
between him and Ida. At this sight his fury
seemed lashed into new delirium. He stamped his
foot and exclaimed,

“Stand aside! You canting, ignominious fool,
stand aside! Will you too fall? Away. I am going
to fire. The hour—the instant has come. I have
gloated for months on this moment. At length it is
here. Leave her to her fate.”

Claude stood back before Ida. Had he advanced
to seize him, he could have fired at her by changing
his position. His only hope was to shield her with
his person, even if it could be done only by receiving
the ball in his own body. He placed himself, therefore,
before her in such a way as to protect her entirely
from danger.

“No, no,” cried Ida, convulsively; “noble! generous!
no, no—”

But, as she spoke, Rossi fired, and the ball lodged in
the wall within an inch of Claude's head.

“Step aside, I say, reptile!” howled the maniac
again, advancing with the other pistol drawn, and
gnashing his teeth with fiendish rage; but Claude stood
firm, lifted his tall figure so as to shield completely the
form of Ida, and fixed his eye steadily on his adversary,

who advanced so near as to make the destruction
of one of his intended victims almost certain. He had
approached to within two or three yards, and was in
the act of pulling the trigger, when Ida fainted and
fell heavily upon Claude's arm, who stamped his
foot suddenly, and exclaimed, “Fire,” and at the same
time rushed forward with his burden in such a way as
to throw the maniac from his aim. He started, and at
the same moment the pistol was discharged. A shriek
of horror burst from all the household who had assembled
to witness this frightful scene. The ball again
buried itself in a splendid door at a still greater distance
from its intended objects. Carolan himself, accompanied
by twenty servants, now leaped upon the
unfortunate wretch, who, in the impotence of his fury,
had dashed the heavy butt of the pistol into his own
head with a force which wounded him dangerously.
All was now confusion. Claude committed the senseless
form of the fair girl he had saved at such imminent
risk to the arms of her trembling father; who, as
often happens with men of feeble understanding, had
been so bewildered and stunned by the greatness of
the danger, that, whatever might have been his courage,
he did not know what to do. Had he advanced,
he believed it would only have been to behold his
daughter murdered long before he could reach her or
the assassin.

A confusion of joy now took place of the despair
which had, till the securing of Rossi, filled every mind.
Claude was the object of universal admiration. In the
dangerous crisis in which he found himself, he had exhibited
a self-possession and courage which surprised
everybody, and which alone had saved the life of Ida.
That he had ever been suspected of cowardice was
now a matter of astonishment; and it was acceded
that few men would have so calmly faced almost certain
death. The idea that he had suffered a blow
rather than fight a duel now received a kind of interest,
which raised him to a rank above that of a merely

brave man. Simple bodily courage is by no means a
rare gift; and, when possessed without moral courage,
does not entitle a man to the high standing which he
sometimes claims on account of it.