Devereux — Complete

So passed the morning till the hour of dinner, and this repast was served with an elegance and luxury which the sons of Apollo seldom command.[65 - Pope seems to have been rather capricious in this respect; but in general he must be considered open to the sarcasm of displaying the bounteous host to those who did not want a dinner, and the niggard to those who did.—ED.] As the evening closed, our conversation fell upon friendship, and the increasing disposition towards it which comes with increasing years. “Whilst my mind,” said Bolingbroke, “shrinks more and more from the world, and feels in its independence less yearning to external objects, the ideas of friendship return oftener,—they busy me, they warm me more. Is it that we grow more tender as the moment of our great separation approaches? or is it that they who are to live together in another state (for friendship exists not but for the good) begin to feel more strongly that divine sympathy which is to be the great bond of their future society?”[66 - This beautiful sentiment is to be found, with very slight alteration, in a letter from Bolingbroke to Swift.—ED.]

While Bolingbroke was thus speaking, and Pope listened with all the love and reverence which he evidently bore to his friend stamped upon his worn but expressive countenance, I inly said, “Surely, the love between minds like these should live and last without the changes that ordinary affections feel! Who would not mourn for the strength of all human ties, if hereafter these are broken, and asperity succeed to friendship, or aversion to esteem? I, a wanderer, without heir to my memory and wealth, shall pass away, and my hasty and unmellowed fame will moulder with my clay; but will the names of those whom I now behold ever fall languidly on the ears of a future race, and will there not forever be some sympathy with their friendship, softer and warmer than admiration for their fame?”

We left our celebrated host about two hours before midnight, and returned to Dawley.

On our road thither I questioned Bolingbroke respecting Montreuil, and I found that, as I had surmised, he was able to give me some information of that arch-schemer. Gerald’s money and hereditary influence had procured tacit connivance at the Jesuit’s residence in England, and Montreuil had for some years led a quiet and unoffending life in close retirement. “Lately, however,” said Bolingbroke, “I have learned that the old spirit has revived, and I accidentally heard three days ago, when conversing with one well informed on state matters, that this most pure administration has discovered some plot or plots with which Montreuil is connected; I believe he will be apprehended in a few days.”

“And where lurks he?”

“He was, I heard, last seen in the neighbourhood of your brother’s property at Devereux Court, and I imagine it probable that he is still in that neighbourhood.”

This intelligence made me resolve to leave Dawley even earlier than I had intended, and I signified to Lord Bolingbroke my intention of quitting him by sunrise the next morning. He endeavoured in vain to combat my resolution. I was too fearful lest Montreuil, hearing of his danger from the state, might baffle my vengeance by seeking some impenetrable asylum, to wish to subject my meeting with him and with Gerald, whose co-operation I desired, to any unnecessary delay. I took leave of my host therefore that night, and ordered my carriage to be in readiness by the first dawn of morning.

CHAPTER VII

THE PLOT APPROACHES ITS DENOUEMENT

ALTHOUGH the details of my last chapter have somewhat retarded the progress of that denouement with which this volume is destined to close, yet I do not think the destined reader will regret lingering over a scene in which, after years of restless enterprise and exile, he beholds the asylum which fortune had prepared for the most extraordinary character with which I have adorned these pages.

It was before daybreak that I commenced my journey. The shutters of the house were as yet closed; the gray mists rising slowly from the earth, and the cattle couched beneath the trees, the cold but breezeless freshness of the morning, the silence of the unawakened birds, all gave an inexpressible stillness and quiet to the scene. The horses slowly ascended a little eminence, and I looked from the window of the carriage on the peaceful retreat I had left. I sighed as I did so, and a sick sensation, coupled with the thought of Isora, came chill upon my heart. No man happily placed in this social world can guess the feelings of envy with which a wanderer like me, without tie or home, and for whom the roving eagerness of youth is over, surveys those sheltered spots in which the breast garners up all domestic bonds, its household and holiest delights; the companioned hearth, the smile of infancy, and, dearer than all, the eye that glasses our purest, our tenderest, our most secret thoughts; these—oh, none who enjoy them know how they for whom they are not have pined and mourned for them!

I had not travelled many hours, when, upon the loneliest part of the road, my carriage, which had borne me without an accident from Rome to London, broke down. The postilions said there was a small inn about a mile from the spot; thither I repaired: a blacksmith was sent for, and I found the accident to the carriage would require several hours to repair. No solitary chaise did the inn afford; but the landlord, who was a freeholder and a huntsman, boasted one valuable and swift horse, which he declared was fit for an emperor or a highwayman. I was too impatient of delay not to grasp at this intelligence. I gave mine host whatever he demanded for the loan of his steed, transferred my pistols to an immense pair of holsters, which adorned a high demi-pique saddle, wherewith he obliged me, and, within an hour from the date of the accident, recommenced my journey.

The evening closed, as I became aware of the presence of a fellow-traveller. He was, like myself, on horseback. He wore a short, dark gray cloak, a long wig of a raven hue, and a large hat, which, flapping over his face, conspired, with the increasing darkness, to allow me a very imperfect survey of his features. Twice or thrice he had passed me, and always with some salutation, indicative of a desire for further acquaintance; but my mood is not naturally too much inclined to miscellaneous society, and I was at that time peculiarly covetous of my own companionship. I had, therefore, given but a brief answer to the horseman’s courtesy, and had ridden away from him with a very unceremonious abruptness. At length, when he had come up to me for the fourth time, and for the fourth time had accosted me, my ear caught something in the tones of his voice which did not seem to me wholly unfamiliar. I regarded him with more attention than I had as yet done, and replied to him more civilly and at length. Apparently encouraged by this relaxation from my reserve, the man speedily resumed.

“Your horse, Sir,” said he, “is a fine animal, but he seems jaded: you have ridden far to-day, I’ll venture to guess.”

“I have, Sir; but the town where I shall pass the night is not above four miles distant, I believe.”

“Hum—ha!—you sleep at D——-, then?” said the horseman, inquisitively.

A suspicion came across me; we were then entering a very lonely road, and one notoriously infested with highwaymen. My fellow equestrian’s company might have some sinister meaning in it. I looked to my holsters, and leisurely taking out one of my pistols, saw to its priming, and returned it to its depository. The horseman noted the motion, and he moved his horse rather uneasily, and I thought timidly, to the other side of the road.

“You travel well armed, Sir,” said he, after a pause.

“It is a necessary precaution, Sir,” answered I, composedly, “in a road one is not familiar with, and with companions one has never had the happiness to meet before.”

“Ahem!—ahem!—Parbleu, Monsieur le Comte, you allude to me; but I warrant this is not the first time we have met.”

“Ha!” said I, riding closer to my fellow traveller, “you know me, then, and we have met before. I thought I recognized your voice, but I cannot remember when or where I last heard it.”

“Oh, Count, I believe it was only by accident that we commenced acquaintanceship, and only by accident, you see, do we now resume it. But I perceive that I intrude on your solitude. Farewell, Count, and a pleasant night at your inn.”

“Not so fast, Sir,” said I, laying firm hand on my companion’s shoulder, “I know you now, and I thank Providence that I have found you. Marie Oswald, it is not lightly that I will part with you!”

“With all my heart, Sir, with all my heart. But, morbleu! Monsieur le Comte, do take your hand from my shoulder: I am a nervous man, and your pistols are loaded, and perhaps you are choleric and hasty. I assure you I am far from wishing to part with you abruptly, for I have watched you for the last two days in order to enjoy the honour of this interview.”

“Indeed! your wish will save both of us a world of trouble. I believe you may serve me effectually; if so, you will find me more desirous and more able than ever to show my gratitude.”

“Sir, you are too good,” quoth Mr. Oswald, with an air far more respectful than he had yet shown me. “Let us make to your inn, and there I shall be most happy to receive your commands.” So saying, Marie pushed on his horse, and I urged my own to the same expedition.

“But tell me,” said I, as we rode on, “why you have wished to meet me?—me whom you so cruelly deserted and forsook?”

“Oh, parbleu, spare me there! it was not I who deserted you: I was compelled to fly; death, murder, on one side; safety, money, and a snug place in Italy, as a lay-brother of the Institute on the other! What could I do?—you were ill in bed, not likely to recover, not able to protect me in my present peril, in a state that in all probability never would require my services for the future. Oh, Monsieur le Comte, it was not desertion,—that is a cruel word,—it was self-preservation and common prudence.”

“Well,” said I, complaisantly, “you apply words better than I applied them. And how long have you been returned to England?”

“Some few weeks, Count, not more. I was in London when you arrived; I heard of that event; I immediately repaired to your hotel; you were gone to my Lord Bolingbroke’s; I followed you thither; you had left Dawley when I arrived there; I learned your route and followed you. Parbleu and morbleu! I find you, and you take me for a highwayman!”

“Pardon my mistake: the clearest-sighted men are subject to commit such errors, and the most innocent to suffer by them. So Montreuil persuaded you to leave England; did he also persuade you to return?”

“No: I was charged by the Institute with messages to him and others. But we are near the town, Count, let us defer our conversation till then.”

We entered D——-, put up our horses, called for an apartment,—to which summons Oswald added another for wine,—and then the virtuous Marie commenced his explanations. I was deeply anxious to ascertain whether Gerald had ever been made acquainted with the fraud by which he had obtained possession of the estates of Devereux; and I found that, from Desmarais, Oswald had learned all that had occurred to Gerald since Marie had left England. From Oswald’s prolix communication, I ascertained that Gerald was, during the whole of the interval between my uncle’s death and my departure from England, utterly unacquainted with the fraud of the will. He readily believed that my uncle had found good reason for altering his intentions with respect to me; and my law proceedings, and violent conduct towards himself, only excited his indignation, not aroused his suspicions. During this time he lived entirely in the country, indulging the rural hospitality and the rustic sports which he especially affected, and secretly but deeply involved with Montreuil in political intrigues. All this time the Abbe made no further use of him than to borrow whatever sums he required for his purposes. Isora’s death, and the confused story of the document given me by Oswald, Montreuil had interpreted to Gerald according to the interpretation of the world; namely, he had thrown the suspicion upon Oswald, as a common villain, who had taken advantage of my credulity about the will, introduced himself into the house on that pretence, attempted the robbery of the most valuable articles therein,—which, indeed, he had succeeded in abstracting, and who, on my awaking and contesting with him and his accomplice, had, in self-defence, inflicted the wounds which had ended in my delirium and Isora’s death. This part of my tale Montreuil never contradicted, and Gerald believed it to the present day. The affair of 1715 occurred; the government, aware of Gerald’s practices, had anticipated his design of joining the rebels; he was imprisoned; no act of overt guilt on his part was proved, or at least brought forward; and the government not being willing, perhaps, to proceed to violent measures against a very young man, and the head of a very powerful house, connected with more than thirty branches of the English hereditary nobility, he received his acquittal just before Sir William Wyndham and some other suspected Tories received their own.

Prior to the breaking out of that rebellion, and on the eve of Montreuil’s departure for Scotland, the priest summoned Desmarais, whom, it will be remembered, I had previously dismissed, and whom Montreuil had since employed in various errands, and informed him that he had obtained for his services the same post under Gerald which the Fatalist had filled under me. Soon after the failure of the rebellion, Devereux Court was destroyed by accidental fire; and Montreuil, who had come over in disguise, in order to renew his attacks on my brother’s coffers (attacks to which Gerald yielded very sullenly, and with many assurances that he would no more incur the danger of political and seditious projects), now advised Gerald to go up to London, and, in order to avoid the suspicion of the government, to mix freely in the gayeties of the court. Gerald readily consented; for, though internally convinced that the charms of the metropolis were not equal to those of the country, yet he liked change, and Devereux Court being destroyed, he shuddered a little at the idea of rebuilding so enormous a pile. Before Gerald left the old tower (my tower) which was alone spared by the flames, and at which he had resided, though without his household, rather than quit a place where there was such “excellent shooting,” Montreuil said to Desmarais, “This ungrateful seigneur de village already shows himself the niggard; he must know what we know,—that is our only sure hold of him,—but he must not know it yet;” and he proceeded to observe that it was for the hotbeds of courtly luxury to mellow and hasten an opportunity for the disclosure. He instructed Desmarais to see that Gerald (whom even a valet, at least one so artful as Desmarais, might easily influence) partook to excess of every pleasure,—at least of every pleasure which a gentleman might without derogation to his dignity enjoy. Gerald went to town, and very soon became all that Montreuil desired.

Montreuil came again to England; his great project, Alberoni’s project, had failed. Banished France and Spain, and excluded Italy, he was desirous of obtaining an asylum in England, until he could negotiate a return to Paris. For the first of these purposes (the asylum) interest was requisite; for the latter (the negotiation) money was desirable. He came to seek both these necessaries in Gerald Devereux. Gerald had already arrived at that prosperous state when money is not lightly given away. A dispute arose; and Montreuil raised the veil, and showed the heir on what terms his estates were held.

Rightly Montreuil had read the human heart! So long as Gerald lived in the country, and tasted not the full enjoyments of his great wealth, it would have been highly perilous to have made this disclosure; for, though Gerald had no great love for me, and was bold enough to run any danger, yet he was neither a Desmarais nor a Montreuil. He was that most capricious thing, a man of honour; and at that day he would instantly have given up the estate to me, and Montreuil and the philosopher to the hangman. But, after two or three years of every luxury that wealth could purchase; after living in those circles, too, where wealth is the highest possible merit, and public opinion, therefore, only honours the rich, fortune became far more valuable and the conscience far less nice. Living at Devereux Court, Gerald had only L30,000 a year; living in London, he had all that L30,000 a year can purchase: a very great difference this indeed! Honour is a fine bulwark against a small force; but, unbacked by other principle, it is seldom well manned enough to resist a large one. When, therefore, Montreuil showed Gerald that he could lose his estate in an instant; that the world would never give him credit for innocence, when guilt would have conferred on him such advantages; that he would therefore part with all those et eoetera which, now in the very prime of life, made his whole idea of human enjoyments; that he would no longer be the rich, the powerful, the honoured, the magnificent, the envied, the idolized lord of thousands, but would sink at once into a younger brother, dependent on the man he most hated for his very subsistence,—since his debts would greatly exceed his portion,—and an object through life of contemptuous pity or of covert suspicion; that all this change could happen at a word of Montreuil’s, what wonder that he should be staggered,—should hesitate and yield? Montreuil obtained, then, whatever sums he required; and through Gerald’s influence, pecuniary and political, procured from the minister a tacit permission for him to remain in England, under an assumed name and in close retirement. Since then, Montreuil (though secretly involved in treasonable practices) had appeared to busy himself solely in negotiating a pardon at Paris. Gerald had lived the life of a man who, if he has parted with peace of conscience, will make the best of the bargain by procuring every kind of pleasure in exchange; and le petit Jean Desmarais, useful to both priest and spendthrift, had passed his time very agreeably,—laughing at his employers, studying philosophy, and filling his pockets; for I need scarcely add that Gerald forgave him without much difficulty for his share in the forgery. A man, as Oswald shrewdly observed, is seldom inexorable to those crimes by which he has profited. “And where lurks Montreuil now?” I asked; “in the neighbourhood of Devereux Court?”

Oswald looked at me with some surprise. “How learned you that, Sir? It is true. He lives quietly and privately in that vicinity. The woods around the house, the caves in the beach, and the little isle opposite the castle, afford him in turn an asylum; and the convenience with which correspondence with France can be there carried on makes the scene of his retirement peculiarly adapted to his purpose.”

I now began to question Oswald respecting himself; for I was not warmly inclined to place implicit trust in the services of a man who had before shown himself at once mercenary and timid. There was little cant or disguise about that gentleman; he made few pretences to virtues which he did not possess; and he seemed now, both by wine and familiarity, peculiarly disposed to be frank. It was he who in Italy (among various other and less private commissions) had been appointed by Montreuil to watch over Aubrey; on my brother’s death he had hastened to England, not only to apprise Montreuil of that event, but charged with some especial orders to him from certain members of the Institute. He had found Montreuil busy, restless, intriguing, even in seclusion, and cheered by a recent promise, from Fleuri himself, that he should speedily obtain pardon and recall. It was, at this part of Oswald’s story, easy to perceive the causes of his renewed confidence in me. Montreuil, engaged in new plans and schemes, at once complicated and vast, paid but a slight attention to the wrecks of his past projects. Aubrey dead, myself abroad, Gerald at his command,—he perceived, in our house, no cause for caution or alarm. This, apparently, rendered him less careful of retaining the venal services of Oswald than his knowledge of character should have made him; and when that gentleman, then in London, accidentally heard of my sudden arrival in this country, he at once perceived how much more to his interest it would be to serve me than to maintain an ill-remunerated fidelity to Montreuil. In fact, as I have since learned, the priest’s discretion was less to blame than I then imagined; for Oswald was of a remarkably impudent, profligate, and spendthrift turn; and his demands for money were considerably greater than the value of his services; or perhaps, as Montreuil thought, when Aubrey no longer lived, than the consequence of his silence. When, therefore, I spoke seriously to my new ally of my desire of wreaking ultimate justice on the crimes of Montreuil, I found that his zeal was far from being chilled by my determination,—nay, the very cowardice of the man made him ferocious; and the moment he resolved to betray Montreuil, his fears for the priest’s vengeance made him eager to destroy where he betrayed. I am not addicted to unnecessary procrastination. Of the unexpected evidence I had found I was most eager to avail myself. I saw at once how considerably Oswald’s testimony would lessen any difficulty I might have in an explanation with Gerald, as well as in bringing Montreuil to justice: and the former measure seemed to me necessary to insure, or at least to expedite, the latter. I proposed, therefore, to Oswald, that he should immediately accompany me to the house in which Gerald was then a visitor; the honest Marie, conditioning only for another bottle, which he termed a travelling comforter, readily acceded to my wish. I immediately procured a chaise and horses; and in less than two hours from the time we entered the inn we were on the road to Gerald. What an impulse to the wheel of destiny had the event of that one day given!

At another time, I might have gleaned amusement from the shrewd roguery of my companion, but he found me then but a dull listener. I served him, in truth, as men of his stamp are ordinarily served: so soon as I had extracted from him whatever was meet for present use, I favoured him with little further attention. He had exhausted all the communications it was necessary for me to know; so, in the midst of a long story about Italy, Jesuits, and the wisdom of Marie Oswald, I affected to fall asleep; my companion soon followed my example in earnest, and left me to meditate, undisturbed, over all that I had heard, and over the schemes now the most promising of success. I soon taught myself to look with a lenient eye on Gerald’s after-connivance in Montreuil’s forgery; and I felt that I owed to my surviving brother so large an arrear of affection for the long injustice I had rendered him that I was almost pleased to find something set upon the opposite score. All men, perhaps, would rather forgive than be forgiven. I resolved, therefore, to affect ignorance of Gerald’s knowledge of the forgery; and, even should he confess it, to exert all my art to steal from the confession its shame. From this train of reflection my mind soon directed itself to one far fiercer and more intense; and I felt my heart pause, as if congealing into marble, when I thought of Montreuil and anticipated justice.

It was nearly noon on the following day when we arrived at Lord———‘s house. We found that Gerald had left it the day before, for the enjoyment of the field-sports at Devereux Court, and thither we instantly proceeded.

It has often seemed to me that if there be, as certain ancient philosophers fabled, one certain figure pervading all nature, human and universal, it is the circle. Round, in one vast monotony, one eternal gyration, roll the orbs of space. Thus moves the spirit of creative life, kindling, progressing, maturing, decaying, perishing, reviving and rolling again, and so onward forever through the same course; and thus even would seem to revolve the mysterious mechanism of human events and actions. Age, ere it returns to “the second childishness, the mere oblivion” from which it passes to the grave, returns also to the memories and the thoughts of youth: its buried loves arise; its past friendships rekindle. The wheels of the tired machine are past the meridian, and the arch through which they now decline has a correspondent likeness to the opposing segment through which they had borne upward in eagerness and triumph. Thus it is, too, that we bear within us an irresistible attraction to our earliest home. Thus it is that we say, “It matters not where our midcourse is run, but we will die in the place where we were born,—in the point of space whence began the circle, there also shall it end!” This is the grand orbit through which Mortality passes only once; but the same figure may pervade all through which it moves on its journey to the grave. Thus, one peculiar day of the round year has been to some an era, always colouring life with an event. Thus, to others, some peculiar place has been the theatre of strange action, influencing all existence, whenever, in the recurrence of destiny, that place has been revisited. Thus was it said by an arch-sorcerer of old, whose labours yet exist,—though perhaps, at the moment I write, there are not three living beings who know of their existence,—that there breathes not that man who would not find, did he minutely investigate the events of life, that, in some fixed and distinct spot or hour or person, there lived, though shrouded and obscure, the pervading demon of his fate; and whenever, in their several paths, the two circles of being touched, that moment made the unnoticed epoch of coming prosperity or evil. I remember well that this bewildering yet not unsolemn reflection, or rather fancy, was in my mind, as, after the absence of many years, I saw myself hastening to the home of my boyhood, and cherishing the fiery hope of there avenging the doom of that love which I had there conceived. Deeply, and in silence, did I brood over the dark shapes which my thoughts engendered; and I woke not from my revery, till, as the gray of the evening closed around us, we entered the domains of Devereux Court. The road was rough and stony, and the horses moved slowly on. How familiar was everything before me! The old pollards which lay scattered in dense groups on either side, and which had lived on from heir to heir, secure in the little temptation they afforded to cupidity, seemed to greet me with a silent but intelligible welcome. Their leaves fell around us in the autumn air, and the branches as they waved towards me seemed to say, “Thou art returned, and thy change is like our own: the green leaves of thy heart have fallen from thee one by one; like us thou survivest, but thou art desolate!” The hoarse cry of the rooks, gathering to their rest, came fraught with the music of young associations on my ear. Many a time in the laughing spring had I lain in these groves, watching, in the young brood of those citizens of air, a mark for my childish skill and careless disregard of life. We acquire mercy as we acquire thought: I would not now have harmed one of those sable creatures for a king’s ransom!

As we cleared the more wooded belt of the park, and entered the smooth space, on which the trees stood alone and at rarer intervals, while the red clouds, still tinged with the hues of the departed sun, hovered on the far and upland landscape,—like Hope flushing over Futurity,—a mellowed yet rapid murmur, distinct from the more distant dashing of the sea, broke abruptly upon my ear. It was the voice of that brook whose banks had been the dearest haunt of my childhood; and now, as it burst thus suddenly upon me, I longed to be alone, that I might have bowed down my head and wept as if it had been the welcome of a living thing! At once, and as by a word, the hardened lava, the congealed stream of the soul’s Etna, was uplifted from my memory, and the bowers and palaces of old, the world of a gone day, lay before me! With how wild an enthusiasm had I apostrophized that stream on the day in which I first resolved to leave its tranquil regions and fragrant margin for the tempest and tumult of the world. On that same eve, too, had Aubrey and I taken sweet counsel together; on that same eve had we sworn to protect, to love, and to cherish one another!—AND NOW!—I saw the very mound on which we had sat,—a solitary deer made it his couch, and, as the carriage approached, the deer rose, and then I saw that he had been wounded, perhaps in some contest with his tribe, and that he could scarcely stir from the spot. I turned my face away, and the remains of my ancestral house rose gradually in view. That house was indeed changed; a wide and black heap of ruins spread around; the vast hall, with its oaken rafters and huge hearth, was no more,—I missed that, and I cared not for the rest. The long galleries, the superb chambers, the scenes of revelry or of pomp, were like the court companions who amuse, yet attach us not; but the hall, the old hall,—the old, hospitable hall,—had been as a friend in all seasons, and to all comers, and its mirth had been as open to all as the heart of its last owner! My eyes wandered from the place where it had been, and the tall, lone, gray tower, consecrated to my ill-fated namesake, and in which my own apartments had been situated, rose like the last of a warrior band, stern, gaunt, and solitary, over the ruins around.

The carriage now passed more rapidly over the neglected road, and wound where the ruins, cleared on either side, permitted access to the tower. In two minutes more I was in the same chamber with my only surviving brother. Oh, why—why can I not dwell upon that scene, that embrace, that reconciliation?—alas! the wound is not yet scarred over.

I found Gerald, at first, haughty and sullen; he expected my reproaches and defiance,—against them he was hardened; he was not prepared for my prayers for our future friendship, and my grief for our past enmity, and he melted at once!

But let me hasten over this. I had well-nigh forgot that, at the close of my history, I should find one remembrance so endearing, and one pang so keen. Rapidly I sketched to Gerald the ill fate of Aubrey; but lingeringly did I dwell upon Montreuil’s organized and most baneful influence over him, and over us all; and I endeavoured to arouse in Gerald some sympathy with my own deep indignation against that villain. I succeeded so far as to make him declare that he was scarcely less desirous of justice than myself; but there was an embarrassment in his tone of which I was at no loss to perceive the cause. To accuse Montreuil publicly of his forgery might ultimately bring to light Gerald’s latter knowledge of the fraud. I hastened to say that there was now no necessity to submit to a court of justice a scrutiny into our private, gloomy, and eventful records. No, from Oswald’s communications I had learned enough to prove that Bolingbroke had been truly informed, and that Montreuil had still, and within the few last weeks, been deeply involved in schemes of treason, full proof of which could be adduced, far more than sufficient to insure his death by the public executioner. Upon this charge I proposed at the nearest town (the memorable seaport of———) to accuse him, and to obtain a warrant for his immediate apprehension; upon this charge I proposed alone to proceed against him, and by it alone to take justice upon his more domestic crimes.

My brother yielded at last his consent to my suggestions. “I understand,” said I, “that Montreuil lurks in the neighbourhood of these ruins, or in the opposite islet. Know you if he has made his asylum in either at this present time?”

“No, my brother,” answered Gerald, “but I have reason to believe that he is in our immediate vicinity, for I received a letter from him three days ago, when at Lord———‘s, urging a request that I would give him a meeting here, at my earliest leisure, previous to his leaving England.”

“Has he really then obtained permission to return to France?”

“Yes,” replied Gerald, “he informed me in this letter that he had just received intelligence of his pardon.”

“May it fit him the better,” said I, with a stern smile, “for a more lasting condemnation. But if this be true we have not a moment to lose: a man so habitually vigilant and astute will speedily learn my visit hither, and forfeit even his appointment with you, should he, which is likely enough, entertain any suspicion of our reconciliation with each other; moreover, he may hear that the government have discovered his designs, and may instantly secure the means of flight. Let me, therefore, immediately repair to———, and obtain a warrant against him, as well as officers to assist our search. In the meanwhile you shall remain here, and detain him, should he visit you; but where is the accomplice?—let us seize him instantly, for I conclude he is with you.”