 be so. He hath indeed preserved thee from the treacherous attempts of base envy, but his duty to his Prince and to his country forbids him to restore to England the champion that hath fought her battles against France. O rigid sense of duty, that thus tears asunder the bands of nature and friendship! Happy D'Aumont, whose soul aspires not to such high unfeeling virtue! who cannot resist the tender sollicitations of pity! Let me ever indulge the kind emotion, uncontrouled by rigorous scruples, or splendid notions of duty, too severe and too exalted for humanity.
These suggestions exactly answered to his purpose. My soul was too much disordered to examine them by the rules of calm deliberate reason; and the emotion which he assumed, increased my inward tumult, and gave him entire possession of my heart. In this fatal moment, the tenderness, the zeal, the sollicitude, the sufferings of Les Roches all vanished from my thoughts. I had even forgotten the confusion which appeared in his castle on our arrival, and his own surprize and concern. I had forgotten that some unexpected event must have torn him from me. I imputed his absence to no other cause but the shame of encountering the looks and reproaches of a man whom he had betrayed: and all confused and distracted as I was, resigned myself entirely to the influence

of this new friend, whose power was like that of those infernal imps who, they say, command the winds to roar or to be still, and the waves to swell or to subside, as their wicked purposes require. As he depressed or roused me, I melted into grief, or raged in all the violence of vain and impotent indignation. I now considered myself as an helpless prey, doomed to inevitable destruction, surrounded on all sides by my hunters, and fatally lured to their toils. Nor was D'Aumont at all sollicitious to dispel my fears. He expatiated on the horrors of a dungeon, on the wretchedness of captivity, the cruel tyranny of exasperated enemies and rivals, the loss of friends and honours; years of bondage spent in gloomy solitude, in useless inaction: the gazing curiosity of the base and ignoble, the insolence and triumphant scorn of the coward, who had perhaps trembled at my sword, and fled from my arm in battle: then, as if afraid to dwell upon the terrible idea, he just hinted at the tears of my friends, and the sorrow of an helpless widowed wife.
Hast thou never heard that the enemy of mankind oftentimes presents shocking and frightful phantoms before the eyes of the holy hermit, in order
