so powerful an effect upon a mind which had neither innocence to support its agony, or patience to endure it, that before morning the countess Caltabellotta was a maniac, from which state, during ́the remainder of her miserable existence, she never for an instant recovered.

CHAPTER IX.

Even-handed justice

Returns th' ingredients of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips.

MACBETH.

WHEN Sigismund perceived that all was lost, and the fortress in the hands of his enemies, he hurried from the scene of contest, and succeeded in gaining the subterranean passage by which the baron Solanto had been conveyed into the castle, the entrance to which was so carefully concealed in the building, as to render it almost impossible to be discovered. As soon as the count had gained this place, and secured the doors which led to it, he paused for some time to consider the best method of securing his ultimate retreat. The mouth of the passage, which was at some short distance from the castle, required an acquaintance with the existenc

of the place to make it an object even of suspicion; and it was so well covered by a thicket, and huge fragments of rock, as to make it difficult to be found by a stricter search than was likely to be made in the tumult and eagerness with which he expected to be pursued.

One of the great objects of his enemies would be, beyond a doubt, to possess themselves of his person; and upon his escape depended the future safety of such of his partisans as might be so fortunate as to survive the general destruction which threatened all connected with the house of Luna è Peralta. He therefore determined to remain concealed in the cavern till the darkness of night might favour his escape, and having from his infancy been well acquainted with the surrounding country, he hoped, by keeping along various tracks in the mountains inaccessible to the cavalry, to elude pursuit altogether.

During the hours he passed in this solitary asylum, the mind of Luna suffered all the pangs of remorse, disappointed

ambition, hopeless love, and desponding wretchedness; so mixed and yet so varied, that there was scarce a subject on which his thoughts could fix, which was not replete with anguish and despair. It was true, he had accomplished his purpose to the fullest extent, as far as the destruction of Perollo was his object; but even in his proudest moments of triumph, the reproaches of Luchese, and the honours paid to the memory of his enemy, had clouded all his enjoyments; and now that nothing remained of all he had laboured to effect, but the sad and heavy punishment for his offences, which had already lighted on so many of his adherents, and hung over his own head, as it were suspended by a single hair, he felt the weakness as well as the wickedness of his deeds. Thus to look to the past, was to recall only the baneful product of his own inhuman revenge, to conjure up the shades of Della Bardia, Gilberto, Ferrara, and the multitudes who had fallen in his cause, or what was worse, to remind him of the honours which had

been shewn to his enemy, when stripped of all those attributes which purchase the applause of man. Defeated, murdered, and insulted, the body of Pandolfina had been as much an object of public veneration and respect, as when living in all the pomp of splendour and affluence, dealing round him the favours of government, and environed by all the honours of popularity and power; whilst he himself, in the hour of victory, had been pursued by the curses of the people, and the reproaches of those whom he loved and esteemed.

If the thoughts of Luna were fixed upon the future, there was as little cause for hope or satisfaction. He had calculated, beyond a doubt, during the tide of his prosperous fortune, on the success of his application to the pope, whose petition he thought the emperor could be in no situation to resist; but now that the hour was come when this protection was most needful, he felt the insecurity of the hope on which he had relied. It was a con