"Hear that village bell: how many vain associations it suggests! But though I cannot regard the past without an emotion, I am already above its influence. How lovely is the day!-Open the casement, dear sister, and let me breathe the pure air of heaven. Now move me into the sun; I long to feel its glorious beams play once more upon these icy limbs !"

We did as she directed; and she closed her eyes, and lay for a few moments silently inhaling the gentle, balmy breeze that floated over her pale face. She threw back her hair, and exposed her brow and temples to its refreshing influence. Again she spoke :

"Earth is fair, and many are the dear delights which it contains; but this which I now enjoy is the highest and purest of them

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all. Often have I stood beneath the blue sky, and, on the lake, or on the hill, revelled in the possession of this best blessing; but never knew I until this moment the extent of the bliss it could confer!-And now, my beloved sister, you can yet farther soothe the bitterness of this parting hour. I could wish before I die to be once more under the exalting influence of music: beneath its inspirations, I might better sustain the pang of separation; and I feel that I need its divine power to raise me above the fascinations which still enthral me, and its buoyant wings to pilot my soul to Heaven. Embrace me then again, dear friend;-and now I entreat you to comply with my request. Descend, and play to me that beauteous hymn to the Virgin, Maria santissima, madre amata, which I so loved in the days of my happiness."

Oh, God! how did I survive that moment? -Had this angel victim of my accursed ferocity striven, in the deadliness of revenge, to stab me to the soul, she could have devised no wiser mode than this simple allusion to the hour of our first meeting. But groan, word, nor look betrayed the agony that was consuming me; though any crime but mine might have been expiated by what I then endured.

After a last and passionate embrace, with a long, lingering look and a breaking heart, my poor sister left the room; and soon the magnificent peals of the organ filled and thrilled through the house. The face of my bride became illuminated with a celestial expression, and the agency of Heaven was visibly upon her. She grasped my hand

with a fervent pressure, and, closing her eyes, abandoned herself to her divine aspirations. As the melody proceeded, her hold relaxed, and without a sigh, a look, the shadow of a manifestation, the pure spirit quitted its mortal tenement, and I sustained the arm of the dead.

Fifty years have passed since that day; one half of them in the indulgence of every ruthless and desperate passion. I deemed existence an injury; I thought myself aggrieved in having been created; and I felt evil towards all my race. In the profligate court of Charles, and afterwards in that of Louis, I found an ample field for my misanthropic impulses.

Like Ishmael, "my hand was

against every man, and every man's hand against me." And yet I prospered in the world, and earned in it those distinctions of name and renown which others only obtain through the exertions of wilful and systematized ambition. At the head of armies, in the strife of courts, in the dangerous intrigues of internal politics, in foreign diplomacy, in private faction or in popular tumult, success invariably attended me. During this long career, I was the envied of the many; and even now, I could direct universal attention to my obscurity, by revealing the designation under which I drew upon myself the eyes of Europe. But neither wealth, power, nor homage, softened the agony of my remorse; within me was the worm that never dieth.

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