ither, because I am best acquainted with your motives for coming here,
and can best appreciate his mercy in permitting you to depart."

"And are you," I cried, "the dupe of this man? He dreads me alive as an
enemy, and dead he fears my avengers. By favouring this clandestine escape
he preserves a shew of consistency to his followers; but mercy is far from
his heart. Do you forget his artifices, his cruelty, and fraud? As I am
free, so are you. Come, Juliet, the mother of our lost Idris will welcome
you, the noble Adrian will rejoice to receive you; you will find peace and
love, and better hopes than fanaticism can afford. Come, and fear not; long
before day we shall be at Versailles; close the door on this abode of crime
--come, sweet Juliet, from hypocrisy and guilt to the society of the
affectionate and good."

I spoke hurriedly, but with fervour: and while with gentle violence I drew
her from the portal, some thought, some recollection of past scenes of
youth and happiness, made her listen and yield to me; suddenly she broke
away with a piercing shriek:--"My child, my child! he has my child; my
darling girl is my hostage."

She darted from me into the passage; the gate closed between us--she was
left in the fangs of this man of crime, a prisoner, still to inhale the
pestilential atmosphere which adhered to his demoniac nature; the unimpeded
breeze played on my cheek, the moon shone graciously upon me, my path was
free. Glad to have escaped, yet melancholy in my very joy, I retrod my
steps to Versailles.

CHAPTER VI.

EVENTFUL winter passed; winter, the respite of our ills. By degrees the
sun, which with slant beams had before yielded the more extended reign to
night, lengthened his diurnal journey, and mounted his highest throne, at
once the fosterer of earth's new beauty, and her lover. We who, like flies
that congregate upon a dry rock at the ebbing of the tide, had played
wantonly with time, allowing our passions, our hopes, and our mad desires
to rule us, now heard the approaching roar of the ocean of destruction, and
would have fled to some sheltered crevice, before the first wave broke over
us. We resolved without delay, to commence our journey to Switzerland; we
became eager to leave France. Under the icy vaults of the glaciers, beneath
the shadow of the pines, the swinging of whose mighty branches was arrested
by a load of snow; beside the streams whose intense cold proclaimed their
origin to be f