that love had
too large, and, as it might prove, a perceptible share in creating this
impulse. I was silent.

Presently he raised his eyes and fixed them upon me. I read in them an
anguish altogether ineffable. Never had I witnessed a like demeanour
in Pleyel. Never, indeed, had I observed an human countenance in which
grief was more legibly inscribed. He seemed struggling for utterance;
but his struggles being fruitless, he shook his head and turned away
from me.

My impatience would not allow me to be longer silent: "What," said I,
"for heaven's sake, my friend, what is the matter?"

He started at the sound of my voice. His looks, for a moment, became
convulsed with an emotion very different from grief. His accents were
broken with rage.

"The matter--O wretch!--thus exquisitely fashioned--on whom nature
seemed to have exhausted all her graces; with charms so awful and
so pure! how art thou fallen! From what height fallen! A ruin so
complete--so unheard of!"

His words were again choaked by emotion. Grief and pity were again
mingled in his features. He resumed, in a tone half suffocated by sobs:

"But why should I upbraid thee? Could I restore to thee what thou hast
lost; efface this cursed stain; snatch thee from the jaws of this fiend;
I would do it. Yet what will avail my efforts? I have not arms with
which to contend with so consummate, so frightful a depravity.

"Evidence less than this would only have excited resentment and scorn.
The wretch who should have breathed a suspicion injurious to thy honor,
would have been regarded without anger; not hatred or envy could have
prompted him; it would merely be an argument of madness. That my eyes,
that my ears, should bear witness to thy fall! By no other way could
detestible conviction be imparted.

"Why do I summon thee to this conference? Why expose myself to thy
derision? Here admonition and entreaty are vain. Thou knowest him
already, for a murderer and thief. I had thought to have been the first
to disclose to thee his infamy; to have warned thee of the pit to
which thou art hastening; but thy eyes are open in vain. O foul and
insupportable disgrace!

"There is but one path. I know you will disappear together. In thy ruin,
how will the felicity and honor of multitudes be involved! But it must
come. This scene shall not be blotted by his presence. No doubt thou
wilt shortly see thy detested paramour. This scene will be again
polluted by a midnight assig