misfortunes of this ominous marriage, Roland's wife had
possessed all the superstitions of a Roman Catholic Spaniard; and with
these the boy had unconsciously intermingled doctrines far more dreary,
imbibed from the dark paganism of the Gitanos.

Roland had sought a Protestant for his son's tutor. The preceptor was
nominally a Protestant,--a biting derider of all superstitions, indeed!
He was such a Protestant as some defender of Voltaire's religion says
the Great Wit would have been had he lived in a Protestant country. The
Frenchman laughed the boy out of his superstitions, to leave behind them
the sneering scepticism of the Encyclopedie, without those redeeming
ethics on which all sects of philosophy are agreed, but which,
unhappily, it requires a philosopher to comprehend.

This preceptor was doubtless not aware of the mischief he was doing;
and for the rest, he taught his pupil after his own system,--a mild and
plausible one, very much like the system we at home are recommended to
adopt: "Teach the understanding,--all else will follow;" "Learn to read
something, and it will all come right;" "Follow the bias of the pupil's
mind,--thus you develop genius, not thwart it." Mind, understanding,
genius,--fine things! But to educate the whole man you must educate
something more than these. Not for want of mind, understanding, genius,
have Borgias and Neros left their names as monuments of horror to
mankind. Where, in all this teaching, was one lesson to warm the heart
and guide the soul?

Oh, mother mine, that the boy had stood by thy knee and heard from
thy lips why life was given us, in what life shall end, and how heaven
stands open to us night and day! Oh, father mine, that thou hadst been
his preceptor, not in book-learning, but the heart's simple wisdom! Oh
that he had learned from thee, in parables closed with practice, the
happiness of self-sacrifice, and how "good deeds should repair the bad"!

It was the misfortune of this boy, with his daring and his beauty, that
there was in his exterior and his manner that which attracted indulgent
interest and a sort of compassionate admiration. The Frenchman liked
him, believed his story, thought him ill-treated by that hard-visaged
English soldier. All English people were so disagreeable, particularly
English soldiers; and the Captain once mortally offended the Frenchman
by calling Vilainton un grand homme, and denying, with brutal
indignation, that the English had poi