hich you have found me, and which causes me
spiritual torments, which my bodily health seems to belie, I am atoning
for a heavy fault--yet no more--farewell!" Upon this, Victor cried
with a loud voice: "Nehelmiahmiheal!" and the baroness, with a shriek
of horror, fell senseless to the ground. Victor under the influence of
a storm of strange feelings, and quite beside himself could scarcely
summon resolution enough to ring the bell. However, having done this,
he rushed from the chamber. "At once,--let us leave at once!" he cried
to his friend, and told him in a few words what had happened. Both
leaped upon the horses that had been brought for them, and rode off
without waiting for the return of the baron, who had gone out hunting.

Albert's reflections on the ride from Liege to Aix-la-Chapelle have
already shown, with what profound earnestness, with what noble feeling,
he had appreciated the events of that fatal period. On the journey to
the Residence, whither the two friends now returned, he succeeded in
completely delivering Victor from the dreamy condition into which he
had sunk, and while Albert brought to his friend's mind, depicted in
the most lively colours, all the monstrous occurrences which the days
of the last campaign had brought forth, the latter felt himself
animated by the same spirit as that which dwelt in Albert. And
although Albert never ventured upon long contradictions or doubts,
Victor himself now seemed to look upon his mystical adventure, as
nothing but a bad dream.

In the Residence it was natural that the ladies were favourably
disposed to the colonel, who was rich, of noble figure, young for the
high rank which he held, and who, moreover, was amiability itself.
Albert looked upon him as a lucky man, who might choose the fairest for
a wife, but Victor observed, very seriously: "Whether it was, that I
had been mystified, and, by wicked means, made to serve some unknown
end, or whether an evil power really tried to tempt me, this much is
certain, that though the past has not cost me my happiness, it has
deprived me of the paradise of love. Never can that time return, when
I felt the highest earthly felicity, when the ideal of my sweetest,
most transporting dreams, nay, love itself, was in my arms. Love and
pleasure have vanished, since a horrible mystery deprived me of her,
who to my inmost heart was really a higher being, such as I shall not
again find upon earth!"

The colonel remaine