e had no other existence than what my dreamy imagination
gave her. The heavy wooden "jalousies" were never opened; the door
remained close locked; not a foot-tread marked the gravel near it. It
was clear to me she had never crossed the threshold since the night I
first saw her.

I fell into a plodding, melancholy mood. The tiresome routine of my
daily life, its dull, unvarying monotony, began to wear into my soul,
and I ceased either to think over the past or speculate on the future,
but would sit for hours long in a moody revery, actually unconscious of
everything.

Sometimes I would make an effort to throw off this despondency, and try,
by recollection of the active energy of my own nature, to stir up myself
to an effort of one kind or other; but the unbroken stillness, the vast
motionless solitude around me, the companionless isolation in which
I lived, would resume their influence, and with a weary sigh I would
resign myself to a hopelessness that left no wish in the heart save for
a speedy death.

Even castle-building--the last resource of imprisonment--ceased to
interest. Life had also resolved itself into a successsion of dreary
images, of which the voiceless prairie, the monotonous water-wheel, the
darkened path of my midnight patrol, were the chief; and I felt myself
sinking day by day, hour by hour, into that resistless apathy through
which no ray of hope ever pierces.

At last I ceased even to pluck the flowers for the Senhora's window.
I deemed any exertion which might be avoided, needless, and taxed my
ingenuity to find out contrivances to escape my daily toil. The garden I
neglected utterly; and in the wild luxuriance of the soil the rank weeds
soon effaced every sign of former culture. What a strange frame of mind
was mine! Even the progress of this ruin gave me a pleasure to the full
as great as that once felt in witnessing the blooming beauty of its
healthful vegetation. I used to walk among the rank and noisome weeds
with the savage delight of some democratic leader who saw his triumph
amid the downfall of the beautiful, the richly-prized, and the valued,
experiencing a species of insane pleasure in the thought of some fancied
vengeance.

How the wild growth of the valueless weed overtopped the tender
excellence of the fragrant plant; how the noisome odor overpowered
its rich perfume; how, in fact, barbarism lorded it over civilization,
became a study to my distorted apprehension; and I felt a di