let at that moment, he would have dropped his
weapon for the sketch, though the snake had been as deadly as the viper
of Sumatra. The sight sank into his memory, to be reproduced often by
the wild, morbid fancies of his hand. Scarce a moment, however, had he
for the gaze; the reptile sprang, and fell, baffled and bruised by
the involuntary blow of its enemy. As it writhed on the grass, how its
colours came out; how graceful were the movements of its pain! And still
the boy gazed, till the eye was sated and the cruelty returned. A blow,
a second, a third,--all the beauty is gone; shapeless, and clotted with
gore, that elegant head; mangled and dissevered the airy spires of that
delicate shape, which had glanced in its circling involutions, free
and winding as a poet's thought through his verse. The boy trampled the
quivering relics into the sod, with a fierce animal joy of conquest, and
turned once more towards the hollow, for a last almost hopeless survey.
Lo, his object was found! In his search for the snake, either his staff
or his foot had disturbed a layer of moss in the corner; the faint ray,
ere he entered the hollow, gleamed upon something white. He emerged from
the cavity with a letter in his hand; he read the address, thrust it
into his bosom, and as stealthily, but more rapidly, than he had come,
took his way to his father.

CHAPTER V. HOUSEHOLD TREASON.

The Provencal took the letter from his son's hand, and looked at him
with an approbation half-complacent, half-ironical. "Mon fils!" said he,
patting the boy's head gently, "why should we not be friends? We want
each other; we have the strong world to fight against."

"Not if you are master of this place."

"Well answered,--no; then we shall have the strong world on our side,
and shall have only rogues and the poor to make war upon." Then, with a
quiet gesture, he dismissed his son, and gazed slowly on the letter.
His pulse, which was usually low, quickened, and his lips were tightly
compressed; he shrank from the contents with a jealous pang; as a
light quivers strugglingly in a noxious vault, love descended into that
hideous breast, gleamed upon dreary horrors, and warred with the noxious
atmosphere: but it shone still. To this dangerous man, every art that
gives power to the household traitor was familiar: he had no fear that
the violated seals should betray the fraud which gave the contents to
the eye that, at length, steadily fell upon the follo