to observe narrowly
his own personal relations to the author. There, if nowhere else, we may
glean some hint of his superior designs. Now I am myself a mingled
personage, liable to doubts, to scruples, and to sudden revulsions of
feeling; I reason continually about life, and frequently the result of
my reasoning is to condemn or even to change my action. I am now
convinced, for example, that I did wrong in joining in your plot against
the innocent and most unfortunate Lelio. I told you so, you will
remember, in the chapter which has just been concluded and though I do
not know whether you perceived the ardour and fluency with which I
expressed myself, I am still confident in my own heart that I spoke at
that moment not only with the warm approval, but under the direct
inspiration, of the author of the tale. I know, Spada, I tell you I
_know_, that he loved me as I uttered these words; and yet at other
periods of my career I have been conscious of his indifference and
dislike. You must not seek to reason me from this conviction; for it is
supplied me from higher authority than that of reason, and is indeed a
part of my experience. It may be an illusion that I drove last night
from Saumur; it may be an illusion that we are now in the garden chamber
of the chateau; it may be an illusion that I am conversing with Count
Spada; you may be an illusion, Count, yourself; but of three things I
will remain eternally persuaded, that the author exists not only in the
newspaper but in my own heart, that he loves me when I do well, and that
he hates and despises me when I do otherwise."

"I too believe in the author," returned the Count. "I believe likewise
in a sequel, written in finer style and probably cast in a still higher
rank of society than the present story; although I am not convinced that
we shall then be conscious of our pre-existence here. So much of your
argument is, therefore, beside the mark; for to a certain point I am as
orthodox as yourself. But where you begin to draw general conclusions
from your own private experience, I must beg pointedly and finally to
differ. You will not have forgotten, I believe, my daring and
single-handed butchery of the five secret witnesses? Nor the sleight of
mind and dexterity of language with which I separated Lelio from the
merchant's family? These were not virtuous actions; and yet, how am I to
tell you? I was conscious of a troubled joy, a glee, a hellish gusto in
my author's boso