n the floor, and near the folding doors of the
apartment, it was with an astonishment nearly bordering upon terror,
that I perceived my own already hanging on my arm, (where I had no doubt
unwittingly placed it,) and that the one presented me was but its exact
counterpart in every, in even the minutest possible particular. The
singular being who had so disastrously exposed me, had been muffled,
I remembered, in a cloak; and none had been worn at all by any of
the members of our party with the exception of myself. Retaining some
presence of mind, I took the one offered me by Preston; placed it,
unnoticed, over my own; left the apartment with a resolute scowl of
defiance; and, next morning ere dawn of day, commenced a hurried journey
from Oxford to the continent, in a perfect agony of horror and of shame.

I fled in vain. My evil destiny pursued me as if in exultation, and
proved, indeed, that the exercise of its mysterious dominion had as yet
only begun. Scarcely had I set foot in Paris ere I had fresh evidence of
the detestable interest taken by this Wilson in my concerns. Years flew,
while I experienced no relief. Villain!--at Rome, with how untimely,
yet with how spectral an officiousness, stepped he in between me and my
ambition! At Vienna, too--at Berlin--and at Moscow! Where, in truth, had
I not bitter cause to curse him within my heart? From his inscrutable
tyranny did I at length flee, panic-stricken, as from a pestilence; and
to the very ends of the earth I fled in vain.

And again, and again, in secret communion with my own spirit, would
I demand the questions "Who is he?--whence came he?--and what are his
objects?" But no answer was there found. And then I scrutinized, with a
minute scrutiny, the forms, and the methods, and the leading traits of
his impertinent supervision. But even here there was very little upon
which to base a conjecture. It was noticeable, indeed, that, in no one
of the multiplied instances in which he had of late crossed my path, had
he so crossed it except to frustrate those schemes, or to disturb those
actions, which, if fully carried out, might have resulted in bitter
mischief. Poor justification this, in truth, for an authority so
imperiously assumed! Poor indemnity for natural rights of self-agency so
pertinaciously, so insultingly denied!

I had also been forced to notice that my tormentor, for a very long
period of time, (while scrupulously and with miraculous dexterity
maintaini