and the lampoons with which the
newspapers abounded, and of which he was the subject, rendered any
concealment out of the question, and poor George passed his life in
running about contradicting falsehoods, stating truth, fighting his
cousin's battles, and then reporting to him, in the course of the day,
the state of the campaign.

Cadurcis, being a man of infinite sensibility, suffered tortures. He
had been so habituated to panegyric, that the slightest criticism
ruffled him, and now his works had suddenly become the subject of
universal and outrageous attack; having lived only in a cloud of
incense, he suddenly found himself in a pillory of moral indignation;
his writings, his habits, his temper, his person, were all alike
ridiculed and vilified. In a word, Cadurcis, the petted, idolised,
spoiled Cadurcis, was enduring that charming vicissitude in a
prosperous existence, styled a reaction; and a conqueror, who deemed
himself invincible, suddenly vanquished, could scarcely be more
thunderstruck, or feel more impotently desperate.

The tortures of his mind, however, which this sudden change in his
position and in the opinions of society, were of themselves competent
to occasion to one of so impetuous and irritable a temperament, and
who ever magnified both misery and delight with all the creative
power of a brooding imagination, were excited in his case even to the
liveliest agony, when he reminded himself of the situation in which he
was now placed with Venetia. All hope of ever obtaining her hand had
now certainly vanished, and he doubted whether even her love could
survive the quick occurrence, after his ardent vows, of this degrading
and mortifying catastrophe. He execrated Lady Monteagle with the most
heartfelt rage, and when he remembered that all this time the world
believed him the devoted admirer of this vixen, his brain was
stimulated almost to the verge of insanity. His only hope of the
truth reaching Venetia was through the medium of his cousin, and he
impressed daily upon Captain Cadurcis the infinite consolation it
would prove to him, if he could contrive to make her aware of the real
facts of the case. According to the public voice, Lady Monteagle at
his solicitation had fled to his house, and remained there, and her
husband forced his entrance into the mansion in the middle of the
night, while his wife escaped disguised in Lord Cadurcis' clothes.
She did not, however, reach Monteagle House in time enou