seemest never to believe in one kindly action, or one virtuous thought!"

Nicot bit his lip, and replied sullenly, "Experience is a great
undeceiver. Humph! What service can I do thee with regard to the
Italian?"

"I have been accessory to her arrival in this city of snares and
pitfalls. I cannot leave her alone amidst dangers from which neither
innocence nor obscurity is a safeguard. In your blessed Republic, a good
and unsuspected citizen, who casts a desire on any woman, maid or wife,
has but to say, 'Be mine, or I denounce you!' In a word, Viola must
share our flight."

"What so easy? I see your passports provide for her."

"What so easy? What so difficult? This Fillide--would that I had never
seen her!--would that I had never enslaved my soul to my senses! The
love of an uneducated, violent, unprincipled woman, opens with a heaven,
to merge in a hell! She is jealous as all the Furies; she will not hear
of a female companion; and when once she sees the beauty of Viola!--I
tremble to think of it. She is capable of any excess in the storm of her
passions."

"Aha, I know what such women are! My wife, Beatrice Sacchini, whom I
took from Naples, when I failed with this very Viola, divorced me when
my money failed, and, as the mistress of a judge, passes me in her
carriage while I crawl through the streets. Plague on her!--but
patience, patience! such is the lot of virtue. Would I were Robespierre
for a day!"

"Cease these tirades!" exclaimed Glyndon, impatiently; "and to the
point. What would you advise?"

"Leave your Fillide behind."

"Leave her to her own ignorance; leave her unprotected even by the
mind; leave her in the Saturnalia of Rape and Murder? No! I have sinned
against her once. But come what may, I will not so basely desert one
who, with all her errors, trusted her fate to my love."

"You deserted her at Marseilles."

"True; but I left her in safety, and I did not then believe her love to
be so deep and faithful. I left her gold, and I imagined she would be
easily consoled; but since THEN WE HAVE KNOWN DANGER TOGETHER! And now
to leave her alone to that danger which she would never have incurred
but for devotion to me!--no, that is impossible. A project occurs to
me. Canst thou not say that thou hast a sister, a relative, or a
benefactress, whom thou wouldst save? Can we not--till we have left
France--make Fillide believe that Viola is one in whom THOU only art
interested; and whom, for thy sake