o the feeling his
unanticipated return had aroused:--feigned pity where he had looked for
sympathetic welcome; dismay where he had expected surprised delight;
and, oftener, airs of resignation, or disappointment ill
disguised,--always insincerity, politely masked or coldly bare. He had
come back to find strangers in his home, relatives at law concerning
his estate, and himself regarded as an intruder among the living,--an
unlucky guest, a revenant ... How hollow and selfish a world it seemed!
And yet there was love in it; he had been loved in it, unselfishly,
passionately, with the love of father and of mother, of wife and child
... All buried!--all lost forever! ... Oh! would to God the story of
that stone were not a lie!--would to kind God he also were dead! ...

Evening shadowed: the violet deepened and prickled itself with
stars;--the sun passed below the west, leaving in his wake a momentary
splendor of vermilion ... our Southern day is not prolonged by
gloaming. And Julien's thoughts darkened with the darkening, and as
swiftly. For while there was yet light to see, he read another name
that he used to know--the name of RAMIREZ ... Nacio en Cienfuegos, isla
de Cuba ... Wherefore born?--for what eternal purpose, Ramirez,--in the
City of a Hundred Fires? He had blown out his brains before the
sepulchre of his young wife ... It was a detached double vault, shaped
like a huge chest, and much dilapidated already:--under the continuous
burrowing of the crawfish it had sunk greatly on one side, tilting as
if about to fall. Out from its zigzag fissurings of brick and plaster,
a sinister voice seemed to come:--"Go thou and do likewise! ... Earth
groans with her burthen even now,--the burthen of Man: she holds no
place for thee!"

VIII.

... That voice pursued him into the darkness of his chilly
room,--haunted him in the silence of his lodging. And then began
within the man that ghostly struggle between courage and despair,
between patient reason and mad revolt, between weakness and force,
between darkness and light, which all sensitive and generous natures
must wage in their own souls at least once--perhaps many times--in
their lives. Memory, in such moments, plays like an electric
storm;--all involuntarily he found himself reviewing his life.

Incidents long forgotten came back with singular vividness: he saw the
Past as he had not seen it while it was the Present;--remembrances of
home, recollections of in