ball that chokes
the female victim of excited nerves. The struggle lasted for several
minutes, and at last a burst of dissolving tenderness, removing all the
obstructions of prudence or terror, and stunning my ear with its loud
sound, afforded him a temporary relief. Tears gushed down his cheeks,
and groans of sorrow filled the room, and might have been heard in the
apartment of his wife, whose entry, I feared, might have interrupted the
extraordinary scene. Looking at me wistfully, he held out his hands, and
sobbed out, in a tone of despair--

"Are you my friend, or are you my enemy?"

I answered him that I was the friend of his wife--one of the brightest
patterns of female fidelity I had ever seen; and if by declaring myself
his friend I would save her from the designs of the poisoner, and him
from the pains of the law and the fire of hell, I would instantly sign
the bond of amity.

"You have knocked from my soul the bonds of terror," he cried out, still
sobbing; "and if I knew and were satisfied of one thing more, I would
resign myself to God and my own breaking heart. Did Espras--yet why
should I suspect one who rejects suspicion as others do the poison she
would swallow from my hand, though labelled by the apothecary?--did
Espras tell you what you have so darkly and fearfully hinted to me?"

I replied to him that, in place of telling me, the faithful unsuspecting
creature had to that hour rejected and spurned the suspicion, as
unworthy of her pure, confiding spirit.

"It is over!--it is over!" cried the changed man. "O God! How powerful
is virtue! How strong is the force of those qualities of the heart which
we men often treat as weak baubles to toy with, and throw away in our
fits of proud spleen--the softness, the gentleness, the fidelity and
devotedness of woman! How strangely, how wonderfully formed is the heart
of man, which, disdaining the terrors of the rope of the executioner,
breaks and succumbs at the touch of the thistle-down of a woman's love!
This creature, sir, gave me my fortune, made me what I am, left for me
her country and her friends, adhered to me through good and evil
report--and I prepared for her a cruel death! Dreadful contrast! Who
shall describe the shame, the sorrow, the humiliation, of the ingrate
whose crime has risen to the fearful altitude of this enormity; and who,
by the tenderness and love of his devoted victim, is forced to turn his
eye on the grim reward of death for love, r