we send
to hover over a dark and unfathomable abyss,--what wonder that ye should
have wasted hope and life in striving to penetrate the future! What
wonder that ye should have given a language to the stars, and to the
night a spell, and gleaned from the uncomprehended earth an answer to
the enigmas of Fate! We are like the sleepers who, walking under the
influence of a dream, wander by the verge of a precipice, while, in
their own deluded vision, they perchance believe themselves surrounded
by bowers of roses, and accompanied by those they love. Or, rather like
the blind man, who can retrace every step of the path he has _once_
trodden, but who can guess not a single inch of that which he has
not yet travelled, our Reason can re-guide us over the roads of past
experience with a sure and unerring wisdom, even while it recoils,
baffled and bewildered, before the blackness of the very moment whose
boundaries we are about to enter.

The few friends I had invited to my wedding were still with me, when one
of my servants, not Desmarais, informed me that Mr. Oswald waited for
me. I went out to him.

"_Parbleu_!" said he, rubbing his hands, "I perceive it is a joyous time
with you, and I don't wonder you can only spare me a few moments."

The estates of Devereux were not to be risked for a trifle, but I
thought Mr. Marie Oswald exceedingly impertinent. "Sir," said I, very
gravely, "pray be seated; and now to business. In the first place may I
ask to whom I am beholden for sending you with that letter you gave
me at Devereux Court? and, secondly, what that letter contained? for I
never read it."

"Sir," answered the man, "the history of the letter is perfectly
distinct from that of the will, and the former (to discuss the least
important first) is briefly this. You have heard, Sir, of the quarrels
between Jesuit and Jansenist?"

"I have."

"Well--but first, Count, let me speak of myself. There were three young
men of the same age, born in the same village in France, of obscure
birth each, and each desirous of getting on in the world. Two were
deuced clever fellows, the third, nothing particular. One of the two at
present shall be nameless; the third, 'who was nothing particular' (in
his own opinion, at least, though his friends may think differently),
was Marie Oswald. We soon separated: I went to Paris, was employed in
different occupations, and at last became secretary, and (why should I
disavow it?) valet to a lady o