but no power of omniscience to direct my hand or stay its effects.
Blind and mad I knew not what I did. Those I most loved fell beneath the
blow which crushed those I most abhorred, and shared the same fate. The
terrible agencies I had summoned as my slaves became my masters. The
fiends which, as ministers of God's justice, garbed in the guise of
angels of light, I had, by hideous necromancy, evoked to aid me in
righteous retribution, proved the dark demons of hell and derided all
orders to accomplish my bidding. The awful engines I had set in motion I
found myself powerless to arrest or control. Effects ceased not with the
causes in which they had their origin. The stroke of vengeance, aimed at
foes, recoiled on friends--recoiled on myself. And when I fain would
stop, when I would arrest the awful havoc which my will had commenced,
the dark ministers I had called up howled in my ears, 'On! on! on!
vengeance is thine! vengeance is thine!' They mocked my terror and
laughed at my apprehensions.

"At last there seemed a pause. Fate appeared to have done her worst, to
have executed her decrees. The blind agencies of vengeance blasted no
more, because there seemed no more to blast. The misery I had caused I
strove to alleviate, the innocent hearts I had crushed I endeavored to
heal; rejoicing in the joy I had created and the affection I gratified,
once more I loved--loved, but, oh! not as I first had loved--not with
that deep, adoring, delirious passion of my youth, and yet with a
subdued, fraternal feeling I loved; in the calm and sweet seclusion of a
favored clime, parted from the world with all its miseries and its
crimes, environed by all that man or nature could contribute to human
bliss, I began to dream of happiness, in the happiness I had created.
But, alas! I forgot that man's happiness lies not in his own hand, but
in the hand of his Maker. I forgot that an omniscient eye pursued me,
that a blasphemed and omnipotent Power was over me. The blow
paused--hovered--fell, not upon me, not on the guilty, but again it fell
on the innocent; and she, who was my only hope, my beloved Haydee, my
wife, was snatched from my heart, ruthlessly murdered by that fiend,
Benedetto!"

The unhappy man pressed his hand to his forehead, and for some time
paced the chamber in silence; then, approaching a small alcove at one
extremity of the apartment, he raised the heavy and sumptuous hangings
and revealed a small silver casket of exquisi