them into cattle; and the world does not condemn because the skin of the slave is darker in hue than that of his master. The soldier slays his neighbours, and for no better reason than that his prince desires it; the patriot slays his prince in order to avert a tax upon the country; yet neither homicide is called a murderer. I say unto thee that a motive may exist which shall render the decomposing of the elemental form, and the shedding of the spirit, whether of man or beast, a work not only innocent but laudable and virtuous!"

Pauline was for some time silent in dismay. The speculations of Orosmandel were often dark and mystical, and she had before now had occasion to wonder at the slight consideration in which he seemed to hold those words and things which blanch the cheek of other men: but till this day, although frequently tending towards it, he had never given her a general glimpse of the theory whence appeared! to emanate all that to her was singular in his opinions. Being a woman, she could not hold her tongue for ever, when words had been spoken which sounded like blasphemies to her ear, and too uninformed to expose his fallacies by reasoning, she had recourse, like other ignorant persons, to Scripture.

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"Your doctrine of spirits," said she, I fear is not only dangerous but damnable: it is opposed to holy writ." "On the contrary," said Orosmandel, "it is based upon Scripture. Every line of the sacred writings inculcates the connexion and integrity of the whole system of the universe; and in the book of the Preacher we find express mention of the souls of beasts."

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Be it so. Of this I know nothing; but can that doctrine be scriptural in which virtue is founded on mere expedience? Are the eternal and immutable laws of God to be broken at the pleasure, or according to the reason of so fallible a being as man?"

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The divine laws," said Orosmandel, speaking carelessly, as if appearing to tire of controversy with so weak an antagonist, are neither eternal ror immutable. They were promulgated for the benefit, not of God, but of man; and were therefore wisely adapted to the wants and uses of a being whose condition is subjected to perpetual and infinite change. Are they to be set aside, thou demandest, according to the fallible reason of a man? Why this is done every day by pope, cardinal, or bishop-nay by the meanest priest that ever heard confession and absolved the sinner from the consequences of transgression. But even setting aside the

practice of the Christian church in our day, which some heretics conceive to be erroneous, we find in every page of Scripture unanswerable evidence of the adaptation of the laws of God to the mutability of human life. To take an extreme case, for the purpose of avoiding any cavilling with regard to the heinousness of the action, the world was peopled at first by the incestuous loves of its inhabitants. This was commanded. -this was a law of God. A race, however, which is thus propagated, deteriorates in the course of a few generations, and would probably finish by sinking to the scale of the beasts. The law, therefore, which had been instituted for the good of mankind, was for the good of mankind not only repealed but reversed; and the means alluded to, after its expedience had ceased, was declared to be an enormous and deadly sin. But this talk is unprofitable. Thy mind must first be purged of prejudice before it can admit truth. Of this, however, rest assured, that no philosophy can be true which is irreconcileable with Scripture!" and with this wholesome dogma the sage concluded his lesson.

Pauline made no reply. The conversations which she had held with the old man on her present journey had more confused than enlightened her; and she desired rather to arrange her thoughts, than to overburden her mind with new ones. She was glad when the philosopher ceased to speak; and in order to change the current of his ideas, she reminded him of a question she had put on their leaving Huguemont, as to whether she might expect to meet her father at La Verrière. Orosmandel started as she spoke, and his eyes flashed fire.

"I had forgotten," said he, and he added between his teeth, in a scarcely audible mutter, "The lagging cur! if he do not howl for this!" and taking a small silver horn from beneath his cloak, he applied it to his lips. Pauline remembered that on asking her question, as they left Huguemont, he had sounded a low note upon this instrument, saying to her, Anon,' as if promising a speedy answer. The blast at present was hardly louder, and yet appeared to vibrate in the air at a great distance. He paused, and looked in the direction of Nantes. Presently some object was seen crossing an open space with the speed of a hare; then the foliage moved nearer the road; and then an uncouth creature, apparently neither man nor beast, darted out of the wood, and sprang at one bound upon the sage's horse, where he sat upon the neck, of the animal in the manner of an ape.

At this apparition, Pauline could not repress a scream, and a hoarser cry arose from more than one of the bold bosoms near her. The horses, however, appeared to be still more affected by the intrusion. Some took the bit in their mouths, and fled at full speed; while others, under more but not better command, plunged, and reared, as if they would have thrown their riders. Orosmandel alone looked fixedly at the strange figure before him; and his noble steed remained as motionless as if he had been cut out of stone.

"How now, sirrah?" said the philosopher sternly: "Must I call twice?"

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Forgive me, master," replied the dwarf, shaking with terror; "I was detained in answering the questions of him whom thou didst command me to obey; but when once free, I came at thy bidding, even as an arrow cleaveth the air."

Pauline, as well as De Briqueville, and the others near him, had by this time recognised, through his goblin dress, a well-known slave-some said a familiar-of Orosmandel; and, although their surprise was undiminished, they were able to look without terror on one to whose imp-like form they had been reconciled by habit. The line was speedily redressed, and in utter silence; for none of the whispered intercommunications were heard, to which an unusual or terrifying circumstance gives birth. Each man locked up his thoughts in his own breast; and many would not trust them with freedom even there, but held them down with aves and credos for the rest of the journey.

Orosmandel, in the mean time, after having informed the damsel that she should find her father at La Verrière, con. tinued his route unmoved, with the dwarf sitting behind him. Sometimes they conversed, but it was in an unknown tongue. De Briqueville, who had been in the East, thought this language resembled Arabic; but he was never heard to make further remark on the subject, except in thanking God that he did not understand a word of it.

Nothing else worthy of observation occurred till they reached La Verrière. Of this place Pauline had a very indistinct recollection, never having been there since her childhood; and now she no longer wondered that her father should have chosen another domicile for her, or that he himself should have sunk, while inhabiting it, into the melancholy and abstractedness for which he was remarkable.

The château was a dark and sombre fortress seated on the brink of the lifeless Erdre. On the landward side, besides its walls and ditches, it was defended by dark woods and

morasses, as intricate of passage as the stronghold of the Cretan monster. On the side of the river all access was cut off, except by a narrow and secret channel, winding through the floating swamps that were called in the language of the district "plains." In summer these were covered with the richest vegetation, so tempting to the eye of cattle, that every year many a strong ox perilled and lost his life in order to gratify his appetite. The ground sunk under his feet while he rioted in the meal; and, in endeavouring to regain the firm earth, it usually happened that he plunged into some treacherous hole, deceived by the grass which coated its surface, and disappeared in a gulf,

"Where never fathom line could touch the ground!"

Pauline, acquainted though she was with Brittany, where at that time almost every gentleman's house was a regular fortress, shivered as she crossed the first drawbridge, and heard the rattle of the chains as it was raised behind her. She was still, however, it might have seemed, in the open country, for her way lay with many a turning and winding, through woods and jungles and morasses, where the earth trembled beneath their feet. The second gate was, in like manner, passed, and almost the same scene still continued; for the castle which they beheld at a distance, had vanished on their entering the precincts. At length, she stood within the court-yard, and saw the heart of all this mystery, with feelings not greatly different from those of the unwilling visitors of the Minotaur after traversing the Labyrinth. It was a huge but low building, of prodigious strength, black with age, half hidden by the fortification termed a curtain, its few windows almost as narrow as loopholes, and the only visible doorway sunk in the earth, like the entrance to a subterranean habitation.

Up to this moment, Pauline, who was only too happy to be permitted to see her father anywhere, had indulged in no speculations upon the cause of her present visit. She had received the summons as a boon, and looked forward with girlish delight to the freedom she would enjoy in roaming among the woods of La Verrière, and skimming in some fairy-like bark the placid waters of the Erdre. She now recollected, however, with an uncomfortable but indefinite sensation, that the château, and all things pertaining thereto, had been a forbidden topic at the Hôtel de la Suze; and that her father, so far from giving her an invitation to his habitual country residence, had on more than one occasion

silenced her with sternness, and almost violence of manner, when she hinted her desire to visit it.

"What can have produced so sudden a change?" she inquired mentally, as she stooped her head to enter the low vaulted door. "Why am I here at last? and how long am I to remain in a place that looks like a dungeon, and smells damp and faint like a burying-vault?"

CHAPTER XV.

BEFORE Conducting the reader into the interior of La Verrière, it is necessary that we bring up another group of the travellers with whom we set out; for our narrative is like that of Sancho Panza, in which a certain number of sheep were to be ferried across a river one by one, and if good count were not kept, the story was at an end.

Sir Archibald Douglas and David Armstrong, as we have seen, followed close upon the processional march of the damsel of Laval; both interested in its progress in the same manner, and in pretty nearly the same degree. The knight, however, had the advantage of his friend, inasmuch as he could talk boldly and openly of his hopes and his love; while our unfortunate scholar shut up his secret in the depths of his own bosom, where its stirrings were even as those of the sons of Titan. The knight, in fact, in spite of David's natural shrewdness, was at times inclined to suspect him of being not altogether composed in his intellects; and he did not scruple to attribute whatever damage he might have sustained therein, to the vain studies in which he had found him engaged, and above all, to the doctrines of that pernicious heathen, Nigidius Figulus.

When the damsel and her party were encamped for the night at Huguemont, the two friends were prowling about the neighbourhood, and circling round the château like birds of prey. David, indeed, perhaps saw with his own eyes the wandering Jewess skimming along the path; but if so, the sympathy which should have revealed her to him, even through the guise of a peasant, must have been rendered powerless by the unhallowed nature of his passion. He knew her not, and she passed on her way.

"Tell me, Archibald," said he, when they awoke in the morning, "have you again been taking advantage of my eyes being shut, to get up and stravague about like an evildoer in the night?"