CHAPTER V.

EDMOND'S RELIGION.

I NEED add nothing to these extracts. Here, then, is the point to which this unhappy man was come. No matter how strongly he might strive against it, he remained a prey to the mysterious action of a Power unknown to those around him, and incredible to himself.

In vain (his journal proves it) did he endeavor by every means in his power to convince himself of the impossibility of apparitions.

THE HAND was there.

The spectral amethyst still smote him with its violet rays.

Not by ex

bring it beSince, if he

Not always. Not when he wished it. pressly exciting his imagination could he fore him. For this he had often tried. succeeded in this (he thought), then the spell would be broken; then he might analyze the nature of the vision, investigate the causes and conditions of it, and rest sure that whatever he was able to evoke by power of will, he should always be able to dismiss by the same power.

Not being able to do this, he hoped to accustom himself to this spectral visitant which he could neither summon nor exclude; and he labored to render the thought of it familiar to his mind. Labor lost!

When the last apparition already seemed to him as a half-forgotten dream; when, in the full enjoyment of untroubled health, and the clear consciousness of intellectual power, he might reasonably assume that he had fairly rid himself of a temporary nervous irritability, then, by ways the most unexpected, and ever with increased significance, IT returned.

In the mid-heart of the barbarous battle, in the treacherous solitude of the mountain ambush, had he not seen that hand put aside the gun that was leveled at his head? Among the balmy autumn woods at L when not the shadow of a cloud in heaven gave omen of the sure destruction to which a hundred paces farther must have brought him, had he not recognized the lurid ring upon the stretched forefinger of that posted arm, imperatively warning him back? And once before, over the chessboard, when he had boasted to his own heart that Juliet could not escape him, had it not crossed his game, and found a means to let him understand that it, the Spectre, would know how to balk him?

Would the thing execute its menace? Would his be always the only eye to see the apparition? Or would it, at some later time, reveal itself also to others? These were the doubts that assailed him. So must he live on.

He had built up for himself an elaborate edifice of internal law, suggested by, and based upon, the analogy of the visible organism of forces acting on external nature. In this system the relations of cause and effect were so close as to admit no place for passivity. Action only was considered capable of consequence.

Causation could not exist in that which had no action. The thing that was not done was not at all. What ef fect could be attributed to that which itself had no existence ?

In this circle of ideas his mind continually moved. I find proof of it in all he wrote.

This is why the inscription on the Egyptian ring had so strongly seized upon his imagination. His own thesis had arisen from the tomb, fortified by the authority of twenty centuries. This is why he had so cautiously considered each active expression of his will, so scrupulously weighed every action of his life. As, according to this way of thinking, the sum of effects must be equal to the sum of causes, and as he thought that he could precisely predicate the first if he carefully calculated the last, he assumed for certain that he could never become the slave of a passion; since, passion being only an effect, had he not beforehand measured and assigned to it its definite extent by the exactly equivalent limits accorded to the cause of it in his proper action?

In the same way he reduced his responsibility to a similar equation. So much action, so much responsibility. He would suffer himself to recognize and accept no responsibility which was not contained in (and legitimized by) this equation. To his own law he had strictly adhered. The law of his mind he had made the law of his nature. He had never evaded it, never opposed it, never flinched from it. In this he had sought security, and to this he now clung with the energy of despair. In his own sense he had never failed, never been wanting. He had, under no

provocation, ever humiliated himself in his own eyes. He dared not do so; he could not do so; for, in this system of his, he had left himself not so much as a foot's breadth for escape from failure. A system which did not admit of weakness could not provide for pardon. By the side of his law was chaos: one step beyond his inch of solid ground, the abyss. Mediation was impossible where there was nothing intermediate. At the summit of his severe religion, in the place of a compassionate Christ, stood a relentless Necessity.

CHAPTER VI.

BEFORE THE ALTAR.

It was the day fixed for the marriage. It had been settled that the ceremony should take place in the private chapel of the chateau, and in the presence of only a few witnesses-the most intimate friends of the family.

Edmond had long looked forward to this moment. He felt that it would be the decisive crisis of his life, and he was forewarned that the Spectre would appear. He was resolved to confront it without flinching. By resolutely fixing in his mind the thought of the apparition, he sought to prepare himself to sustain, undefeated, the shock of that sudden terror, of which the triumph is-madness. It was neither of Heaven nor of Hell, but of himself, that he sought strength for the final conflict.

When he felt that he was master of himself, he went to meet his betrothed.

Those that saw him pass said to each other, "See how brave and hearty is our young lord to-day! How gallantly goes he yonder, with his manly step and handsome face. On him Heaven's blessing visibly reposes; for he is of a noble nature, and 'tis written clear on the brow of him that there is not in his veins one drop of sullied blood."

M