until the following day.

For my own part, I gradually came to my senses, and with difficulty
regained my chaise, the driver of which told me I had been gone about
an hour. I drove off to town, wholly unaware that I had been observed
by any one, much less by Emily. When she related to her father what
she had seen, he either disbelieved or affected to disbelieve it, and
treated it as the effects of a distempered mind, the phantoms of a
disordered imagination; and she at length began to coincide with him.

I started for the continent a few days afterwards. Talbot, who had
seen little of Clara since my rejection by Emily, and subsequent
illness, offered my father to accompany me; and Clara was anxious that
he should go, as she was determined not to listen to any thing he
could say during my affliction; she could not, she said, be happy
while I was miserable, and gave him no opportunity of conversing with
her on the subject of their union.

We arrived at Paris; but so abstracted was I in thought, that I
neither saw nor heard any thing. Every attention of Talbot was lost
upon me. I continued in my sullen stupor, and forgot to read the
little book which dear Clara had given, and which, for her sake, I had
promised to read. I wrote to Eugenia on my arrival; and disburthened
my mind in some measure, by acknowledging my shameful treatment of
her. I implored her pardon; and, by return of post, received it.
Her answer was affectionate and consoling; but she stated that her
spirits, of course, were low, and her health but indifferent.

For many days my mind remained in a state, of listless inanity; and
Talbot applied, or suffered others to apply, the most pernicious
stimulant that could be thought of to rouse me to action. Taking
a quiet walk with him, we met some friends of his; and, at their
request, we agreed to go to the saloons of the Palais Royal. This was
a desperate remedy, and by a miracle only was I saved from utter and
irretrievable ruin. How many of my countrymen have fallen victims to
the arts practised in that horrible school of vice, I dare not say!
Happy should I be to think that the infection had not reached our own
shores, and found patrons among the great men of the land. They have,
however, both felt the consequences, and been forewarned of the
danger. _They_ have no excuse: _mine_ was, that I had been excluded
from the society of those I loved. Always living by excitement, was it
surprising that, when a ga