his secret soul, he felt himself possessed of a
superiority of knowledge, a power both of science and of mind, which
placed the rude nobles of the day infinitely beneath him. So conscious
was Henbane Dwining of this elevation, that, like a keeper of wild
beasts, he sometimes adventured, for his own amusement, to rouse the
stormy passions of such men as Ramorny, trusting, with his humble
manner, to elude the turmoil he had excited, as an Indian boy will
launch his light canoe, secure from its very fragility, upon a broken
surf, in which the boat of an argosy would be assuredly dashed to
pieces. That the feudal baron should despise the humble practitioner
in medicine was a matter of course; but Ramorny felt not the less the
influence which Dwining exercised over him, and was in the encounter
of their wits often mastered by him, as the most eccentric efforts of
a fiery horse are overcome by a boy of twelve years old, if he has been
bred to the arts of the manege. But the contempt of Dwining for Ramorny
was far less qualified. He regarded the knight, in comparison with
himself, as scarcely rising above the brute creation; capable, indeed,
of working destruction, as the bull with his horns or the wolf with his
fangs, but mastered by mean prejudices, and a slave to priest craft, in
which phrase Dwining included religion of every kind. On the whole, he
considered Ramorny as one whom nature had assigned to him as a serf, to
mine for the gold which he worshipped, and the avaricious love of
which was his greatest failing, though by no means his worst vice. He
vindicated this sordid tendency in his own eyes by persuading himself
that it had its source in the love of power.

"Henbane Dwining," he said, as he gazed in delight upon the hoards which
he had secretly amassed, and which he visited from time to time, "is no
silly miser that doats on those pieces for their golden lustre: it is
the power with which they endow the possessor which makes him thus adore
them. What is there that these put not within your command? Do you love
beauty, and are mean, deformed, infirm, and old? Here is a lure the
fairest hawk of them all will stoop to. Are you feeble, weak, subject
to the oppression of the powerful? Here is that will arm in your defence
those more mighty than the petty tyrant whom you fear. Are you splendid
in your wishes, and desire the outward show of opulence? This dark chest
contains many a wide range of hill and dale, many a fai