he benefit which will accrue to thee by this
event?"

"Not even for that consideration."

"O these daughters!" exclaimed the old man. "We bring them up tenderly, we
exhaust all our science for the improvement of their minds and bodies, we
set our choicest hopes upon them, and entrust them with the fulfilment of
our most cherished aspirations; and when all is done, they will not so much
as commit a murder to please us! Miserable ingrate, receive the just
requital of thy selfish disobedience!"

"O father, do not turn me into a tadpole!"

"I will not, but I will turn thee out of doors."

And he did.

II

Though disinherited, Mithridata was not destitute. She had secured a
particle of the philosopher's stone--a slender outfit for a magician's
daughter! yet ensuring her a certain portion of wealth. What should she do
now? The great object of her life must henceforth be to avoid committing
murder, especially murdering any handsome young man. It would have seemed
most natural to retire into a convent, but, not to speak of her lack of
vocation, she felt that her father would justly consider that she had
disgraced her family, and she still looked forward to reconciliation with
him. She might have taken a hermitage, but her instinct told her that a
fair solitary can only keep young men off by strong measures; and she
disliked the character of a hermitess with a bull-dog. She therefore went
straight to the great city, took a house, and surrounded herself with
attendants. In the choice of these she was particularly careful to select
those only whose personal appearance was such as to discourage any approach
to familiarity or endearment. Never before or since was youthful beauty
surrounded by such moustached duennas, squinting chambermaids, hunchbacked
pages, and stumpy maids-of-all-work. This was a real sorrow to her, for she
loved beauty; it was a still sadder trial that she could no longer feel it
right to indulge herself in the least morsel of arsenic; she sighed for
strychnia, and pined for prussic acid. The change of diet was of course at
first most trying to her health, and in fact occasioned a serious illness,
but youth and a sound constitution pulled her through.

Reader, hast thou known what it is to live with a heart inflamed by love
for thy fellow-creatures which thou couldst manifest neither by word nor
deed? To pine with fruitless longings for good? and to consume with vain
yearnings for usefulness? To