ppointments, as serious to it, as the more severed and destructive
afflictions of which he, in his existence, had been the victim; and, as
he watched the shadow-like movement of the little fluttering heart of
the lizard, he experienced a cruel pleasure in perceiving that there
were other beings in the creation, even down to the most insignificant,
who inherited a part of his misery, and suffered a portion of his
despair.

Ere long, however, his emotions took a sterner and a darker hue. The
sight of the animal wearied him, and he flung it contemptuously aside.
It disappeared in the direction of the ramparts; and almost at the same
moment he heard a slight sound, resembling the falling of several
minute particles of brick or light stone, which seemed to come from the
wall behind him.

That such a noise should proceed from so massive a structure appeared
unaccountable. He rose, and, parting the bushes before him, advanced
close to the surface of the lofty wall. To his astonishment, he found
that the brickwork had in many places so completely mouldered away,
that he could move it easily with his fingers. The cause of the
trifling noise that he had heard was now fully explained: hundreds of
lizards had made their homes between the fissures of the bricks; the
animal that he had permitted to escape had taken refuge in one of these
cavities, and in the hurry of its flight had detached several of the
loose crumbling fragments that surrounded its hiding-place.

Not content, however, with the discovery he had already made, he
retired a little, and, looking stedfastly up through some trees which
in this particular place grew at the foot of the wall, he saw that its
surface was pierced in many places by great irregular rifts, some of
which extended nearly to its whole height. In addition to this, he
perceived that the mass of the structure at one particular point,
leaned considerably out of the perpendicular. Astounded at what he
beheld, he took a stick from the ground, and inserting it in one of the
lowest and smallest of the cracks, easily succeeded in forcing it
entirely into the wall, part of which seemed to be hollow, and part
composed of the same rotten brickwork which had at first attracted his
attention.

It was now evident that the whole structure, over a breadth of several
yards, had been either weakly and carelessly built, or had at some
former period suffered a sudden and violent shock. He left the stick in