to me
a little more than I learn from English rumour (which never accurately
reports upon foreign matters still more notorious), how a person who had
so much to lose, and so little to win, by revolution, could put himself
into the same crazy boat with a crew of hair-brained adventurers and
visionary professors."

"Professors!" repeated the count; "I think you have hit on the very
answer to your question; not but what men of high birth were as mad as
the canaille. I am the more willing to gratify your curiosity, since
it will perhaps serve to guide your kind search in my favour. You
must know, then, that my kinsman was not born the heir to the rank he
obtained. He was but a distant relation to the head of the House which
he afterwards represented. Brought up in an Italian university, he was
distinguished for his learning and his eccentricities. There too, I
suppose, brooding over old wives' tales about freedom, and so forth,
he contracted his carbonaro, chimerical notions for the independence of
Italy. Suddenly, by three deaths, he was elevated, while yet young, to
a station and honours which might have satisfied any man in his senses.
Que diable! what could the independence of Italy do for him? He and I
were cousins; we had played together as boys; but our lives had been
separated till his succession to rank brought us necessarily together.
We became exceedingly intimate. And you may judge how I loved him,"
said the count, averting his eyes slightly from Randal's quiet, watchful
gaze, "when I add, that I forgave him for enjoying a heritage that, but
for him, had been mine."

"Ah, you were next heir?"

"And it is a hard trial to be very near a great fortune, and yet just to
miss it."

"True," cried Randal, almost impetuously. The count now raised his eyes,
and again the two men looked into each other's souls.

"Harder still, perhaps," resumed the count, after a short
pause,--"harder still might it have been to some men to forgive the
rival as well as the heir."

"Rival! how?"

"A lady, who had been destined by her parents to myself, though we had
never, I own, been formally betrothed, became the wife of my kinsman."

"Did he know of your pretensions?"

"I do him the justice to say he did not. He saw and fell in love with
the young lady I speak of. Her parents were dazzled. Her father sent
for me. He apologized, he explained; he set before me, mildly enough,
certain youthful imprudences or errors of my own, a