s very being was a
doom,--a curse sent upon him by some malignant fate with whose power it
was vain to struggle. He detested his work,--he detested his duties,--he
loathed his vows,--and there was not a thing in his whole future to
which he looked forward otherwise than with the extreme of aversion,
except one to which he clung with a bitter and defiant tenacity,--the
spiritual guidance of Agnes. Guidance!--he laughed aloud, in the
bitterness of his soul, as he thought of this. He was her guide,--her
confessor,--to him she was bound to reveal every change of feeling;
and this love that he too well perceived rising in her heart for
another,--he would wring from her own confessions the means to repress
and circumvent it. If she could not be his, he might at least prevent
her from belonging to any other,--he might at least keep her always
within the sphere of his spiritual authority. Had he not a right to do
this?--had he not a right to cherish an evident vocation,--a right to
reclaim her from the embrace of an excommunicated infidel, and present
her as a chaste bride at the altar of the Lord? Perhaps, when that
was done, when an irrevocable barrier should separate her from all
possibility of earthly love, when the awful marriage-vow should have
been spoken which should seal her heart for heaven alone, he might
recover some of the blessed calm which her influence once brought over
him, and these wild desires might cease, and these feverish pulses be
still.

Such were the vague images and dreams of the past and future that
floated over his mind, as he lay in a heavy sort of lethargy on the
floor of his cell, and hour after hour passed away. It grew afternoon,
and the radiance of evening came on. The window of the cell overlooked
the broad Mediterranean, all one blue glitter of smiles and sparkles.
The white-winged boats were flitting lightly to and fro, like
gauzy-winged insects in the summer air,--the song of the fishermen
drawing their nets on the beach floated cheerily upward. Capri lay like
a half-dissolved opal in shimmering clouds of mist, and Naples
gleamed out pearly clear in the purple distance. Vesuvius, with its
cloud-spotted sides, its garlanded villas and villages, its silvery
crown of vapor, seemed a warm-hearted and genial old giant lying down
in his gorgeous repose and holding all things on his heaving bosom in a
kindly embrace.

So was the earth flooded with light and glory, that the tide poured into
the