med
its wonted paleness; but he did not relapse into inanity. He sat with
a steady, serene, patient look. Like one prepared not to contend, but
to suffer.

His trial continued for a long time, with cruel mockery of justice,
for no witnesses were ever in this court confronted with the accused,
and the latter had continually to defend himself in the dark. Some
unknown and powerful enemy had alleged charges against the unfortunate
alchymist, but who he could not imagine. Stranger and sojourner as he
was in the land, solitary and harmless in his pursuits, how could he
have provoked such hostility? The tide of secret testimony, however,
was too strong against him; he was convicted of the crime of magic,
and condemned to expiate his sins at the stake, at the approaching
auto da fe.

While the unhappy alchymist was undergoing his trial at the
inquisition, his daughter was exposed to trials no less severe. Don
Ambrosio, into whose hands she had fallen, was, as has before been
intimated, one of the most daring and lawless profligates in all
Granada. He was a man of hot blood and fiery passions, who stopped at
nothing in the gratification of his desires; yet with all this he
possessed manners, address, and accomplishments, that had made him
eminently successful among the sex. From the palace to the cottage he
had extended his amorous enterprises; his serenades harassed the
slumbers of half the husbands in Granada; no balcony was too high for
his adventurous attempts, nor any cottage too lowly for his perfidious
seductions. Yet he was as fickle as he was ardent; success had made
him vain and capricious; he had no sentiment to attach him to the
victim of his arts; and many a pale cheek and fading eye, languishing
amidst the sparkling of jewels, and many a breaking heart, throbbing
under the rustic bodice, bore testimony to his triumphs and his
faithlessness.

He was sated, however, by easy conquests, and wearied of a life of
continual and prompt gratification. There had been a degree of
difficulty and enterprise in the pursuit of Inez that he had never
before experienced. It had aroused him from the monotony of mere
sensual life, and stimulated him with the charm of adventure. He had
become an epicure in pleasure; and now that he had this coy beauty in
his power, he was determined to protract his enjoyment, by the gradual
conquest of her scruples and downfall of her virtue. He was vain of
his person and address, which he thoug