rief and despair had traced deep furrows--his beard and
nails, from long neglect, grown to a frightful length-his clothes rotten
and hanging about him in tatters; and the air he breathed, for want of
ventilation and cleansing, foul, fetid, and infectious. In this state
be found the favorite of fortune;--his iron frame had stood proof
against it all! Seized with horror at the sight, the pastor hurried
back to the governor, in order to solicit a second indulgence for the
poor wretch, without which the first would prove of no avail.

As the governor again excused himself by pleading the imperative nature
of his instructions, the pastor nobly resolved on a second journey to
the capital, again to supplicate the prince's mercy. There he protested
solemnly that, without violating the sacred character of the sacrament,
he could not administer it to the prisoner until some resemblance of the
human form was restored to him. This prayer was also granted; and from
that day forward the unfortunate man might be said to begin a new
existence.

Several long years were spent by him in the fortress, but in a much more
supportable condition, after the short summer of the new favorite's
reign had passed, and others succeeded in his place, who either
possessed more humanity or no motive for revenge. At length, after ten
years of captivity, the hour of his delivery arrived, but without any
judicial investigation or formal acquittal. He was presented with his
freedom as a boon of mercy, and was, at the same time, ordered to quit
his native country forever.

Here the oral traditions which I have been able to collect respecting
his history begin to fail; and I find myself compelled to pass in
silence over a period of about twenty years. During the interval
G------ entered anew upon his military career, in a foreign service,
which eventually brought him to a pitch of greatness quite equal to that
from which he had, in his native country, been so awfully precipitated.
At length time, that friend of the unfortunate, who works a slow but
inevitable retribution, took into his hands the winding up of this
affair. The prince's days of passion were over; humanity gradually
resumed its sway over him as his hair whitened with age. At the brink
of the grave he felt a yearning towards the friend of his early youth.
In order to repay, as far as possible, the gray-headed old man, for the
injuries which had been heaped upon the youth, the prince, with frien