underground passage connecting the
two, and by which the fortress may be entered instead of scaled. The
difficulty of making one's way through life amidst the ruins of old
beliefs and the fanciful overgrowth in which time has clothed them; the
equal danger of destroying too much and clearing away too little; also
find their place in the allegory.

The possible friend and adviser, to whom Miranda is referred at vol.
xii. p. 122, was M. Joseph Milsand, who always at that time passed the
bathing season at St. Aubin.[80]

"THE INN ALBUM" is a tragedy in eight parts or scenes: the dialogue
interspersed with description; and carried on by four persons not named.
It is chiefly enacted in the parlour of a country inn; and the Inn
"Album," in spite of its grotesque or prosaic character, becomes an
important instrument in it.

Four years before the tragedy occurred--so we learn from the dialogue--a
gentlemanly adventurer of uncertain age had won and abused the
affections of a motherless girl, whom he thought too simple to resent
the treachery. He was mistaken in this; for her nature was as proud as
it was confiding; and her indignation when she learned that he had not
intended marriage was such as to surprise him into offering it. She
rejected the offer with contempt. He went his way, mortified and
embittered. A month later she had buried herself in a secluded and
squalid village, as wife of the old, poor, overworked, and hopelessly
narrow-minded clergyman, whose cure it was. She abstained, however, for
his own sake, from making any painful disclosures to her husband; and
the daily and hourly expiation brought no peace with it; for she
remained in her deceiver's power.

Three years went by. The elderly adventurer then fell in with a young,
wealthy, and inexperienced man, who had loved the same woman, and whose
honourable addresses had been declined for his sake; and he acquired
over this youth an influence almost as strong as that which he had
exercised over the young girl. He found him grieving over his
disappointment, and undertook to teach him how to forget it; became his
master in the art of dissipation; helped to empty his pockets while he
filled his own; and finally induced him to form a mercenary engagement
to a cousin whom he did not love. When the story opens, the young man
has come to visit his bride-elect in her country home; and his
Mephistopheles has followed him, under a transparent pretext, to secure
a last