pe. There was, besides, a kind
of fog-like indistinctness in her few and muttered words that made a
fitting atmosphere of drowsy uniformity for the sick-room.

Her first care, on my recovery, was to supply me with a number of little
religious books,--lives of saints and martyrs, accounts of miracles, and
narratives of holy pilgrimages,--and I devoured them with all the zest
of a devotee. They seemed to supply the very excitement my mind
craved for, and the good soul little suspected how much more she was
ministering to a love for the marvellous than to a spirit of piety. In
the "Flowers of St. Francis," for instance, I found an adventure-seeker
after my own heart To be sure, his search was after sinners in need of
a helping hand to rescue them; but as his contests with Satan were
described as stand-up encounters, with very hard knocks on each side,
they were just as exciting combats to read of, as any I had ever perused
in stories of chivalry.

Mistaking my zest for these readings for something far more
praiseworthy, "the gray sister" enjoined me very seriously to turn
from the evil advisers I had formerly consorted with, and frequent the
society of better-minded and wiser men. Out of these counsels, dark
and dim at first, but gradually growing clearer, I learned that I was
regarded as a member of some terrible secret society, banded together
for the direst and blackest of objects; the subversion of thrones,
overthrow of dynasties, and assassination of sovereigns being all labors
of love to us. She had a full catalogue of my colleagues, from Sand, who
killed Kotzebue, to Orsini, and seemed thoroughly persuaded that I was
a very advanced member of the order. It was only after a long time, and
with great address on my part, that I obtained these revelations from
her, and she owned that nothing but witnessing how the holy studies had
influenced me would ever have induced her to make these avowals. As my
convalescence progressed, and I was able to sit up for an hour or so
in the day, she told me that I might very soon expect a visit from the
Staats Procurator, a kind of district attorney-general, to examine me.
So little able was I to carry my mind back to the bygone events of my
life, that I heard this as a sort of vague hope that the inquiry would
strike out some clew by which I could connect myself with the past,
for I was sorely puzzled to learn what and who I had been before I came
there. Was I a prosecutor or was I a