esting
to the honour of our house, and the very life of one of its members.
Nothing, however, for me to do, calculated to prevent or impede the
designs of Montreuil and the danger of Gerald, occurred to me. Eager
alike in my hatred and my love, I said, inly, "What matters it whether
one whom the ties of blood never softened towards me, with whom, from
my childhood upwards, I have wrestled as with an enemy, what matters it
whether he win fame or death in the perilous game he has engaged in?"
And turning from this most generous and most brotherly view of the
subject, I began only to think whether the search or the society of
Isora also influenced Gerald in his absence from home. After a fruitless
and inconclusive meditation on that head, my thoughts took a less
selfish turn, and dwelt with all the softness of pity, and the anxiety
of love, upon the morbid temperament and ascetic devotions of Aubrey.
What, for one already so abstracted from the enjoyments of earth, so
darkened by superstitious misconceptions of the true nature of God and
the true objects of His creatures,--what could be anticipated but wasted
powers and a perverted life? Alas! when will men perceive the difference
between religion and priestcraft? When will they perceive that reason,
so far from extinguishing religion by a more gaudy light, sheds on it
all its lustre? It is fabled that the first legislator of the Peruvians
received from the Deity a golden rod, with which in his wanderings he
was to strike the earth, until in some destined spot the earth entirely
absorbed it, and there--and there alone--was he to erect a temple to the
Divinity. What is this fable but the cloak of an inestimable moral? Our
reason is the rod of gold; the vast world of truth gives the soil, which
it is perpetually to sound; and only where without resistance the soil
receives the rod which guided and supported us will our altar be sacred
and our worship be accepted.

CHAPTER X.

BEING A SHORT CHAPTER, CONTAINING A MOST IMPORTANT EVENT.

SIR WILLIAM'S letter was still fresh in my mind, when, for want of some
less noble quarter wherein to bestow my tediousness, I repaired to St.
John. As I crossed the hall to his apartment, two men, just dismissed
from his presence, passed me rapidly; one was unknown to me, but there
was no mistaking the other,--it was Montreuil. I was greatly startled;
the priest, not appearing to notice me, and conversing in a whispered
yet seemingly veh