he most mysterious
and hoarded secrets in the love of others.

Two circumstances of importance happened before you left Devereux
Court for London; the one was the introduction to your service of Jean
Desmarais, the second was your breach with Montreuil. I speak now of
the first. A very early friend did the priest possess, born in the same
village as himself and in the same rank of life; he had received a good
education and possessed natural genius. At a time when, from some fraud
in a situation of trust which he had held in a French nobleman's
family, he was in destitute and desperate circumstances, it occurred
to Montreuil to provide for him by placing him in our family. Some
accidental and frivolous remark of yours which I had repeated in my
correspondence with Montreuil as illustrative of your manner, and your
affected pursuits at that time, presented an opportunity to a plan
before conceived. Desmarais came to England in a smuggler's vessel,
presented himself to you as a servant, and was accepted. In this plan
Montreuil had two views: first, that of securing Desmarais a place in
England, tolerably profitable to himself and convenient for any plot or
scheme which Montreuil might require of him in this country; secondly,
that of setting a perpetual and most adroit spy upon all your motions.

As to the second occurrence to which I have referred; namely, your
breach with Montreuil--

Here Aubrey, with the same terrible distinctness which had characterized
his previous details and which shed a double horror over the contrast of
the darker and more frantic passages in the manuscript, related what the
reader will remember Oswald had narrated before, respecting the letter
he had brought from Madame de Balzac. It seems that Montreuil's abrupt
appearance in the hall had been caused by Desmarais, who had recognized
Oswald, on his dismounting at the gate, and had previously known that
he was in the employment of the Jansenistical _intriguante_ Madame de
Balzac.

Aubrey proceeded then to say that Montreuil, invested with far more
direct authority and power than he had been hitherto in the projects of
that wise order whose doctrines he had so darkly perverted, repaired to
London; and that, soon after my departure for the same place, Gerald and
Aubrey left Devereux Court in company with each other; but Gerald,
whom very trifling things diverted from any project, however important,
returned to Devereux Court to accomplish the