often filled Fame's trumpet! Is it
so?--can it be so? Could such a light as thine fall from the horizon of
chivalry, and yet men be uncertain where its embers had alighted?"

"Seek a fallen star," said the hermit, "and thou shalt only light on
some foul jelly, which, in shooting through the horizon, has assumed for
a moment an appearance of splendour. Richard, if I thought that rending
the bloody veil from my horrible fate could make thy proud heart stoop
to the discipline of the church, I could find in my heart to tell thee
a tale, which I have hitherto kept gnawing at my vitals in concealment,
like the self-devoted youth of heathenesse. Listen, then, Richard, and
may the grief and despair which cannot avail this wretched remnant of
what was once a man be powerful as an example to so noble, yet so wild,
a being as thou art! Yes--I will--I WILL tear open the long-hidden
wounds, although in thy very presence they should bleed to death!"

King Richard, upon whom the history of Alberick of Mortemar had made
a deep impression in his early years, when minstrels were regaling his
father's halls with legends of the Holy Land, listened with respect
to the outlines of a tale, which, darkly and imperfectly sketched,
indicated sufficiently the cause of the partial insanity of this
singular and most unhappy being.

"I need not," he said, "tell thee that I was noble in birth, high in
fortune, strong in arms, wise in counsel. All these I was. But while
the noblest ladies in Palestine strove which should wind garlands for my
helmet, my love was fixed--unalterably and devotedly fixed--on a maiden
of low degree. Her father, an ancient soldier of the Cross, saw our
passion, and knowing the difference betwixt us, saw no other refuge
for his daughter's honour than to place her within the shadow of the
cloister. I returned from a distant expedition, loaded with spoils and
honour, to find my happiness was destroyed for ever! I too sought the
cloister; and Satan, who had marked me for his own, breathed into my
heart a vapour of spiritual pride, which could only have had its source
in his own infernal regions. I had risen as high in the church as
before in the state. I was, forsooth, the wise, the self-sufficient,
the impeccable!--I was the counsellor of councils--I was the director
of prelates. How should I stumble?--wherefore should I fear temptation?
Alas! I became confessor to a sisterhood, and amongst that sisterhood
I found the long-l