it. This is sufficient for a bank
kept by a rich society of capitalists, to realize millions by this
passion, and to produce many disasters and calamities."

The Marquise felt her heart grow chill, and as she began to grow sick
she dismissed the Count.

"Will the _Marquise_ permit me to call on her again?"

"Yes, Count; and if you receive any news from Rome--from the Marquis and
my brother, tell me of it, I beg you." The Count left, more in love than
ever; and Aminta remained alone, unhappy, agitated, and a prey to
instinctive and wretched thoughts.

It now becomes our duty to conduct the reader to a magnificent hotel in
the Faubourg St. Germain, and make him a spectator of a scene which
occurred a few days after the conversation we have spoken of. We wish to
introduce him to the beautiful girl of whom Dr. Matheus caught a glimpse
from the windows of the laboratory. This girl was no longer the most
brilliant rose of the parterre. Seated in a large arm-chair, near a
window of the saloon, which looked out upon the garden, her pale
complexion, and the hectic flush of her cheek, her red lips, and the
dark ring about the eyes, indicated general indisposition. An old man
sat near her, with one of her hands in his; while, with his eyes fixed
on her, he seemed with despair to read the expression of intense
suffering. The old man was the Duke d'Harcourt, and the invalid, his
daughter _Marie_.

"Ah, papa! this is nothing but a horrid _migraine_ to which I have long
been subject. The pain in the chest which accompanies it, you know,
never lasts long, and is almost always cured by the very presence of the
kind doctor, whom we might almost fancy to be a sorcerer."

"The means he employs, my child, and which he has communicated to me, is
not sorcery, but a science, scarcely known as yet, and the source of
much dispute. I confess I had no great faith in it until experience had
revealed to me its power and reality."

"And have you faith, papa, in the power of the doctor?" asked the young
girl, with a singular accent.

"I believe, my child, in what I see. He benefits you, and therefore
dissipates all my hesitation. Magnetism is not new; Mesmer, the able
Foria, and afterwards many serious and learned men have inquired into
it, and discovered undeniable virtues. Unfortunately, imposture and
charlatanism soon took possession of it, and, therefore, it has been
overburdened with ridicule and contempt. If it be a truth, as all I hav