NDED ON THE ISLAND.

XIII. HOW, WITHOUT FIGHTING, OUR ARMY WASTED BY ENCHANTMENT.

XIV. HOW BY MEANS OF HER WINE I CAME TO CIRCE.

XV. I BECOME HOSTAGE TO PRINCESS CAMILLA.

XVI. THE FOREST HUT.

XVII. THE FIRST CHALLENGE.

XVIII. THE TENDER MERCIES OF PRINCE CAMILLO.

XIX. HOW MARC'ANTONIO NURESD ME AND GAVE ME COUNSEL.

XX. I LEARN OF LIBERTY, AND AM RESTORED TO IT.

XXI. OF MY FATHER'S ANABASIS; AND THE DIFFERENT TEMPERS OF AN
ENGLISH GENTLEMAN AND A WILD SHEEP OF CORSICA.

XXII. THE GREAT ADVENTURE.

XXIII. ORDEAL AND CHOOSING.

XXIV. THE WOOING OF PRINCESS CAMILLA.

XXV. MY WEDDING DAY.

XXVI. THE FLAME AND THE ALTAR.

XXVII. MY MISTRESS RE-ENLISTS ME.

XXVIII. GENOA.

XXIX. VENDETTA.

XXX. THE SUMMIT AND THE STARS.

POSTSCRIPT.

SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE.

CHAPTER I.

OF THE LINEAGE AND CONDITION OF SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE.

"I have laboured to make a covenant with myself, that affection
may not press upon judgment: for I suppose there is no man,
that hath any apprehension of gentry or nobleness, but his
affection stands to a continuance of a noble name and house,
and would take hold of a twig or twine-thread to uphold it: and
yet time hath his revolution, there must be a period and an end
of all temporal things, _finis rerum_, an end of names and
dignities and whatsoever is terrene. . . . For where is Bohun?
Where is Mowbray? Where is Mortimer? Nay, which is more
and most of all, where is Plantagenet? They are intombed in the
urns and sepulchres of mortality."--_Lord Chief Justice Crewe_.

My father, Sir John Constantine of Constantine, in the county of
Cornwall, was a gentleman of ample but impoverished estates, who by
renouncing the world had come to be pretty generally reputed a
madman. This did not affect him one jot, since he held precisely the
same opinion of his neighbours--with whom, moreover, he continued on
excellent terms. He kept six saddle horses in a stable large enough
for a regiment of cavalry; a brace of setters and an infirm spaniel
in kennels which had sometime held twenty couples of hounds; and
himself and his household in a wing of his great mansion, locking off
the rest, with its portraits and tapestries, cases of books, and
stands of antique arms, to be a barrack for the mice. This household
consisted of his brother-in-law,