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retired with her; others, with compassion, drew around the hapless boy, while Stewart, who was a bold and callous tactician, would not attend the unhappy sister till he had enforced the necessity of sending the brother to the madhouse.

"Ha!" cried poor Antonio, at mention of this horrid destination; and a convulsive shudder ran through his frame. He turned a rueful glance on Julia Romelli, whilst at the same time he trembled as if his slight body would have been shaken to pieces. "So, you ruffians," he said, at length, "you have crushed my poor sister down to the earth, and all for what? Where is my broken flower? well-she is better hence. Lead on :-and, gentlemen, I am not very mad perhaps. Look to Charlotte, and tell her I have escaped -any thing but "-Lead him out then. He bowed to the company with a kind of wild, unsteadfast energy; and was led away manacled.

Much, indeed, was Frederick Hume surprised and shocked to hear from Mrs Mather's next letter, of Antonio's fate, and he determined to visit the country as soon as possible, for the express purpose of seeing the poor Italian boy. A few weeks after this, he was sitting in his apartment one evening with two or three of his college chums, when his landlady announced to him that a young lady was in another apartment waiting to see him. "Why, this is something," said Frederick, rising and following the mistress of the house "Who can it possibly be?" "Ah, you are a lucky dog, Hume," observed one of his companions. "Some very fond, faithful, or despairing shepherdess!" said a second.

Little did these gay chaps know the cause of such a visit, for it was poor Charlotte Cardo herself; and no sooner did she see Frederick, than grasping his proffered hand, she fell on her knees, and looking him wistfully in the face, cried, "Oh, my poor brother! have mercy on me, good sir, and help him.” "Poor child!" said Hume, raising her, "I am afraid I can do little for him; but 1 shall lose no time now in seeing him. Can I do any thing for him in the meantime?" "I do not know, sir," said Charlotte, confusedly; aware, probably for the first time, that she had undertaken a foolish journey. "And have you come all this way, Charlotte, for my poor help?" "O, speak not, Mr Hume, of miles, or hundreds of miles, in such a case, if you can do any thing for us. I am told there are great physicians in this city. Perhaps you know them, and perhaps"--She stopped short. "Well, my good girl," said Frederick, clapping her on the shoulder, "for your sisterly love, every thing shall be done for your brother that man can do. I shall see him first myself, and that ere long; and then I shall consult on his case with one or two eminent doctors,

friends of mine." "God bless you, sir, all the days of your life!" said the Italian girl, sobbing almost hysterically from her full and grateful heart. "I have no other friend on earth that I can seriously trust; they are all hollow, or foolish in their kindness." "Does Mrs Mather know of this pious journey of yours, Charlotte?" asked Frederick. "Forgive me, sir-She tried very much to dissuade me, and bade me write if I chose-But, pardon me, sir, I thought it better" "To see me personally, you would say? Well, Charlotte, you argue fairly that letters are but secondrate advocates, though, to do myself justice, I think, in such a case as this of your brother's illness, the mere representation of the thing was enough to make me do my very utmost. Now, Charlotte, that you may not be ultimately disappointed, let me warn youThe maiden here looked so piteously, that he was fain to add, "Well, I have good hopes that he may soon recover." To this Charlotte answered nothing; for in the natural sophistry of the heart under an overwhelming wish, she durst not appear confident, lest she should again provoke the doubts of her medical Aristarch, as if the evil were not, when she had not heard it literally expressed by another. Yet still, when Frederick tried to change the conversation, by asking indifferent questions, she brought it back to the subject which engrossed her heart, by citing instances of some who had been confined as lunatics, though they were not, and of others who had gradually recovered their reason.

Resigning Charlotte to his landlady's care for the night, Frederick in the morning provided for her a seat in the mail, and took leave of her, with the promise, that he would make a point of being at Greenwells in little more than a week.

In less than ten days he visited Antonio in his cell, and found the poor boy lying lowly in his straw, and chained, because, as the keeper explained, he had made the most desperate efforts to get out. He arose, as Hume entered, and, with a suspicious look, demanded, "Are you also come to spy out the nakedness of the land?" "Do you not know me, Antonio?" asked Frederick, kindly. "I think I do," answered the boy, with a faint smile: "but do you know me under this sad change of affairs?” "You have not been very well, I understand?" said Hume. "No doubt you were given to understand so," was the answer; "but if you will request that official gentleman to retire for a little, I shall undeceive you." Frederick did so; and the keeper, having withdrawn accordingly, the poor patient, with a tear in his eye, looked eagerly at Hume, and said, "Are you, too, sir, against me? Holy Virgin! will you also leave me here, and go and tell the world I am truly mad?" Well, my good boy," said Frederick, "you must be very quiet,

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and you will soon give the lie to the cnarge. I am glad to see you as you are." "God in Heaven! to be sure, sir. As you say, very quiet I must be; and reason good; and all that. Let me tell you, Dr Hume, you have not a good method with madmen. Nothing manages them so well as grave banter, half-angry and halfyielding; or stern and unmitigated awe, which overrules them as the lower range of the creation is controlled by the human face divine.' You may try these methods with me, if you think me bona fide insane. But, oh, rather hear me, sir, this once, and give me justice take for granted that I am in my right mind: affect neither kindness nor menace in your words; but speak with me as man to man, and then you shall not lose perhaps the only opportunity of saving my body and my spirit from this unhallowed coercion, for I may soon be ill enough." "Whatever you have to state," returned Hume, "I shall in the first place hear you without interruption." "I readily grant, sir," said the supposed maniac, "that you have good reason to believe me insane, and that it is a very difficult thing for you to be satisfied of the contrary. On the other hand, it is no easy matter for me, chafed and tortured as I have been by my horrid confinement, to refrain from the 'winged words' of an indignant spirit. But I shall try to be calm and consistent; and you must try to be unprejudiced and discriminating. You see, sir, I go to work scarcely like a lunatic, since I have sense and reason to provide allowance for preliminary difficulties." Very well; tell me what you wish, good Antonio: what can I do for you?" "Either you have little tact, Dr Hume, or you still think me mad, since you speak in that particular tone of voice-I know it well. The God of Heaven help me in my words at this time, that I may not speak from my full and burning heart, and you misinterpret me!"

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"My dear fellow, Antonio Cardo," said Frederick, with kind earnestness, for your own sake, and for your sister Charlotte's sake, I will not leave this part of the country, till I have thoroughly sifted the cause and reasonableness of your confinement; yet you must allow me to do the thing with prudence. I may not be able to get you released to-night; but, as I said before, I am disposed this very moment to hear and judge what you have to propose or state. I think you ought not now to be suspicious of me?" "Ave Maria!" said Antonio-" Holy Virgin of Grace! you have sent one wise and honourable man to my wretched cell; and I think my hour of deliverance must now be at hand. What shall say to you, Dr Hume? What argument shall I try, to lay fast a foundation on which your faith in my sanity may be built? For, O! assuredly beneath the gracious eye of Heaven, there can

not be a fitter temple for Charity to dwell in. The truth is, Frederick Hume, I may at times in my life have felt the madness of whirling and intense passion; and I have a horrid fear that my days shall close in darkness, in pits which I dare not name, in dreams, the dark alienation of the mind. I am thus candid, the better to assure you that my soul at present is self-possessed and compact, of firm and wholesome service. Think, too, that I have leapt against my cage till my heart has been well-nigh breaking; that my spirit, from feverish irritability, has been a furnace seven times heated, in the next alteration of feelings, to be overwhelmed by a suffocating calmness. Remember that I have lived for months amidst those horrid cries which thicken the air of this place: and, above all, that I know well I should not be here. Such things may make me mad at times; but say, sir, am not I tolerably well, every drawback considered ?" "Good God!" answered Hume," what then could be their purpose or meaning in this confinement of yours!" "My heart, Dr Hume, is ready to cast out corresponding flames with your indignant speech and question; but I shall be calm, and not commit myself, because I still think God hath brought round a gracious hour and a just man. What shall I say to you again, Dr Hume? Try me by any process of logic. Shall it be an argumentum ad hominem, as my kind old tutor styles it? Shall I reason on my present situation, and tell you that things are not well managed in this place? The treatment is too uniform, and general, and unmodified; whereas, by a proper scale, the patient should be led from one degree of liberty to another, according to his good behaviour, that so he might calculate, that so he might exercise and strengthen his reason, that so he might respect himself, and gradually improve. Now, sir, judge me aright. Nature, in dread apprehension, sets me far above vanity; and I will ask you have I not uttered deep wisdom? You have not detected aught like the disjointed fervour of lunacy in my speech? My thoughts are not abrupt and whirling, but well attempered, and softly shaded, as the coming on of sleep." "By my soul, Cardo," said Frederick, "I think you have been most grossly abused." "Have I not? have I not?" "Whose doing was this? and can you guess why it was?" asked it to Romelli and Stewart," answered Antonio. I know not, unless it be that I have loved too ardently, and shall never cease to love, Signora Romelli. Go away, sir, and be like the rest of the world; leave me here to perish, for you, too, love the maiden, and may be offended at my passion." "It is my business, in the first instance," answered Hume, "to follow common humanity and justice. I shall instantly overhaul this damnable

Hume.

"I owe

"The wherefore

oppression, and call the above men to tax.

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You must be quiet in the meantime." "O, let it not be long, then!-let it not be long! -let it not be long!-If you knew how my good angel, young Charlotte Cardo, has made me hope for your coming! If you knew how I have counted the weeks, the days, the hours, the minutes, for you! How my heart has beat loudly at every sound for you, from morning, till night darkened above my rustling straw, and all for your coming! And in the tedious night-watches too! when my soul longed in vain to rest for a little while beyond the double gates of horn and ivory, in the weary land of Morpheus! Merciful sleep!-Merciful sleep! How many worn and ghostlike spirits yearn and cry to be within the dreamy girdle of thy enchanted land! Let them in, O God! The body's fever and the mind's fever, calentures of the brain and careerings of the pulse, revenge, and apprehension, and trembling, fears of death that visit me in the night when I lie here, terror to be alone lest indeed I lose my reason and oh! hope deferred-and then outwardly, around me day and night, beleaguering the issues of my soul, and making me mad by the mere dint of habit, wild laughter unfathomed by reason, sharp cries, as fast as mill-wheels strike,' shrieking groans as from the hurt mandrake, muddy blasphemies, enough to turn the sweet red blood of the hearer into black infatuation and despair; add all these precious ingredients to the boiling heart of pride within, and what have you got? O, something worse than a witch's cauldron, boiling thick and slab' with the most damned physical parcels, and casting up the smeared scums of hell! And such, sir, has been my lot here, and therefore I pray that God may put swift gracious thought for me into your heart! O, let it not be long, for the knowledge of hope will make me only the more irritable, and it will be very dangerous for me if that hope be deferred. I will amuse myself counting off bundles of straw till you visit me again, if you do not die, as I am afraid you may, ere you can free me.”. "Now then, I must take my leave of you, Antonio, as it is needless for me to say any thing farther at this time." "For the love of the sweet Virgin Mother, Frederick Hume," said the Italian boy, throwing himself down among his straw with a violence which made his chains rattle, "speak comfort to my sister, who has pitched her tent and set down her soul's rest within the shadow of one unhappy boy's heart. I shall sleep none to-night. Farewell, sir, and think upon me!" He nestled with his head in the straw, and Frederick Hume left the unhappy place.

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