When I entered, my friend was walking up and down the room, with his eyes fixed upon the ground; but, on hearing my step, he raised them, and fixed them sternly on my face. The fear of appearing guilty, and the impossibility of clearly exculpating myself, had a greater effect upon my countenance than perhaps real guilt would have had, and the rebellious blood flew up with provoking hurry to my cheek. Angry at my own embarrassment, I resolved to master it; but the effort communicated something of bitterness to my manner towards the Chevalier, who had hitherto said nothing to call it forth. He remarked it, and striding towards the door, which I had left open, he shut it impatiently; then turned towards me, and with a straining eye, demanded--"Tell me, Count Louis de Bigorre, after all the evidence brought forward to prove that you passed last night in this house--tell me, was it, or was it not you, that I saw enter this door at two o'clock this morning?"

"I should think," replied I, coldly, "that what satisfied the judge before whom I was accused, would be enough to satisfy any one really my friend."

"Not when their own eyes were evidence against you," answered the Chevalier, indignantly. "I thought you incapable of a subterfuge. Once more, was it you, or was it not?"

"Though I deny your right to question me," I replied, growing heated at the authority he assumed, "yet to show that I seek no subterfuge, I answer it was; but, at the same time, I repeat, that I am innocent--perfectly innocent of the crime with which I was charged."

"Pshaw!" cried the Chevalier, with an air of scorn that almost mastered my patience--"Pshaw!" and turning on his heel, he quitted the room and the house. When what we have done produces a disagreeable consequence, whether we have really acted right or not, we are apt to call to mind every line of conduct which we might have pursued, and fix upon any other as preferable to that which we have adopted. Thus, no sooner had the Chevalier left me, than I thought of a thousand means whereby I might have persuaded him of my innocence, without breaking my promise to the corregidor; and I resolved to seek him, as soon as the preparations for my return to France were completed, and explain myself, as far as I could, without violating the confidence reposed in me.

My resolution, however, came too late. About an hour after his departure, one of the servants of the house where he lodged, brought me a letter from him, of the following tenure:--

"I leave you, and for ever. You have done me the greatest injury that one man can inflict upon another. You have shown me what human nature really is, and you have made me a misanthrope. I had watched you from your infancy, and I had fancied that amongst the many faults and errors, from which youth is never exempt, I perceived the germ of great and shining qualities of heart and mind. I devoted myself to cultivate them to maturity, and to train them aright. Perhaps I was selfish in doing so; for what man is not selfish? but bitter is the atonement which you have forced me to make. Adieu! seek me not henceforth--know me not if we meet--be to me as a stranger. Though, for the sake of your unhappy father, I rejoice in your escape from the punishment your crime deserves, my interest in yourself is over; and I would fain rase out from the tablets of memory all that concerns one so unworthy of the esteem I once entertained for him."

This was hard to endure, especially from one that I both respected and loved. My heart swelled with a mixture of indignation and sorrow, both at the loss of a friend, and at his unjust suspicions; and though my consciousness of innocence guarded me from bitterer regrets, yet it increased my painful irritation at the wrong I suffered, and at my disappointment in not being able to exculpate myself. Occupation, however--in every situation of life the greatest blessing and relief--now came to my aid, and called my attention for a time from the dark and gloomy views that the circumstances of my fate presented at the moment. Our departure was fixed for the next morning, and all the thousand petty accumulations of business, which always hang about the last day of one's sojourn in any place, now came upon me at once.

The weather had much altered since our arrival at Saragossa; for three months had tamed the lion of the summer, and it was not, at all events, heat that we had to fear on our journey. Cold autumn winds were now blowing, and saluted us rudely the moment we got beyond the sheltering walls of the city, piercing to our very bones. I would have given a pistole for half an hour of the hot-breathed siroc to warm the air till we could heat ourselves by exercise.

As we approached the mountains, however, it became colder and more cold, and the prospect of their snowy passes fell chill and cheerless upon our anticipations. Yet there was something vast and majestic in their aspect, which raised and elevated the mind above the petty cares and sorrows of existence. I had been grave, I had been gloomy--I had been perhaps peevish--but the contrast between the transitory littleness of all human things, and the eternal grandeur of such objects, reproved the impatient repinings of my heart. I felt a consolation in looking upon them as they stretched along before me, in the same bold towering forms that they had presented unmemoried centuries ago. It seemed as if they said, "Ages and generations, nations and languages, have passed away and been forgotten, with all their idle hopes and vain solicitudes, while we have stood unmoved, unaged, unaltered. Even Time, the inexorable enemy of all man's works, lays not upon us his profaning finger; and while he overthrows the arch that records man's glory, and hurls down the column that monuments his grave, he dares not spoil the fabrics of that great God who created him and us."