Although deprived for the present of all intercourse with Chastel and Yoletta, now in constant attendance on her mother, I ought to have been happy, for all things seemed conspiring to make my life precious to me. Nevertheless, I was far from happy; and, having heard so much said about reason in my late conversations with the father and mother of the house, I began to pay an unusual amount of attention to this faculty in me, in order to discover by its aid the secret of the sadness which continued at all times during this period to oppress my heart. I only discovered, what others have discovered before me, that the practice of introspection has a corrosive effect on the mind, which only serves to aggravate the malady it is intended to cure. During those restful days in the Mother's Room, when I had sat with Chastel, this spirit of melancholy had been with me; but the mother's hallowing presence had given something of a divine color to it, my passions had slumbered, and, except at rare intervals, I had thought of sorrow as of something at an immeasurable distance from me. Then to my spirit "_The gushing of the wave Far, far away, did seem to mourn and rave On alien shores_"; and so sweet had seemed that pause, that I had hoped and prayed for its continuance. No sooner was I separated from her than the charm dissolved, and all my thoughts, like evening clouds that appear luminous and rich in color until the sun has set, began to be darkened with a mysterious gloom. Strive how I might, I was unable to compose my mind to that serene, trustful temper she had desired to see in me, and without which there could be no blissful futurity. After all the admonitions and the comforting assurances I had received, and in spite of reason and all it could say to me, each night I went to my bed with a heavy heart; and each morning when I woke, there, by my pillow, waited that sad phantom, to go with me where I went, to remind me at every pause of an implacable Fate, who held my future in its hands, who was mightier than Chastel, and would shatter all her schemes for my happiness like vessels of brittle glass.