doing a great service or a slight favor: he designed to settle for six months of the year in England, to be near me; and I could hardly prevent his sharing with me the whole of his possessions. 'I have but a sister,' he said, 'married richly, so I am free to do what I please with my fortune. Besides, this revolution will turn out ill, and I may be killed; let me then enjoy what I have in looking on it as yours,' Alas! the noble Raimond but too well foresaw his destiny. "When man is capable of self-knowledge, he is rarely deceived as to his own fate; and presentiment is oft but judgment in disguise. Sincere even to imprudence, Raimond 'wore his heart upon his sleeve:' such a character was new to me; in England, the treasures of the mind are not thus exposed; we have even a habit of doubting those who display them; but the expansive bounty of my friend afforded me enjoyments at once ready and secure. I had no suspicion of his qualities, even though I knew them all at our first meeting. I felt no timidity with him; nay, what was better, he put me at ease with myself. Such was the amiable Frenchman for whom I felt the friendship of a brother in arms, which we experience but in youth, ere we acquire one sentiment of rivalry--ere the unreturning wheels of time have furrowed the partitions betwixt the present and the future. "One day Count Raimond said to me: 'My sister is a widow. I confess, I am not sorry for it. I never liked the match. She accepted the hand of a dying old man, when we were both of us poor; for what I have has but lately been bequeathed to me. Yet, at the time, I opposed this union as much as possible. I would have no mercenary calculations prompt our acts, least of all the most important one of life; still, she has behaved in an exemplary manner to the husband she never loved: that is nothing in the eyes of the world. Now that she is free, she will return to my abode. You will see her: she is very pleasing in the main, and you English like to make discoveries; for my part, I love to read all in the face at once. Yet your manner, dear Oswald, never vexes me; but from that of my sister I feel a slight restraint.'