shamefully is his fault, not yours; for, though you believed him honest, you did not weakly trust him. It were well, when you find him, to nail his ears to the doorpost; but still you have nothing to reproach yourself with. I trust, however, that sweet and good lady is by this time freed from his hands, for one who loves her very well has undertaken that part of the task." "But how," exclaimed Bernard de Rohan, "how came she in his power at all?" Corse de Leon replied briefly, but with sufficient detail to show his hearer at one glance all that had taken place in regard to Isabel de Brienne since he had seen her. The deep and bitter indignation that gathered at the young cavalier's heart as his companion went on, was not of a nature that wasted itself in many words. "This must be looked to!" he said; "this must be looked to! And now, my friend, to think of this dear girl's escape. Can we trust to good Father Willand? Not his faith, I mean, but his power. He is there, it would seem, alone, unaided, unsupported, to cope with a man artful, rich, powerful, and numerously followed." "We may trust him, I am sure," replied the other. "This count's art, like all pitiful art, will help to deceive himself; and in quiet wisdom he cannot compete with the good priest. Besides, Father Willand is not so unsupported as you think. It may seem strange to you to hear, but many of your own men, nay, I believe all, are with him or round about him." "No," replied Bernard de Rohan, "that surprises me not. Most of them were born within sight of the lands of Brienne--most of them have often seen and know her well, and there is none who has seen her that would not willingly sacrifice life to serve her." Corse de Leon smiled with somewhat of a melancholy expression. In life, when we have lost any of those sweet delusions which, like the radiant colours of the morning sky, clothe, at the dawning of our youth, thin air itself and unsubstantial vapours, nay, perhaps even the cloudy home of the future storm, with loveliness and radiance, and the most glowing hues of Heaven's own golden treasury--when we have lost those sweet delusions, I say, and any one with whom they still remain speaks of the reality of things whose emptiness we have proved, how sad, how profoundly sad, is the contrast suddenly presented to us, of what we were and what we are! how melancholy is the conviction of the emptiness of our dream-like life! And yet there is something sweet which mingles even with our sadness, to see others enjoying and believing what we can no longer enjoy or believe; something ennobling and elevating that shares in our melancholy, if the feeling of how unreal are life's best joys lead us to sigh for those that are more true and lasting.