While I was undressing, some thoughts would fain have intruded, which I was very sure would have broken up my rest for the night. The agitation of being in new, strange scenes, acting with people of whom I yet knew hardly anything, and involved in schemes which at best were hazardous, was quite enough to make sleep difficult, and I felt very certain, that if I let my mind rest one moment on the thought of Helen, and of the circumstances in which she might at that moment be placed, all hope of repose--mental repose, at least--was gone--and where is any exercise so exhausting to the body, as that anxious occupation of the mind? The next morning I was hardly awake, when Monsieur de Varicarville entered my chamber, and informed me that Monsieur le Comte wished to see me; and dressing myself as fast as possible, I hurried to the Prince's apartments, where I found him still in bed. Varicarville left us, and the Count made me sit down by his bedside. "I have been thinking, De l'Orme," said he, "over the history you gave me last night, and I again assure you that I sympathize not a little with you. I am much older than you, and the first hasty torrent of passion has passed away at my time of life; but I can still feel, and know, that love such as you profess towards this young lady, whom your mother has educated, is not a passion easily to be rooted out. Nor is the death of her brother by your hand an insurmountable obstacle. She evidently does not know it herself; and it would be a cruel piece of delicacy in you either to let her know it, or to sacrifice both her happiness and your own for such a scruple." The picture of Helen in the arms of her brother's murderer, and the horror she would feel at his every caress, if she did but know that he was so, rose up frightfully before my imagination, as the Count spoke; and, without replying, I covered my eyes with my hands, as if to shut the image out.