The two most skilled in physic of the brethren were immediately summoned, and they lost not a moment in accompanying me to the cavern. All that evening, until midnight, the frenzy of the maniac seemed rather to increase than abate. But at that hour, exactly indeed as the clock struck twelve, he fell all at once into a deep sleep. Then for the first time, but not till the weary brethren had at this favourable symptom permitted themselves to return for a brief interval to the monastery, to seek refreshment for themselves and to bring down new medicines for the patient,--then, for the first time, I rose from the Hermit's couch by which I had hitherto kept watch, and repairing to the outer chamber, took forth the packet superscribed with my name. There, alone in that gray vault, and by the sepulchral light of the single lamp, I read what follows:-- THE HERMIT'S MANUSCRIPT. Morton Devereux, if ever this reach you, read it, shudder, and, whatever your afflictions, bless God that you are not as I am. Do you remember my prevailing characteristic as a boy? No, you do not. You will say "devotion!" It was not! "Gentleness." It was not: it was JEALOUSY! Now does the truth flash on you? Yes, that was the disease that was in my blood, and in my heart, and through whose ghastly medium every living object was beheld. Did I love you? Yes, I loved you,--ay, almost with a love equal to your own. I loved my mother; I loved Gerald; I loved Montreuil. It was a part of my nature to love, and I did not resist the impulse. You I loved better than all; but I was jealous of each. If my mother caressed you or Gerald, if you opened your heart to either, it stung me to the quick. I it was who said to my mother, "Caress him not, or I shall think you love him better than me." I it was who widened, from my veriest childhood, the breach between Gerald and yourself. I it was who gave to the childish reproach a venom, and to the childish quarrel a barb. Was this love? Yes, it was love; but I could not endure that ye should love one another as ye loved me. It delighted me when one confided to my ear a complaint against the other, and said, "Aubrey, this blow could not have come from thee!"