You, therefore, he resolved to leave to the irregularities of your own nature, confident that they would yield him the opportunity of detaching your uncle from you and ultimately securing to Gerald his estates. * It will be observed that Aubrey frequently repeats former assertions; this is one of the most customary traits of insanity.--ED. The trial at school first altered his intentions. He imagined that he then saw in you powers which might be rendered availing to him: he conquered his pride--a great feature in his character--and he resolved to seek your affection. Your subsequent regularity of habits and success in study confirmed him in his resolution; and when he learned from my uncle's own lips that the Devereux estates would devolve on you, he thought that it would be easier to secure your affection to him than to divert that affection which my uncle had conceived for you. At this time, I repeat, he had no particular object in view; none, at least, beyond that of obtaining for the interest of his order the direction of great wealth and some political influence. Some time after--I know not exactly when, but before we returned to take our permanent abode at Devereux Court--a share in the grand political intrigue which was then in so many branches carried on throughout England, and even Europe, was confided to Montreuil. In this I believe he was the servant of his order, rather than immediately of the exiled House; and I have since heard that even at that day he had acquired a great reputation among the professors of the former. You, Morton, he decoyed not into this scheme before he left England: he had not acquired a sufficient influence over you to trust you with the disclosure. To Gerald and myself he was more confidential. Gerald eagerly embraced his projects through a spirit of enterprise; I through a spirit of awe and of religion. RELIGION! Yes,--then,--long after,--now,--when my heart was and is the home of all withering and evil passions, Religion reigned,--reigns, over me a despot and a tyrant. Its terrors haunt me at this hour; they people the earth and the air with shapes of ghastly menace! They--Heaven pardon me! what would my madness utter? Madness?--madness? Ay, /that/ is the real scourge, the real fire, the real torture, the real hell, of this fair earth!