Maltravers never before felt so flattered--so stirred into high resolves. The stately eloquence, the fervid encouragement of this man, usually so cold and fastidious, roused him like the sound of a trumpet. He stopped short, his breath heaved thick, his cheek flushed. “De Montaigne,” said he, “your words have cleared away a thousand doubts and scruples--they have gone right to my heart. For the first time I understand what fame is--what the object, and what the reward of labour! Visions, hopes, aspirations I may have had before--for months a new spirit has been fluttering within me. I have felt the wings breaking from the shell, but all was confused, dim, uncertain. I doubted the wisdom of effort, with life so short, and the pleasures of youth so sweet. I now look no longer on life but as a part of the eternity to which I _feel_ we were born; and I recognise the solemn truth that our objects, to be worthy life, should be worthy of creatures in whom the living principle never is extinct. Farewell! come joy or sorrow, failure or success, I will struggle to deserve your friendship.” Maltravers sprang into his boat, and the shades of night soon snatched him from the lingering gaze of De Montaigne. BOOK IV. “Strange is the land that holds thee,--and thy couch is widow’d of the loved one.” EURIP. _Med._ 442 Translation by R. G. CHAPTER I. “I, alas! Have lived but on this earth a few sad years; And so my lot was ordered, that a father First turned the moments of awakening life To drops, each poisoning youth’s sweet hope.” “_Cenci_.” FROM accompanying Maltravers along the noiseless progress of mental education, we are now called awhile to cast our glances back at the ruder and harsher ordeal which Alice Darvil was ordained to pass. Along her path poetry shed no flowers, nor were her lonely steps towards the distant shrine at which her pilgrimage found its rest lighted by the mystic lamp of science, or guided by the thousand stars which are never dim in the heavens for those favoured eyes from which genius and fancy have removed many of the films of clay. Not along the aerial and exalted ways that wind far above the homes and business of common men--the solitary Alps of Spiritual Philosophy--wandered the desolate steps of the child of poverty and sorrow. On the beaten and rugged highways of common life, with a weary heart, and with bleeding feet, she went her melancholy course. But the goal which is the great secret of life, the _summum arcanum_ of all philosophy, whether the Practical or the Ideal, was, perhaps, no less attainable for that humble girl than for the elastic step and aspiring heart of him who thirsted after the Great, and almost believed in the Impossible.