"On the other side, what I heard of him--and he took care never to let men's tongues rest about him--confirmed me in the sad conviction that between him and me a gulf had opened, not to be crossed by even the sincere love I still felt for him. I heard of the wild life he was living with the noblemen of his neighborhood, now impoverished by the war; of the drinking and gaming bouts, of mad exploits of which he was the originator. At this time a dark rumor got abroad that he was conducting the smuggling traffic, which during the war had flourished greatly, being then encouraged by the government, but now was strongly repressed. But the worst rumors were those that spoke of the wretched life he led with his unhappy wife. He ill-treated her, it was said; he had imprisoned her in a cellar; it was unaccountable that the authorities did not interfere. "I could not bear to hear these things, of which I did not believe a word, for the charges were in too glaringly contradiction to the naturally noble and generous nature of my brother. But I felt a natural hesitation to mix myself up in these affairs, until a letter which I received brought me to a decision. The letter was written in bad French, and the very first words informed me that the unhappy woman who wrote it must be out of her right mind. 'I hear you know the road to Spain,' it began, and ended with the words, 'I entreat you to tell me the road to Spain.' In an hour after receiving it I set out, and, after so many years, saw my father's house and my brother again. It was a painful meeting. "My father's house a ruin, my brother a shadow--worse, a caricature--of his former self. Ah, my friend, the hammer-theory had shown itself cruel to its staunchest maintainer. How had the clumsy anvil beaten out the delicate hammer! How ignoble he had grown in the common world which he so deeply despised! 'Only despise reason and knowledge,' Goethe makes the Spirit of Lies say, 'and I have you then safe.' And I say, only despise men, and you will see how soon you grow despicable to others and to yourself. "I told him why I had come; he led me in silence into the park, and pointed to a woman, who, in a fantastic dress, flowers and weeds in her glossy-black, half-dishevelled hair, in her hands a guitar with half its chords broken, was wandering under the trees and among the shrubbery, sometimes raising her dark eyes, as if in ecstacy, to heaven, and again dropping them, as in despair, to the earth. "'You see,' he said, 'it is a lie that I have imprisoned her. Many another would do it, for it is not a pleasant thing to afford the public such an exhibition.' "Take her to her native place," I said.