"Again, I ask you why you come here? Answer me, or leave the room at once." "Why do I come here? To gladden myself by looking at your wretchedness. You are worse than I am--sunk below me a thousand fathoms deep in degradation--every finger is pointed at you--you are steeped in scorn--despised and loathed. I came to see this. It makes me supremely happy." "Go--there is the door," I cried, the blood tingling in my ears, and in the tips of my fingers. Astræa saw that the excitement was rising, and looked at me imploringly; but it was too late to attend to her scruples. The dwarf looked at the door superciliously, and almost smiled when I repeated my warning. "You will not leave the room? Be advised. I am not responsible for what may happen after this. I am not master of myself. Go--it is the last time I will utter the word. Go--or I will kill you on the spot!" He did not move, but looked at me wonderingly and incredulously. I rushed upon him and grappled him by the neck. Astræa sprang up, and begged of me to desist, for I was hanging over him, with my hand upon his throat. "Let him go--let him go!" she exclaimed; "for my sake do not commit a murder. Loosen your hold--there--there--have mercy on him, for my sake--for the love of God, spare him--remember, we have injured him enough already--remember that!" I would not loosen my hold; passion had given me the power and the cruelty of a demon. There was a brief struggle, in which I flung him heavily to the ground. I had seized his handkerchief, and twisted my hand in it--he was nearly choked--his face was growing black; but I was hardly conscious of all this, for the room was swimming round me as I knelt over him. Astræa saw the change in his color, and with a shriek of horror fell upon my arm. This action made me relax my hold. She had fainted on his body. CONCLUSION. Why should I dwell any longer on these painful events? Had I known then, as I afterward discovered, that the unhappy object of my wrath and hatred had, ever since the flight of Astræa, betrayed symptoms of aberration, and that the scheme of vengeance he nurtured so relentlessly, was the stratagem of a disordered brain, I should have treated him with mercy and compassion. But I was ignorant of the real condition of his mind, and dealt with him as I should have dealt with a responsible being. The violent excitement of that scene brought on a crisis, which ended in a seizure of insanity. He still lives; if that may be called living in which all memory of the past is extinguished, and the present is a mere tangled skein of day-dreams.