I was alone. Overwhelmed and awed by the demoniacal maledictions of the wretched creature whom I had hitherto so intensely despised, I knew not what to think, or how to act. He had assumed a fresh shape, more marvelous than any he had hitherto put on in the whole round of his extraordinary mummery. The raillery and tipsy recklessness which appeared constitutional in him had suddenly passed away, leaving not a solitary trace behind. Even his figure, while he had been speaking, seemed to heave with a new life, and to dilate into unnatural dimensions. I was perplexed to the last extremity; not that the malice of the demon could scare me from my resolves, but that his motives were so impenetrable as to suffer no clew to escape by which I could discover the evil purpose that lay at the bottom. It was not the machination or revenge of a disappointed suitor. He never could have aspired to a hope of Astræa, and he avowed his aversion to her. She was ignorant of all this bravado about her; and would be even more indignant to hear of it than I was to suffer it. I resolved, therefore, not to insult her by revealing it to her. Fortunately, I had made an appointment to meet her alone on the following day. That meeting would decide every thing. She might, perhaps, throw some light upon what was at present a profound mystery to me. At all events, my course was clear. Under the circumstances in which I was placed, I felt that there lay but one alternative before me. VII. My resolution was taken, as I thought, very composedly. I tried to persuade myself that I was not in the least ruffled or agitated by the scene I had passed through; but I was secretly conscious, notwithstanding, of a vague dread which I endeavored in vain to stifle. The defiance which the dwarf had so insolently flung at me, the contrast he drew between his shriveled frame and my physical advantages, and the Satanic pride with which he rose superior to his wretched deformities, gave me no slight cause for uneasiness, although I could not analyze the nature of the fear that possessed me. All through the night I abandoned myself to the wildest speculations upon the unaccountable conduct and designs of my arch-enemy; but as morning advanced that oppressive train of reflections gave way to more agreeable thoughts, just as the hideous images of the night-mare vanish before the approach of day.