All this while you may imagine _Brilliard_ endured no little torment; he could not on the one side, determine what the _States_ would do with him, when once they should find him a false accuser of so great a man; and on the other side, he suffered a thousand pains and jealousies from love; he knew too well the charms and power of _Octavio_, and what effects importunity and opportunity have on the temper of feeble woman: he found the _States_ did not make so considerable a matter of his being impeached, as to confine him strictly, and he dies with the fears of those happy moments he might possibly enjoy with _Sylvia_, where there might be no spies about her to give him any kind intelligence; and all that could afford him any glimpse of consolation, was, that while they were thus confined, he was out of fear of their being married. _Octavio_’. uncle this while was not idle, but taking it for a high indignity his nephew should remain so long without being heard, he moved it to the Council, and accordingly they sent for him to the state-house the next morning, where _Brilliard_ was brought to confront him; whom, as soon as _Octavio_ saw, with a scornful smile, he cried,--’It is well, _Brilliard_, that you, who durst not fight me fairly, should find out this nobler way of ridding yourself of a rival: I am glad at least that I have no more honourable a witness against me.’ _Brilliard_, who never before wanted assurance, at this reproach was wholly confounded; for it was not from any villainy in his nature, but the absolute effects of mad and desperate passion, which put him on the only remedy that could relieve him; and looking on _Octavio_ with modest blushes, that half pleaded for him, he cried--’Yes, my lord, I am your accuser, and come to charge your innocence with the greatest of crimes, and you ought to thank me for my accusation; when you shall know it is regard to my own honour, violent love for _Sylvia_, and extreme respect to your lordship, has made me thus saucy with your unspotted fame.’ ’.ow,’ replied _Octavio_, ‘shall I thank you for accusing me with a plot upon the State?’ ‘Yes, my lord,’ replied _Brilliard_; ‘and yet you had a plot to betray the State, and by so new a way, as could be found out by none but so great and brave a man’--’Heavens,’ replied _Octavio_, enraged, ‘this is an impudence, that nothing but a traitor to his own king, and one bred up in plots and mischiefs, could have invented: I betray my own country?’--’Yes, my lord,’ cried he (more briskly than before, seeing _Octavio_ colour so at him) ‘to all the looseness of unthinking youth, to all the breach of laws both human and divine; if all the youth should follow your example, you would betray posterity itself, and only mad confusion would abound. In short, my lord, that lady who was taken with you by the messenger, was my wife.’ And going towards _Sylvia_, who was struck as with a thunder-bolt, he seized her hand, and cried,--while all stood gazing