“Ines, overcome with horror at this obvious proof of insanity, neither interrupted or opposed him; she attempted only to soothe him, internally praying against the too probable disturbance of her own intellects. Walberg saw her look of distrust, and, with the quick jealousy of partial insanity, said, “If you do not credit me in that, still less, I suppose, will you in the account of that fearful visitation with which I have latterly been familiar.”--“Oh, my beloved!” said Ines, who recognized in these words the source of a fear that had latterly, from some extraordinary circumstances in her husband’s conduct, taken possession of her soul, and made the fear even of famine trifling in comparison,--“I dread lest I understand you too well. The anguish of want and of famine I could have borne,--aye, and seen you bear, but the horrid words you have lately uttered, the horrid thoughts that escape you in your sleep,--when I think on these, and guess at”---- “You need not guess,” said Walberg, interrupting her, “I will tell you all.” And, as he spoke, his countenance changed from its expression of wildness to one of perfect sanity and calm confidence,--his features relaxed, his eye became steady, and his tone firm.--“Every night since our late distresses, I have wandered out in search of some relief, and supplicated every passing stranger;--latterly, I have met every night the enemy of man, who”---- “Oh cease, my love, to indulge these horrible thoughts,--they are the results of your disturbed unhappy state of mind.”--“Ines, listen to me. I see that figure as plainly as I see yours,--I hear his voice as distinctly as you hear mine this moment. Want and misery are not naturally fertile in the production of imagination,--they grasp at realities too closely. No man, who wants a meal, conceives that a banquet is spread before him, and that the tempter invites him to sit down and eat at his ease. No,--no, Ines, the evil one, or some devoted agent of his in human form, besets me every night,--and how I shall longer resist the snare, I know not.”--“And in what form does he appear?” said Ines, hoping to turn the channel of his gloomy thoughts, while she appeared to follow their direction. “In that of a middle-aged man, of a serious and staid demeanour, and with nothing remarkable in his aspect except the light of two burning eyes, whose lustre is almost intolerable. He fixes them on me sometimes, and I feel as if there was fascination in their glare. Every night he besets me, and few like me could have resisted his seductions. He has offered, and proved to me, that it is in his power to bestow all that human cupidity could thirst for, on the condition that----I cannot utter! It is one so full of horror and impiety, that, even to listen to it, is scarce less a crime than to comply with it!”