"Your language is hard," replied the Prior, "and your similes are indecent towards a minister of the religion you profess to hold; I shall, therefore, waste no more words upon you, young sir. Your conduct, however, makes no change in my purposes. The treatment you receive shall be as gentle and as good as if you were grateful for kindness, and courteous towards those whom you should respect. You will one time know me better; and you may be sure, even now, that I have no purposes to serve by your detention; as you will find by our intercourse, be it long, be it short, that I shall strive for nothing but, if possible, to lead you in that course in which your honour, your happiness, and your best interests, here and hereafter, are alone to be found." St. Real made no reply; and the Dominican, bowing his head with an air of conscious dignity, withdrew from the apartment, and, proceeding through the doorway by which he had entered, left the young Marquis and his attendant alone. The sound of turning keys and drawing bolts succeeded, and St. Real for the first time found himself a prisoner indeed. Now "The soul, secure in its existence, may smile at the drawn dagger, and defy its point;" yet there are many things which may happen to the body, that defy the soul to preserve her equanimity, although they be much less evils, in comparison, than that irretrievable separation of matter and spirit, which we are accustomed to look upon with more indifference. For a moment or two, St. Real lost his calmness, and, striding up and down the room with his arms folded on his breast, gave way to that bitterness of spirit, which every noble heart must feel on the loss of the great, the incomparable, the inestimable blessing of liberty. His more philosophical attendant, who had been selected in haste from among the rest of his followers, without any great attention to his mental qualities, consoled himself, under the privation which so painfully affected his master, by examining every hole and corner in the apartments to which they were consigned; and comforted himself not a little, under all their woes and disasters, by the sight of soft and downy beds, rich arras, and velvet hangings. Before his perquisitions were well complete, however, and just as his master was reasoning himself into calmer endurance of an event he could not avoid, the door once more opened, and admitted a brother of the order, on whose appearance and demeanour we must pause for a moment.