"Out, knave!" cried Leonard de Monte, turning sharply upon him. "Out! Did you ever know me hesitate in a pursuit that I had once determined, or regret a deed when once it was done? Firm in myself, I am firm to myself, and, whether good or ill happens, I never regret. No, no; think you that I am such a fool or such a child as to start from the first trifling obstacle? To whimper, because I am forced to lie on a hard bed, or fly off indignant because some saucy serving-man breaks his jest upon _the page?_ No, no! I was thinking of my father's house, and of a picture there which some skilful hand had painted of just such a scene as this. There was the little sparkling stream, and there a sweet and tranquil grassy bank like that, with the bright sunshine--even as it does now--streaming through the bushes, and touching the rounded turf with gold. Often, very often, have I stood and gazed upon that landscape, and my fancy has rendered the dull canvass instinct with life. I have dreamed that I could see through those groves, or climb the hill, and wander amongst the rocks; and in infancy--that time of happy hearts--imagination, as I stood and looked, has shaped me out a little paradise in such a scene as that. The palace and its cold splendour has faded away around me, and I have fancied myself wandering in the midst of Nature's beauties, with beings as bright and as ideal as my dream: and now, Bartholo--and now--what are all those visions now?" The dwarf cast his eyes to the ground, and for a moment, a single moment, the cynical smile passed away from his lip. "You," he said--"you have made your fate! You have sought the bitter well from which you are forced to drink. You have chosen sorrow, and the way to sorrow; for the love of any human thing is but the high road thither, and you must tread it to the end." "How now, sir!" cried the youth, proudly tossing back his head; "school'st thou me?" "Nay, I school you not," answered the dwarf; "and less than all sought to offend you. I would have given you consolation. I would have said that you, for a great prize, had played a stake as weighty:--I mean that knowingly, willingly, you had risked happiness for love; and, seemingly having lost, are sorrowful; but still you have the satisfaction of knowing that your fate has been your own deliberate act." "Would not that make it all the more painful, thou bitter medicine?" asked the youth.