Poor old fool! I sincerely pitied him. "This comes," said I to myself, "of turning nephews out of doors. Had you, instead of trying to bend the iron resolve of your nephew to your own poor old obstinate will, assisted him in his very laudable determination to follow science, you might yet have lived and died a bachelor to your heart's content. But console yourself, my uncle, St. Anthony was tempted by a fair demon before you. Now you have learned a lesson, although it has come somewhat late in life." Although I deeply sympathised with my guardian's mistake, I could not do otherwise than feel that he fully deserved this punishment for his treatment of myself. How absurd and arrogant of a man, to persist in bending another to his own selfish will! Are we free agents, or are we not? But enough of this. My uncle had sinned, and he was punished. He had imagined his charmer an angel, and found after all that she was but mortal like the rest of her sex, a poor, weak woman. He could hardly ever have been besotted enough to fancy that she had married him for anything else than his money, but what will not a man do to obtain the idol of his affections? Perhaps it was not mere blind passion that had induced him to thrust his neck under the yoke. It might only have been pique. He would show his nephew that he could live very happily without his companionship, and this was the way he showed it. I mentally drew a portrait of my aunt. A dashing, reckless girl, determined to have her own way in everything, running up dressmakers' bills, driving about in her carriage to spend her days in visiting and frivolity. Ambitious of pleasing every man but her husband. Dragging her poor old wooden-legged spouse after her to balls, operas, and concerts, or else leaving him at home, perhaps poorly, whilst she was enjoying herself in some crowded assembly, surrounded by a troop of young gallants, encouraging their attentions and making game of the poor old fool she had cajoled into marrying her. I imagined her pretty, witty, vivacious and with a temper. A thorough incapacity for the management of a household, vain, extravagant, frivolous, heartless, calculating. Such was the mental picture I had drawn of my young aunt. How I could imagine her of an evening--if she ever stayed at home with her husband in the evening--yawning over the admiral's long nautical stories, sighing and pouting when he asked her to bring him his slippers, or rather his slipper, for he had but one. Turning up her nose as she mixed his grog for him or lighted his pipe. Shuddering when the old man caressingly touched her dimpled chin, and pleading fatigue that she might go to bed early to be alone and dream of some handsome young lieutenant she had met at Mrs. So-and-So's ball. "Well, well," said I to myself, "I will not triumph too long over your fall, uncle, lest some day the like may happen to myself, which Heaven forfend."