kind-hearted jailer went down stairs, and sent the servants to take away. Not even the brass candlesticks were left behind; and I went to bed by the palpable darkness of a glimmering lamp suspended against the wall. _CHAPTER V._ _HIS REFLECTIONS BEFORE HE WENT TO SLEEP THAT NIGHT, AND THE NOISE THAT WAKED HIM._ Two hours at least were my thoughts employed on what Tordesillas had told me. Here, then, am I, for having lent myself to the pleasures of the heir-apparent! It was certainly not having my wits about me, to pander for so young a prince. Therein consists my crime: had he been arrived at a more knowing age, the king perhaps might only have laughed at what has now made him so angry. But who can have given such counsel to the monarch, without dreading the prince's resentment or the Duke of Lerma's? That minister will doubtless take ample vengeance for his nephew the Count de Lemos. How can the king have made the discovery? That is above my comprehension. This last was the eternal burden of my song. But the idea most afflictive to my mind, what drove me to despair, and laid fiend-like hold upon my fancy, was the unquestioned plunder of my effects. My strong box, exclaimed I, my dear wealth, what is become of you? Into what hands have you fallen? Alas! you are lost in less time than you were gained! The ruinous confusion of my household was the perpetual death's head of my imagination. Yet this wilderness of melancholy ideas sheltered me from absolute distraction; sleep, which had shunned my wretched straw, now paid his readier visit to my soft and gentlemanly couch. Watching and wine, too, imparted a strong narcotic to his poppies. My slumbers were profound; and to all appearance, the day might have peeped in upon my repose, if I had not been awakened all at once by such sounds as rarely perforate a prison wall. I heard the thrum of a guitar, accompanying a man's voice. My whole attention was absorbed; but the invisible musician paused, and left the fleeting impression of a dream. An instant afterwards, my ear was soothed with the sound of the same instrument, and the same voice. Wisely the ant against poor winter hoards The stock which summer's wealth affords; In grasshoppers, that must at autumn die, How vain were such an industry! Of love or fortune the deceitful light Might half excuse our cheated sight, If it of life the whole small time would stay, And be our sunshine all the day.[*] [*] To have substituted, with a slight variation, these two stanzas from Cowley for a translation of the commonplace couplet in the original, will probably not be thought to require any apology. They necessarily involve a change in the consequent reflections of our hero. TRANSLATOR.