“All that you tell me, therefore, about titles and dignities, and so forth, is premature. With patience you will be enabled to assume all, from which a momentary precipitation would infallibly see you repulsed. A few of your leading men still cling to the ruinous notion of elevating Ireland; for Heaven's sake cease not to combat this. It is the Church--the Church alone--for which we combat. Her difficulties are enough, without linking her fortune to such a sinking destiny! you have many able men amongst you, and they ought to see this proposition in its true light. “You are right--though you only threw it out in jest--about the interest I feel for my little Princess and her brother. It was the charity of a relative of theirs--a certain Mr. Godfrey--that first gave me the entrance into my career. He sent me to Louvain as a boy, and thence to Salamanca, and afterwards to Borne. He paid liberally for my education, and I believe intended, had he lived, to have provided handsomely for me. The story has an ugly ending; at least the rumors are gloomy ones; and I would rather not revive their memory. Here have I fallen into a sad track of thought, dear Michel; and now it is past midnight, and all is silent about me, and I feel half as if I ought to tell you everything, and yet that everything resolves itself into nothing; for of my actual knowledge, I possess not one single fact “Can you conceive the position of a man with a great, a glorious future before him,--rewards the very highest his wildest ambition ever fancied,--a sphere to exercise powers that he feels within, and but needing a field for their display? Picture to yourself such a man, and then fancy him tortured by one terrible suspicion, one damning doubt,--that there is a flaw in his just title to all this; that some day or other there may rise up against him--he knows not how or whence or why--from the very earth as it were, a voice to say, 'you are disowned, disgraced,--you are infamous before men!' Such a terrible hell have I carried for years within me! Yes, Michel, this ulcer is eating at my very heart, and yet it is only like a vision of evil,--some mind-drawn picture, carried up from infancy through boyhood, and stealing on, year by year, into the prime of life, strengthening its ties on me like a malady.