"Yet who is able to counteract successfully the contrivances of devilish cunning and hypocrisy? _My_ endeavours, at least, were all utterly in vain, and it would only have been absurd to impart to the Baron what I had seen and heard. My opponents would directly have found ways and means to represent me as a half-witted, tiresome visionary. "The snow still lay upon the mountains, when we came, last spring, over to the castle; but I made my usual excursions over all the grounds. One morning I met, in a neighbouring village, _a bauer_, who had something odd in his walk and gestures. Happening to turn round his head, he betrayed to me, on the first glance, the features of the Count Victorin! However, in the same moment he had vanished among the houses, and was no more to be seen. "Any mistake on my part was here impossible. And what could have led him to this disguise, but the continuance of his old intrigue with the Baroness? Even now, I know for certain that he is again in this neighbourhood, for I have seen his _chasseur_ riding past; and yet it is inexplicable to me how it happened that he did not rather attend the Baroness in town. "It is now three months since we received intelligence that her uncle the Governor was attacked by severe and dangerous illness. Without delay, therefore, she obtained the Baron's consent to visit her relation, and set off, taking only Aurelia with her, indisposition preventing the Baron from accompanying her at that time; and he has since chosen to remain here. "Now, however, misfortune had begun to make determined inroads into our house; for the Baroness had not been long absent before she wrote home, that Hermogen was suddenly seized by a melancholy, on which no society or advice of physicians seemed to have any beneficial influence; and that this even broke out oftentimes into fits of delirious rage. Day after day he wandered about all alone, cursing and denouncing himself and his cruel destiny; while all endeavours of his friends to recover him from this frightful state had been hitherto ineffectual. "You may suppose, reverend sir, how painful and distressing was the impression that all this made upon the Baron. The sight of his son under such a fearful malady, would, in his present state, have agitated him too much. I therefore went to town alone. "By the strong measures that had been adopted, Hermogen was already cured of these violent out-breakings of madness described by the Baroness; but a settled melancholy had fallen upon him, against which the physicians seemed to think that all aid would be unavailing.