Though his life was irreproachable, his manners pure, and his talents high, Claude de l'Estang had not been without his portion of the faults and failings of humanity. He had been ambitious in his particular manner; he had been vain; he had loved the admiration and applause of the multitude; he had coveted the fame of eloquence, and the reputation of superior sanctity; youth, and youth's eagerness, joined with the energy inseparable from high genius, had carried his natural errors to an extreme: but long before the period of which we now speak, years, and still more sorrows, had worked a great and beneficial, but painful alteration. His first disappointment was the disappointment of the brightest hopes of youth, complicated with all that could aggravate the crossing of early love; for there was joined unto it the blasting of all bright confidence in woman's sincerity, and the destruction of that trust in the eternal happiness of one whom he could never cease to love which was more painful to the mind of a sincere and enthusiastic follower of his own particular creed than the loss of all his other hopes together. He had loved early, and loved above his station; and encouraged by hope, and by the smiles of one who fancied that she loved in return, his ambition had been stimulated by passion, till all the great energies of his mind were called forth to raise himself to the highest celebrity. When he had attained all, however, when he saw multitudes flock to hear his voice, and thousands hanging upon the words of his lips as upon oracles, even then, at the moment when he thought every thing must yield to him, he had seen an unexpected degree of coldness come upon her he loved, and apparent reluctance to fulfil the promises which had been given when his estate was lowlier. Some slight opposition on the part of noble and wealthy parents--opposition that would have yielded to entreaties less than urgent, was assigned as the cause of the hesitation which wrung his heart. The very duties which he himself had inculcated, and which, had there been real love at heart, would have found a very different interpretation, were now urged in opposition to his wishes; and, mortified and pained, Claude de l'Estang watched anxiously for the ultimate result. We need not pause upon all the steps; the end was, that he saw her, to whom he had devoted every affection of a warm and energetic heart, break her engagements to him, wed an enemy of her father's creed, renounce the religion in which she had been brought up, and after some years of ephemeral glitter in a corrupt court, become faithless to the husband for whom she had become faithless to her religion, and end her days, in bitterness, in a convent, where her faith was suspected, and her real sins daily reproved.