Hour passed over hour; Gerard knocked at the door, to announce that his solitary meal was prepared, but he knocked unheeded. At last, the deepening glooms of evening enclosing him in darkness, reminded him the day was past, and that his demanded task of the morning was yet to begin. Aware that the man, whom he was required to revere as a guardian, but whom the pangs of recollection made him now abhor as a tyrant, would exact it from him at midnight; he started from the ground. At that moment of self-recall to labour, the yoke of bondage pressed with insupportable weight upon his soul. "I will not endure it!" cried he, "why should I immure myself like a condemned wretch? Shut up in solitude, fastened to the duty of a machine; Without sound of human voice, but that of my hard task-master! Without breathing the free air of Heaven; unless accompanied with lackies! Is this a fate, chosen by the Baron de Ripperda for his son, his only son? It is mockery, and I will not endure it." The fever in his blood exaggerated to his perturbed mind every mysterious circumstance in his situation. He might be now the unconscious instrument of treason, or the cheated agent of political treachery. His father's confidence might be abused by the impenetrable Ignatius, and he be ignorant, alike of his son's being at Vienna, and of the illiterate drudgery to which he was consigned. All this seemed the strange effect of Louis having seen Duke Wharton. But much sprung from a distempered imagination, and disordered nerves; the consequence of loneliness, want of exercise, and long confinement in a deleterious atmosphere. However, the sudden appearance of Wharton was certainly the circumstance which at once awoke all his sensibilities to the perception of his changed state; of the liberty he had been persuaded to relinquish, of the liberty he might, perhaps, regain by the Duke's interference. The last idea was a vague one, but still it was visible; it had a shadowy existence between hope and despair, and Louis clasped at the delusive shade. A prey to these confused imaginations, he could not command either the desire or the power to resume his labours. Leaning his throbbing head upon the table, he allowed the gloom of black night to surround him; without even the wish to dispel it, by going into the adjoining room for one of the candles which had been for so many hours burning to waste. As the old clock of the mansion struck ten, he was aroused from his moody position by a gleam of light. He looked up, and saw the Sieur Ignatius standing before him, with a lamp in his hand. Louis started, disordered, from his chair. "What is the meaning of this?" asked the Sieur, in a kindly voice; "I fear you are seriously ill." Louis, in attempting to speak, was agitated to suffocation. Ignatius fixed his eyes on his haggard countenance.