’Tis done; and amidst the vows of a transitory delirium of pleasure, regret, horror, and misery, arise! they shake their Gorgon locks at Eloise! appalled she shudders with affright, and shrinks from the contemplation of the consequences of her imprudence. Beware, Eloise!--a precipice, a frightful precipice yawns at thy feet! advance yet a step further, and thou perishest! No, give not up thy religion--it is that alone which can support thee under the miseries, with which imprudence has so darkly marked the progress of thine existence! CHAPTER X. The elements respect their Maker’s seal! Still like the scathed pine-tree’s height. Braving the tempests of the night. Have I ’scaped the bickering flame. Like the scathed pine, which a monument stands Of faded grandeur, which the brands Of the tempest-shaken air Have riven on the desolate heath; Yet it stands majestic even in death, And rears its wild form there. Wandering Jew. Yet, in an attitude of attention, Wolfstein was fixed, and, gazing upon Ginotti’s countenance, awaited his narrative. “Wolfstein,” said Ginotti, “the circumstances which I am about to communicate to you are, many of them, you may think, trivial; but I must be minute, and, however the recital may excite your astonishment, suffer me to proceed without interruption.” Wolfstein bowed affirmatively--Ginotti thus proceeded:-- “From my earliest youth, before it was quenched by complete satiation, _curiosity_, and a desire of unveiling the latent mysteries of nature, was the passion by which all the other emotions of my mind were intellectually organized. This desire first led me to cultivate, and with success, the various branches of learning which led to the gates of wisdom. I then applied myself to the cultivation of philosophy, and the éclât with which I pursued it, exceeded my most sanguine expectations. _Love_ I cared not for; and wondered why men perversely sought to ally themselves with weakness. Natural philosophy at last became the peculiar science to which I directed my eager inquiries; thence was I led into a train of labyrinthic meditations. I thought of _death_--I shuddered when I reflected, and shrank in horror from the idea, _selfish and self-interested_ as I was, of entering a new existence to which I was a stranger. I must either dive into the recesses of futurity, or I must not, I cannot die. ‘Will not this nature--will not the _matter_ of which it is composed--exist to all eternity? Ah! I know it will; and, by the exertions of the energies with which nature has gifted me, well I know it shall.’ This was my opinion at that time: I then believed that there existed no God. Ah! at what an exorbitant price have I bought the conviction that there is one!!! Believing that priestcraft and superstition were all the religion which _man_ ever practised, it could not be supposed that I thought there existed supernatural beings of any kind. I believed