Every word uttered by the hapless Verezzi spoke daggers to the agitated Matilda. Again overpowered by the acuteness of his sensations, he sank on the floor, and, in violent convulsions, he remained bereft of sense. Matilda again raised him--again laid his throbbing head upon her bosom. Again, as, recovering, the wretched Verezzi perceived his situation--overcome by agonising reflection, he relapsed into insensibility. One fit rapidly followed another, and at last, in a state of the wildest delirium, he was conveyed to bed. Matilda found that a too eager impatience had carried her too far. She had prepared herself for violent grief, but not for the paroxysms of madness which now seemed really to have seized the brain of the devoted Verezzi. She sent for a physician--he arrived, and his opinion of Verezzi’s danger almost drove the wretched Matilda to desperation. Exhausted by contending passions, she threw herself on a sofa; she thought of the deeds which she had perpetrated to gain Verezzi’s love; she considered that should her purpose be defeated at the very instant which her heated imagination had portrayed as the commencement of her triumph: should all the wickedness, all the crimes, into which she had plunged herself, be of no avail--this idea, more than remorse for her enormities, affected her. She sat for a time absorbed in a confusion of contending thought; her mind was the scene of anarchy and horror; at last, exhausted by their own violence, a deep, a desperate calm, took possession of her faculties. She started from the sofa, and, maddened by the idea of Verezzi’s danger, sought his apartment. On a bed lay Verezzi. A thick film overspread his eye, and he seemed sunk in insensibility. Matilda approached him. She pressed her burning lips to his. She took his hand--it was cold, and at intervals slightly agitated by convulsions. A deep sigh at this instant burst from his lips--a momentary hectic flushed his cheek, as the miserable Verezzi attempted to rise. Matilda, though almost too much agitated to command her emotions, threw herself into a chair behind the curtain, and prepared to watch his movements. “Julia! Julia!” exclaimed he, starting from the bed, as his flaming eye-balls were unconsciously fixed upon the agitated Matilda, “where art thou? Ah! thy fair form now moulders in the dark sepulchre! would I were laid beside thee! thou art now an ethereal spirit!” And then, in a seemingly triumphant accent, he added, “But, ere long, I will seek thy unspotted soul--ere long I will again clasp my lost Julia!” Overcome by resistless delirium, he was for an instant silent--his starting eyes seemed to follow some form, which imagination had portrayed in vacuity. He dashed his head against the wall, and sank, overpowered by insensibility, on the floor.