He had now retreated from a bad position to one a mighty deal worse; for, in the midst of a town, he could sometimes see a friend, and smoke a pipe, in the fumes of which all his cares were, for a time, enveloped, and kept from the eyes of his haunted fancy; but now, in the midst of a comparative wilderness, he had no associate, but that very limb of Satan herself, that was the source and origin of the misery to which he was enslaved. He was, besides, rolled up in a cloud of mystery, in which the wicked enchantress sat and mocked him, like some of those eastern genii, that love to look and speak through thick vapours which increase the mystic character of their power. Still she contrived to get intoxicated; and, so vain had been his efforts to trace the source of the evil, that he verily believed the imp was possessed of some charm whereby she realized a compact with the enemy of mankind. If he went out to stalk round the house and brood over his misfortunes, he found that she had, in the meantime, got herself made perfect in insensibility; and if she, by any means, got to a short distance from the house unobserved, she returned in a condition no less lamentable. It was a big, crying evil, fronted with shame, and adminicled with devilries of every degree and colour that ever came from the box of Pandora. It was impossible that man could stand it; and necessity, the mother of invention, stung the obtuse brain of Gustavus to something like the _ingenium perfervidum_ of genius itself. He knew very well that he had terrified men; and, indeed, as love is said to be inspired by a look, so one glance of him was, of a surety, sufficient to have produced fear in any one but Julia, who valued his fierce looks no more than if they had been smiles. But he could do more than look—he could threaten; and the question that troubled him, for a time, was, what he should threaten; for he had made up his mind to terrify her in some way; and the sheer necessity of projecting something worthy of himself, was the parent of one of the most extraordinary expedients that ever came from the brain of genius.