When Louis awoke to recollection, he found himself lying on a mat, on a stone floor, and in a dark apartment. A strange mingling of heavy sounds murmured in his ear, as, with a confused sense of suffering and of misery, he strove to recall past events. Such shades are of speedy conjuration. Where he was, he could not guess; but he soon remembered where he last knew consciousness: he too well remembered the last scene which had met his eyes. Almost believing himself in some Moorish dungeon, he turned his languid frame, in the resignation of utter hopelessness. His hand touched a human face. He raised himself on his arm, and found some one extended on the bare ground, near him, and, by the hard breathing, in a profound sleep.

"Some unhappy wretch, like myself!" murmured he, and fell back upon his bed. Whether he slumbered, or mused, he knew not; but he continued to lie in a quiet, dreamy consciousness of irremedible misery.

A sound creaked in the darkness. He turned towards it and saw a door opened at the extremity of the apartment by a shadowy figure, which put its hand in for something that hung against the wall, and then withdrew. A faint light glimmered from under the now open portal. For some minutes, he could discern nothing distinctly; but the light suddenly became vivid, and he had a clear, though transitory view of the adjoining chamber. It seemed vaulted; and a number of men and women were seated on the floor, round a heap of burning logs. Some smoked segars; others spoke in whispers; some chanted low and dirge-like tunes; while the rest silently applied to their flaggons, or fed the fire with broken boughs. A high wind raged without; which, making its way through the ill-contrived fastenings of this rugged abode, blew the ashes and live embers over the wild group. Some had dropped asleep, and lay in various attitudes, with their heads on their knees, or leaning against the nearest substance for a pillow. The women, whose figures were huge as their male companions, were apparently more robust, for they did not seem to need the same restorer of nature. When all the men were crouched down on their rocky bed, these beldames drew closely around the fire; and bending over it, as if brooding incantation, conversed with each other in low, grumbling tones. At last, they, too, successively dozed over the dying embers, till the whole was involved in total silence. The fire went perfectly out; and Louis' over-strained nerves sunk into a kind of night-mare repose. About dawn he was aroused by a stir in the next chamber. The noise had the same effect upon his companion, who awoke with a deep sigh. The person rose, and, leaving the vault, shut the door. All now was darkness; and the lumbering bustle without, mingling with the voices of men and women, gradually augmented to uproar; till, sinking by the same gradations, every sound ceased, and the whole became profoundly still.

It was indifferent to Louis what passed; tumult, or silence; whether he were still in the world, or committed to a living grave. He was not himself; for the shock he had received had fevered his brain; and he lay, as if the horrible past, and the inexplicable present, were only parts of the same irksome dream. His eyes were closed, in this carelessness of observation, when a ray gleamed through their lids. He opened them instinctively, and saw the white light of day streaming through the open door, and Lorenzo bending over him. His torpid faculties aroused themselves at sight of the well-known countenance; and the faithful servant as gladly made a response, which answered the demand of where they were, though he could hardly speak for joy, at seeing his master restored from the stupor, which had immediately followed his recovery from the swoon in which Martini had committed him to his arms in the felucca.

Lorenzo related, that, without a word of explanation, his brother had ordered him to accompany the Marquis immediately back to the opposite coast; and that, though Rodrigo's vessel could not so instantly return, a comrade's boat was soon obtained, which landed them both at the place of their former embarkation. The smugglers advised, and assisted him, to carry his insensible charge up the mountain, to take a safe repose in the cavern. There, they found their wives waiting to receive them. But these women seemed to have nothing of the sex but the name. They saw the pale, and scarcely breathing form of the Marquis de Montemar, carried by them into the interior den, without a glance of pity. He was a Grandee! one of those, whose family had held rule in Spain; and, some day, he might be as ready as any of them, to drag to execution the very men who now gave him shelter! This passed in the minds of these women, as they joked on the great ladies who might then be weeping the unexplained absence of the handsome Cavalier; and they exulted in the idea, that not one female hand of the disdained gipsey tribe, would condescend to smooth the pillow, or bestow a look, on the object of so many courtly sighs.

As Lorenzo had marked these women, and their haughty rejection of their husbands' orders, to administer to the comfort of their guest; he feared their more active malice; and was not a little rejoiced when their whole train parted in the morning on their various trafficks, and he was left alone to convey his master from the cavern in the best way he could. Finding him restored to sensibility and speech, he did not venture to ask him the cause of his so terrible trance; for Martini had warned him, neither to make such enquiries himself; nor to satisfy the curiosity of persons in Spain, by recounting any part of the incidents in the Sierra de Ronda, nor hinting at his transitory visit to the opposite coast.

Louis listened, with a very few observations, to all that Lorenzo said. As the fresh and balmy air of the morning breathed into the cavern, his frame became braced; and, though still bewildered in his thoughts, he rose; and walking out into the dell before the cave, dispatched his companion to procure mules, for re-crossing the mountains. The animals were soon on the rock: and, with an aimless mind, he commenced his return to Madrid. A film was over every faculty, as he mechanically pursued his journey. Lorenzo watched anxiously the rayless fixture of his eye, which turned to no object, nor his ear to any sound, during their rapid posting through the champaign country. But all his haste was vain to check the fire that was preying on his master's veins; or to arrive at Madrid, where alone he could expect relief or comfort.

In the Val de Penas Louis became too ill to proceed; and, happily, the alarming symptoms seized him in sight of a monastery. Lorenzo, left him in the carriage, and went forward alone to solicit the hospitality of the Brotherhood. They were as eager to bestow, as he to ask, the benevolence required; and Louis soon found assistance under their charitable roof.

For three long weeks, he lingered between suffering and the grave. His fever was on the nerves, and attended with delirium, and every other prognostic of a speedy termination of his days. Lorenzo shared the constant vigilance of the good Fathers, in watching by his side; and at the commencement of the fourth week, the delirium left him. His present recovery to recollection was not like that in the cave, dim and distressing. He spoke with so much strength of voice, and clearness of perception, that his affectionate attendant was transported with hope; but the priest, who considered it as a last gleam from the departing soul, (which often sheds its brightest beam on the earth it leaves for ever,) bade the happy Lorenzo wait without for a few minutes, while he discoursed, as became his faith, with the restored Marquis.

When he found himself obeyed, and that he was alone with his patient, he cautiously apprised him of his approaching dissolution; and then as piously exhorted him to dedicate the sane hour which had been granted to him, in making his peace with God. "I have one act to perform," said he, "before I am called into the presence of my only father. Give me writing materials."

The monk laid paper before him, but held the pen in his own hand.

"Dictate, and I will write, what, I trust will bring peace to your soul."

"No," replied Louis, "my own hand alone must record what is on my soul. And no eye, Lorenzo,"—he looked for that faithful servant, and finding him absent, requested the monk to call him in. "He must be a witness, with you Father, that the probably altered characters are mine."

Lorenzo was summoned, and the monk briefly told him the cause. He was transfixed, till the gentle voice of his master addressed him.

"Lorenzo," said he, "your fidelity to me has been more that of a brother than of a servant. I trust you with the charge of my last testament, for I know you will execute it, as if my eye were then looking upon you."

Lorenzo did not speak, but put to his lips the trembling hand that took the pen from the friar.

Louis passed an hour in writing. Both witnesses sat at a distance; Lorenzo, with his face bent down on his knees; and the priest, marvelling within himself, at the firmness with which the dying Marquis pursued his task. His eyes receded not once from the paper, nor did his fingers relax, while, with determined truth, he related all that had passed in the Hambra between him and his father; yet in the dreadful confession, he pleaded his almost belief, that calamity had disordered the senses of his unhappy parent. On these grounds, he implored the Marquis Santa Cruz, (to whom the paper was addressed,) not only to conceal this tale of shame from every hostile eye; but by the friendship he once felt for both father and son, and by his vows of Christian charity, to leave no means unexerted to re-call Ripperda from his apostacy.

"If I deceive myself," continued this pious son, "in believing the existence of that mental derangement, which would once have been my most fearful deprecation, but since this direful crime is now my fervent hope, many would tell me I must despair of his salvation. My trust is in an higher judgement. In him who blessed me with such zeal as your's, to be his minister to my erring parent; in him who promises pardon to the penitent; and to whom all that seems impossible to man, is as already done.

"In this faith I shall lay down my head in the grave, with perfect confidence that a way is open by which the unhappy abjurer of his Saviour's name, may yet be received to mercy. In the world to come, I may hope to embrace my father, reconciled to his God and washed from every worldly stain! Meanwhile, in this my last act, I recommend him to your sacred exhortations:—To the prayers of my saint-like uncle of Lindisfarne."

Here Louis paused, and a tear fell upon the paper. It was the first that had moistened the burning surface of his eye, since the calamity which had stretched him on that bed of death. It mingled with the ink in writing the dear and honoured name.—He resumed.

"This paper must pass from your hands, my revered friend, to his. Let those kindred eyes alone share the confidence of this sad narrative. Let him know that his nephew, the child of his nurture, dies happy! Happy in the hope that is, and that which is to come."

As he added an awful farewell to his beloved aunt and cousins, a crowd of tender recollections thronged upon his soul. He hastily addressed the packet to the Marquis Santa Cruz. Besides this comprehensive letter, he wrote the few brief lines which comprised his will; and the monk and Lorenzo having signed it, a seal was affixed to its cover. The abbot was summoned to dispatch the one to Madrid; and Lorenzo received the other, to convey to Lindisfarne, when his beloved master should be no more.

This duty done, Louis sunk exhausted on his pillow. But the cord on his heart was taken off. The benign image of his earliest friend, like the vision of a ministering angel, had unloosed it; and a holy dew seemed poured upon the desart of his soul. As he laid himself back on the bed whence he expected never to rise again, he thought of the only hand which he wished could have given him the last bread of life; the only hand he could have wished might have closed his eyes, when temporal life was fled. He wept at the distance which separated him from that father of his moral being; he wept, that he must breathe his last sigh on a stranger's bosom. But his spirit was resigned; and, as his tears ceased to flow, he gently fell asleep.