STORY OF GASPAR MENDEZ.

BY CATHERINE CROWE.


The extraordinary motives under which people occasionally act, and
the strange things they do under the influence of these motives,
frequently so far transcend the bounds of probability, that we
romance-writers, with the wholesome fear of the critics before our
eyes, would not dare to venture on them. Only the other day we read
in the newspapers that a Frenchman who had been guilty of
embezzlement, and was afraid of being found out, went into a theatre
in Lyon and stabbed a young woman whom he had never seen before in
his life, in order that he might die by the hands of the
executioner, and so escape the inconvenience of rushing into the
other world without having time to make his peace with Heaven. He
desired death as a refuge from the anguish of mind he was suffering;
but instead of killing himself he killed somebody else, because the
law would allow him leisure for repentance before it inflicted the
penalty of his crime.

It will be said the man was mad--I suppose he was; and so is
everybody whilst under the influence of an absorbing passion,
whether the mania be love, jealousy, fanaticism, or revenge. The
following tale will illustrate one phase of such a madness.