changed; he was looking ill and feeble. I, too, was altered; my
hair had become quite grey. He conducted me through the desolate
apartments to an inner room, which had escaped the general wreck.
After partaking of some refreshment, we seated ourselves; and, with
fresh lamentations, he began to tell me that the grey withered old
man whom he had met with my shadow had insensibly led him such a
zig-zag race, that he had lost all traces of me, and at last sank
down exhausted with fatigue; that, unable to find me, he had
returned home, when, shortly after the mob, at Rascal's instigation,
assembled violently before the house, broke the windows, and by all
sorts of excesses completely satiated their fury. Thus had they
treated their benefactor. My servants had fled in all directions.
The police had banished me from the town as a suspicious character,
and granted me an interval of twenty-four hours to leave the
territory. Bendel added many particulars as to the information I
had already obtained respecting Rascal's wealth and marriage. This
villain, it seems--who was the author of all the measures taken
against me--became possessed of my secret nearly from the beginning,
and, tempted by the love of money, had supplied himself with a key
to my chest, and from that time had been laying the foundation of
his present wealth. Bendel related all this with many tears, and
wept for joy that I was once more safely restored to him, after all
his fears and anxieties for me. In me, however, such a state of
things only awoke despair.

My dreadful fate now stared me in the face in all its gigantic and
unchangeable horror. The source of tears was exhausted within me;
no groans escaped my breast; but with cool indifference I bared my
unprotected head to the blast. "Bendel," said I, "you know my fate;
this heavy visitation is a punishment for my early sins: but as for