they succeeded, would not only have placed a new king upon the English
throne, but wrought an utter change over the whole face of Europe. With
Alberoni and with Gortz fell Montreuil. He was banished France and
Spain; the penalty of death awaited him in Britain; and he was supposed
to have thrown himself into some convent in Italy, where his name and
his character were unknown. In this brief intelligence was condensed
all my information of the actors in my first scenes of life. I return
to that scene on which I had now entered.

At the age of thirty-three I had acquired a reputation sufficient to
content my ambition; my fortune was larger than my wants; I was a
favourite in courts; I had been successful in camps; I had already
obtained all that would have rewarded the whole lives of many men
superior to myself in merit, more ardent than myself in desires. I was
still young; my appearance, though greatly altered, manhood had rather
improved than impaired. I had not forestalled my constitution by
excesses, nor worn dry the sources of pleasure by too large a demand
upon their capacities; why was it then, at that golden age, in the very
prime and glory of manhood, in the very zenith and summer of success,
that a deep, dark, pervading melancholy fell upon me? a melancholy so
gloomy that it seemed to me as a thick and impenetrable curtain drawn
gradually between myself and the blessed light of human enjoyment. A
torpor crept upon me; an indolent, heavy, clinging languor gathered over
my whole frame, the physical and the mental: I sat for hours without
book, paper, object, thought, gazing on vacancy, stirring not, feeling
not,--yes, feeling, but feeling only one sensation, a sick, sad,
drooping despondency, a sinking in of the heart, a sort of gnawing
within as if something living were twisted round my vitals, and, finding
no other food, preyed, though with a sickly and dull maw, upon /them/.
This disease came upon me slowly: it was not till the beginning of the