frame with torture, and I would fain ask from your holy, soothing, and
pious comfort, something of alleviation or of fortitude."

The Hermit drew near to me; he laid his thin hand upon my arm, and
looked long and wistfully in my face. It was then that a suspicion
crept through me which after observation proved to be true, that the
wanderings of those dark eyes and the meaning of that blanched brow were
tinctured with insanity.

"Brother and fellow man," said he, mournfully, "hast thou in truth
suffered? and dost thou still smart at the remembrance? We are friends
then. If thou hast suffered as much as I have, I will fall down and do
homage to thee as a superior; for pain has its ranks, and I think at
times that none ever climbed the height that I have done. Yet you look
not like one who has had nights of delirium, and days in which the heart
lay in the breast, as a corpse endowed with consciousness might lie in
the grave, feeling the worm gnaw it, and the decay corrupt, and yet
incapable of resistance or of motion. Your cheek is thin, but firm;
your eye is haughty and bright; you have the air of one who has lived
with men, and struggled and not been vanquished in the struggle.
Suffered! No, man, no,--/you/ have not suffered!"

"My Father, it is not in the countenance that Fate graves her records.
I have, it is true, contended with my fellows; and if wealth and honour
be the premium, not in vain: but I have not contended against Sorrow
with a like success; and I stand before you, a being who, if passion be
a tormentor and the death of the loved a loss, has borne that which the
most wretched will not envy."

Again a fearful change came over the face of the recluse: he grasped my