Scythrop did not despair. 'Seven copies,' he thought, 'have been sold.
Seven is a mystical number, and the omen is good. Let me find the
seven purchasers of my seven copies, and they shall be the seven
golden candle-sticks with which I will illuminate the world.'

Scythrop had a certain portion of mechanical genius, which his
romantic projects tended to develope. He constructed models of cells
and recesses, sliding panels and secret passages, that would have
baffled the skill of the Parisian police. He took the opportunity of
his father's absence to smuggle a dumb carpenter into the Abbey, and
between them they gave reality to one of these models in Scythrop's
tower. Scythrop foresaw that a great leader of human regeneration
would be involved in fearful dilemmas, and determined, for the benefit
of mankind in general, to adopt all possible precautions for the
preservation of himself.

The servants, even the women, had been tutored into silence. Profound
stillness reigned throughout and around the Abbey, except when the
occasional shutting of a door would peal in long reverberations
through the galleries, or the heavy tread of the pensive butler would
wake the hollow echoes of the hall. Scythrop stalked about like the
grand inquisitor, and the servants flitted past him like familiars. In
his evening meditations on the terrace, under the ivy of the ruined
tower, the only sounds that came to his ear were the rustling of the
wind in the ivy, the plaintive voices of the feathered choristers, the
owls, the occasional striking of the Abbey clock, and the monotonous
dash of the sea on its low and level shore. In the mean time, he drank
Madeira, and laid deep schemes for a thorough repair of the crazy
fabric of human nature.