emotion. The curiosity of the groupe for once overcame the restraint of Spanish reserve, and approaching the two cavaliers, they inquired if the singular personage who had passed was not the subject of their conversation, and the cause of the emotion which appeared to accompany it. The others replied in the affirmative, and hinted at their knowledge of circumstances in the character and history of that extraordinary being that might justify even stronger marks of emotion at his presence. This hint operated still more strongly on their curiosity—the circle of listeners began to deepen. Some of them, it appeared, had, or pretended to have, some information relative to this extraordinary subject. And that kind of desultory conversation commenced, whose principal ingredients are a plentiful proportion of ignorance, curiosity, and fear, mingled with some small allowance of information and truth;—that conversation, vague, unsatisfactory, but not uninteresting, to which every speaker is welcome to contribute his share of baseless report,—wild conjecture,—anecdote the more incredible the better credited,—and conclusion the more falsely drawn the more likely to carry home conviction.

“The conversation passed very much in language incoherent as this:—“But why, if he be what he is described, what he is known to be,—why is he not seized by order of government?—why is he not immured in the Inquisition?”—“He has been often in the prison of the holy office—oftener, perhaps, than the holy fathers wished,” said another. “But it is a well-known fact, that whatever transpired on his examination, he was liberated almost immediately.” Another added, “That the stranger had been in almost every prison in Europe, but had always contrived either to defeat or defy the power in whose grasp he appeared to be inclosed,—and to be active in his purposes of mischief in the remotest parts of Europe at the moment he was supposed to be expiating them in others.” Another demanded, “If it was known to what country he belonged?” and was answered, “He is said to be a native of Ireland—(a country that no one knows, and which the natives are particularly reluctant to dwell in from various causes)—and his name is Melmoth.” The Spaniard had great difficulty in expressing the theta, unpronounceable by continental lips. “Another, who had an appearance of more intelligence than the rest, added the extraordinary fact of the stranger’s being seen in various and distant parts of the earth within a time in which no power merely human could be supposed to traverse them—that his marked and fearful habit was every where to seek out the most wretched, or the most profligate, of the community among which he flung himself—what was his object in 

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