glanced suspiciously towards his son; and stopped opposite to him, as if he were going to speak; then turned away, and resumed his perturbed pace. A consuming impatience inflamed every feature; and, once or twice, he took out his watch, and looking at it, muttered to himself. At last, abruptly drawing near

his son, he snatched the cross of the Amaranth from his breast, and scornfully exclaimed:

“If you would belong to me, forswear all of which this is the emblem.”

Louis was dumb. -The Duke resumed with wild solemnity.

"One night in the Alcazar, when my gaolers had left me no other light than my injuries, I bethought me who raised those walls!-In the black darkness of my prison, I saw a host, they who fell in the passes of Grenada! And from that hour, the soul of Aben Humeya passed into my breast. Yon is my ensign !"

He pointed to a crescent, on a standard in a far corner of the room. Louis still gazed on him without speaking; but the apprehension in his mind was in his looks.

"Do not mistake me," rejoined the Duke, " my injuries have not made me mad; but they have driven me to a desperation that will prove you to the heart. Are you now willing to go, where I shall go; to lodge, where I shall lodge? Shall my God, be your God? And my enemies, your enemies? Or, am I cast out, like Ismael, to find my revenge on them who mock me- alone ?"

Louis had now subdued the effect of his fears, and rallied himself to argue again with his father, as man with man. He could not penetrate the whole of the threats he had heard; yet his rapid arguments embraced every possible project of revenge. The Duke listened to him with stoical apathy. But when the energetic pleader dwelt on the heinous

ness of coalescing with the enemies of the Christian faith, in any scheme of vengeance against its professors, Ripperda interrupted him with a withering laugh.

"What, if I make their faith my

own ?"

Impossible!" cried Louis, " you whose life has been a transcript of your faith; noble and true! It is not in you, my father, to desert a religion whose founder was perfectly holy, just, and merciful; to embrace the creed of an impostor! One whose life was polluted with every vice; and whose blasphemous doctrines sanctioned oppression, and privileged murder! Oh, my father, it is not in you to become the very thing that excites your vengeance."

As Louis continued a still more earnest appeal to his understanding and his conscience, Ripperda suddenly stopped before him.

"You may spare your arguments,

De Montemar; I know all you

would

say; but it is my choice to be a Mussul

His son's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth; but he forced himself to say: "Your choice to abjure the religion you believe? To cast from you your God, and your redemption ?"

"It is my choice to be revenged !” cried the Duke, gloomily striking his sword; "we will talk of redemption hereafter."

"Oh my father, it may then be too late!"

"My soul on the issue!" returned he, with a second horrible smile; " you are brave and daring, and will not shrink from the adventure. You will buckle your life to your father's in the desperate leap!"

He grasped his son's arm as he spoke, and looked in his face with a fierce resolution, which menaced some terrible judgement on the reply he seemed to

anticipate. A low monotonous cadence of many voices, chanting a few dismal notes in regular rise and fall, broke the awful pause. Ripperda dropped the arm he held, and calmly said:

66

They come! In another hour, I shall be sealed an enemy of Christendom."

Louis comprehended all that was intended.

of

66

By the Saviour you outrage in the dreadful intent!" cried he, "I demand you not to incur the deep perdition! By the honour and renown you so richly possess, I conjure you not to consign all at once to such universal infamy! By the memory of my mother, now in the heaven from which you would seal your everlasting banishment, I implore you to remember that you are a Christian! That you are the Duke de Ripperda! That you are my father."

With the last words, Louis sunk on his