1229, ]- Bibel 
MINE HOST’S LAST STORY. 
« You are an Englishman, I believe, Sir?” 
I looked up, startled, at the face of the speaker; but Cayrmelo’s eyes, 
bent upon me with a sad and thoughtful expression, and the words he 
uttered, seemed no longer unmeaning. I did not question him in return, 
as my first impulse prompted me, but quietly left him to the unravelment 
of his own thoughts in silence, if they were too sacred for disclosure, or 
by such gradual exhibition as his mood chose to indulge in. The old 
man laid his pipe upon the table before us, and, rising from his seat, 
paced once or twice the whole length of the chamber ; then suddenly 
fixing his gaze upon a rude picture that leant against a retiring panel, 
on one side of the little lamp for ever illuminating his patron saint, he 
seemed absorbed in contemplations, the spirit of which was of no happy 
character. He returned to his seat—his features unfixed, his look dim 
and quivering ; and when he examined his pipe, and railed against the 
exhausted tobacco, the tone of his anger was heightened and falsified, to 
conceal the tremulous accents in which otherwise -he would have ex- 
pressed himself. This depression was not. customary in my excellent 
old host. His name was more often coupled with supper-songs, and the 
quotations of merry roysterers, than used as a fit appendage to a love- 
tale or twilight sentiment. But his heart was human; and, in that 
strange, capricious atmosphere, the succession of whose storms and sun- 
shine no philosophic laws have availed to regulate, he lived as cther men, 
subject to the raging of its Dog-star— to the soft influences of its Pleiades. 
It was a dark moment with him, and something of sympathy forbade me 
to interfere with it. I was rewarded. 
« Sir,” said he, after a long pause, “ you have heard from me the 
story in which one of my kindred bore a trifling part ;—at any rate, you 
remember her name ;—I mean Rosalia, the mother of that young vixen 
whom you have been so kind to?—Well !—I am tempted to use an old 
man’s privilege, and confide to you some more family particulars—more 
interesting to me, because the parties were still dearer to my heart, and 
_ nearer tome by blood. I can bear to think of them now ; for, tottering 
as I do on the very parapet of this world, I seem to lose the former mag- 
nitude of the objects which engrossed me in it, whilst I catch a dim and 
fanciful, but perhaps a very close, view of those which are opening upon 
me in a world which has no horizon.” : 
He crossed himself, and bowed his head reverently, as one already 
eccupied with the mysteries which emanated from the Deity whose pre- 
gence he acknowledged. 
« And yet,” he proceeded, “I do not think myself unblest, even 
though I have these mortal recollections tugging at my worn-out heart 
_—worn out because of them. Something have I lost, but much have I 
here gained, even by the sorrows which taught me to despise the 
romises of our present pleasures, and the-sleck looks of earthly attrac- 
»—Psha! what will you think of this, whoare still young, and fresh, 
and undesponding ? You, too, who have laughed and made merry with 
_ ie, as though either my mirth or my sadness were hypocrisy ? . There 
are times, young man, when we are opposites of ourselves ; and, in a 
single hour, the mind, if agitated, will traverse the whole extent of its 
sensations, and, resting only on the extremes, make itself appear a trifler 
or a dissembler.—Will you hear my present narrative ?” 
_ MLM. New Series—Vou. VII. No. 39. | 
