Shortly after Scythrop’s disappointment Mr. Glowry was involved in a lawsuit, which compelled his attendance in London, and Scythrop was left alone, to wander about, with the “Sorrows of Werter” in his hand.

He now became troubled with the passion for reforming the world, and meditated on the practicability of reviving a confederacy of regenerators.  He wrote and published a treatise in which his meanings were carefully wrapped up in the monk’s hood of transcendental technology, but filled with hints of matters deep and dangerous, which he thought would set the whole nation in a ferment, and awaited the result in awful expectation; some months after he received a letter from his bookseller, informing him that only seven copies had been sold, and concluding with a polite request for the balance.

“Seven copies!” he thought.  “Seven is a mystical number, and the omen is good.  Let me find the seven purchasers, and they shall be the seven golden candlesticks with which I shall illuminate the world.”

Scythrop had a certain portion of mechanical genius, and constructed models of cells and recesses, sliding panels and secret passages, which would have baffled the skill of the Parisian police.  In his father’s absence, he smuggled a dumb carpenter into his tower, and gave reality to one of these models.  He foresaw that a great leader of regeneration would be involved in fearful dilemmas, and determined to adopt all possible precautions for his own preservation.

In the meantime, he drank Madeira and laid deep schemes for a thorough repair of the crazy fabric of human nature.

II.—­Marionetta

Mr. Glowry returned with the loss of his lawsuit, and found Scythrop in a mood most sympathetically tragic.  His friends, whom we have mentioned, availed themselves of his return to pay him a simultaneous visit, and at the same time arrived Scythrop’s friend and fellow-collegian, the Hon. Mr. Listless, a young gentleman devoured with a gloomy and misanthropical nil curo.

Mr. and Mrs. Hilary brought with them an orphan niece, Miss Marionetta Celestina O’Carroll, a blooming and accomplished young lady, who exhibited in her own character all the diversities of an April sky.  Her hair was light brown, her eyes hazel, her features regular, and her person surpassingly graceful.  She had some coquetry, and more caprice, liking and disliking almost in the same moment, and had not been three days in the abbey before she threw out all the lures of her beauty and accomplishments to make a prize of her cousin Scythrop’s heart.

Scythrop’s romantic dreams had given him many pure anticipated cognitions of combinations of beauty and intelligence, which, he had some misgivings, were not realised by Marionetta, but he soon became distractedly in love, which, when the lady perceived, she altered her tactics and assumed coldness and reserve.  Scythrop was confounded, but, instead of falling at her feet begging explanation, he retreated to his tower, seated himself in the president’s chair of his imaginary tribunal, summoned Marionetta with terrible formalities, frightened her out of her wits, disclosed himself, and clasped the beautiful penitent to his bosom.