“But she hath a lover!” said Rodolf, gravely.

“Peradventure she hath, but not of her own choosing, or mine art fails me.  Look, this figure is the horoscope of her birth.  Thou hast some knowledge of the celestial sciences.  The directions are so close worked that should this night pass and Kate go unwed—­indicated by Venus coming to a trine of the sun on the cusp of the seventh house, she will refuse all her suitors, and her whole patrimony pass into the hands of a stranger; but”—­he raised his voice with a solemn and emphatic enunciation—­“to-night! look to it!  If not thine she may be another’s.”

The listener’s brain seemed on a whirl; thought hurrying on thought, until the mind lost all power of discrimination.  The succession of images was too rapid.  All individuality was gone.  He felt as though not one idea was left out of the busy crowd on which to rest his own identity.  He seemed a mere passive existence, unable either to execute the functions of thought or volition.

“Go, for a brief space.  Thou mayest return at sunset.  Yet”—­the seer fixed a penetrating glance on the youth as he retired—­“go not nigh the merchant’s dwelling, unless thou wouldest mar thy fortune.  To-night—­remember!”

In the dim solitude of his chamber Rodolf sought in vain to allay the feverish excitement he had endured.  He seemed left to the sport and caprice of a power he could not control.  The coursers of the imagination grew wilder with restraint:  he recklessly flung the reins upon their neck; but this did not tire their impetuosity.  His brain glowed like a furnace; he seemed hastening fast on to the verge of either folly or madness.  He threw himself on the couch, when the voice of Altdorff came like a winged harmony upon his spirit.  The page was seated in the narrow cloisters,—­the lute, his untiring companion, enticing a few chords from his touch, playful and gentle as the feelings that awaked them; some old and quaint chant, scarce worth the telling, but cherished in the heart’s inmost shrine, from the hallowed nature of its associations.  A deep slumber crept heavily on the cavalier, but the merchant’s daughter still haunted him:  sometimes snatched away from his embrace just as a rosy smile was kindling on her lips; at others, she met him with frowns and menace, but ere he could speak to her she had disappeared.  Then was he tottering on the battlements of some old turret, when a storm arose, the maiden crept to his side, but in an instant, with a hideous crash, she was borne away by the rude grasp of the tempest.  He awoke, with a mortifying discovery that the crash had been of a somewhat less equivocal nature.  A cabinet of costly workmanship lay overturned at his feet, and a rich vase, breathing odours, strewed the floor in a thousand fragments.

The noise brought up several of the college servitors; to rid himself from the annoyance he ascended the roof, then protected by low battlements, and leaded, so that a person might walk round the building and pursue his meditations without interruption.