a brother, whom he had always treated with the utmost affection, and whose fortune it had been his care to promote, should have dared to harbour even the most distant wish of dishonouring his wife.  He seemed, in his eyes, the most culpable of the two, and thought the banishment intended for him much too small a punishment for so atrocious a crime.  It is certain that this young gentleman had not only broke through the bands of duty, honour, gratitude, and every social obligation, but had also sinned against nature itself, by adding incest to adultery.—­Natura could not indeed consider him as any thing but a monster, and that as such he ought to be cut off from the face of the earth; and neither reason nor humanity, could alledge any thing against the dictates of a revenge, which by the most unconcerned and disinterested person could not be called unjust.—­Strongly did its emotions work within his soul, and he was more than once on the point of going in search of him, in order to satiate its most impatient thirst, but was as often restrained, by reflecting on the consequences.—­’Suppose,’ said he to himself, ’I should escape that death the law inflicts for murder, in consideration of the provocation, I cannot hope to preserve my employments.—­I must retire from the world, live an obscure life the whole remainder of my days, and the whole shameful adventure being divulged, will render me the common topic of table conversation, and entail dishonour and contempt upon my son.’

Thus did ambition get the better of resentment;—­thus did the love of grandeur extirpate all regard of true honour, and the shame of private contempt from the world lie stifled in the pride of public homage.

The minister in the mean time kept his word; he let the offending brother know it was his pleasure he should dispose of his commission in the guards, and purchase one in a regiment he named to him, which was very speedily to embark for Gibraltar:  the young gentleman obeyed the injunction, and doubtless was not sorry to quit a place, where some accident or other, in spite of all the care he had resolved to take, might possibly bring him to the sight of a brother he had so greatly injured, the thoughts of whose just reproaches were more terrible to him, than any thing else that could befal him.

The wife of Natura being also privately admonished by her uncle how to behave, kept her chamber for some days, not only to give the better colour to the pretence had been made of her indisposition, but also to avoid the presence of her husband, till the first emotions of his fury should be a little abated;—­he, on the other hand, profited by this absence, to bring himself to a resolution how to behave, when the shock of seeing her should arrive:—­as her crime was past recal, reproaches and remonstrances would be in vain to retrieve her honour, or his peace; and if they even should work her into penitence, what would it avail? unless to soften him into a pity, which would only serve to render him more uneasy, as there was now no possibility of living with her as a wife.—­Having, therefore, well weighed and considered all these things, it seemed best to him to say nothing to her of what had happened, and indeed to avoid speaking to her at all, except in public.