Page:Clermont - Roche (1798, volume 2).djvu/150

 he shut out company, and appeared to have taken a dislike to all the pleasures he before delighted in; but though he avoided company, solitude seemed equally irksome to him, and he almost continually had one or other of the domestics in the apartment with him. The sudden alteration in his manner, the involuntary horrors he sometimes betrayed, appeared strange circumstances in the eyes of Peter, and from them he drew an inference that shocked him. Determined to know whether it was, or was not a just one, he devised a scheme, which, when you hear it, you will say was a bold one.

"He was the domestic his master generally selected to be near him, and, at the close of day, they frequently walked together up and down a great Gothic hall.—One evening, as they were thus engaged, Peter, whom his master allowed to converse familiarly with him, from his long residence in the family, and well-known attachment to it, said to him, with a solemn voice and coun-