Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/164

 than it is now to account for a mysterious bound into wealth; the Stock Exchange was not invented. Still, one would have thought that it was not beyond human ingenuity to get round such a perplexity. St. Leon is unequal to the task. He comes under suspicion—pretty well justified indeed—of dealing in magic; he alienates his family by his unaccountable proceedings; he is locked up in a dungeon by a nobleman who guesses at his powers, and proposes to keep him employed in making gold; he falls into the hands of the Inquisition; and though he manages to escape and to disguise himself by again becoming a youth, he has in that capacity to repudiate his children; becomes thoroughly miserable and is left at the end of the story proposing to die in spite of his miraculous gifts. Godwin had got further from realities than he was in Caleb Williams, and makes his characters indulge in a stilted declamation which he appears to have meant for passion. A brief passage will be enough to show what was the kind of eloquence which induced contemporaries—even Shelley—to think that he was at home in describing 'whirlwinds of passion.' St. Leon's wife has guessed the secret. She feels that a hopeless gulf has opened between herself and her