Hampered with a wife whom he had never affected to love, and whose tearful face was a constant reproach to him, and with a father who was an utter imbecile, the thoughts of suicide more than once crossed Norbert's brain.

One day a servant informed Norbert that his father refused to get up.

A doctor was sent for, and he declared that the Duke was in a highly critical condition.

A violent reaction had taken place, and all day the invalid was in a state of intense excitement.

The power of speech, which he had almost entirely lost, seemed to have returned to him in a miraculous manner; at length, however, he became delirious, and Norbert dismissed the servants who had been watching by his father's bed, lest in the incoherent ravings of the invalid, the words "Parricide" or "Poison" should break forth.