t.
My apathy is not natural, but superinduced. There was a
volcano under my ice, but it burnt out, and a face of
desolation has come on, not to be rectified in ages, could
my life be prolonged to patriarchal longevity.

"The necessity of loving and being loved was never felt by
the imaginary beings of Rousseau and Byron's creation, more
imperiously than by myself. My heart was offered with a
devotion that knew no reserve. Long an object of
proscription and treachery, I have at last, more mortifying
to the pride of man, become an object of utter
indifference."

The brilliant statesman would doubtless have had a large liberty of
choice among the many beautiful women of his circle, but he never
married, and there is no record of any entanglement. To the few women
he deemed worthy of his respect and admiration, he was deferential and
even gallant. In one of his letters to a young relative he said:

"Love to god-son Randolph and respectful compliments to Mrs.
R. She is indeed a fine woman, one for whom I have felt a
true regard, unmixed with the foible of another passion.

"Fortunately or unfortunately for me, when I knew her, I
bore a charmed heart. Nothing else could have preserved me
from the full force of her attractions."

For much of the time after his disappointment, he lived alone with
his servants, solaced as far as possible by those friends of all
mankind--books. When the spirit moved him, he would make visits to the
neighbouring plantations, sometimes dressed in white flannel trousers,
coat, and vest, and with white paper wrapped around his beaver hat!
When he presented himself in this manner, riding horseback, with his
dark eyes burning, he was said to have presented "a most ghostly
appearance!"

An old lady who lived for years on the banks of the Staunton, near
Randolph's solitary home, tells a pathetic story:

She was sitting alone in her room in the dead of winter, when a
beautiful woman, pale as a ghost, dressed entirely in white, suddenly
appeared before her, and began to talk about Mr. Randolph, saying he
was her lover and would marry her yet, as he had never proved false to
his plighted faith. She talked of him incessantly, like one deranged,
until a young gentleman came by the house, leading a horse with a
side-saddle on. She rushed out, and asked his permission to ride a few
miles. Greatly to his surprise, she