king, O orient Phoebus, what horrible grief and
savage wrath have you not seen me suffer! Though my wife is mine ever so
long, I say I am angry just the same. Who dared, I want to know, to
make us suffer so? I was forbidden to see her. I kept my promise, and
remained away from the house: that is, after that horrible meeting and
parting. But at night I would go and look at her window, and watch the
lamp burning there; I would go to the Chartreux (where I knew
another boy), and call for her brother, and gorge him with cakes and
half-crowns. I would meanly have her elder brother to dine, and almost
kiss him when he went away. I used to breakfast at a coffee-house in
Whitehall, in order to see Lambert go to his office; and we would salute
each other sadly, and pass on without speaking. Why did not the women
come out? They never did. They were practising on her, and persuading
her to try and forget me. Oh, the weary, weary days! Oh, the maddening
time! At last a doctor's chariot used to draw up before the General's
house every day. Was she ill? I fear I was rather glad she was ill. My
own suffering was so infernal, that I greedily wanted her to share
my pain. And would she not? What grief of mine has it not felt, that
gentlest and most compassionate of hearts? What pain would it not suffer
to spare mine a pang?

I sought that doctor out. I had an interview with him. I told my story,
and laid bare my heart to him, with an outburst of passionate sincerity,
which won his sympathy. My confession enabled him to understand his
young patient's malady; for which his drugs had no remedy or anodyne. I
had promised not to see her, or to go to her: I had kept my promise. I
had promised to leave London: I had gone away. Twice, thrice I went back
and told my sufferings to him. He would take my fee now and again, and
always receive me kindly, and let me speak. Ah, how I clung to him! I
suspect he must have been unhappy once in his own life, he knew so well
and gently how to succour the miserable.

He did not tell me how dangerously, though he did not disguise from
me how gravely and seriously, my dearest girl had been ill. I told him
everything--that I would marry her and brave every chance and danger;
that, without her, I was a man utterly wrecked and ruined, and cared not
what became of me. My mother had once consented, and had now chosen to
withdraw her consent, when the tie between us had been, as I held, drawn
so closely together, as