ry
read aloud from a little book that was lying before him, the
following question: "Qu'est-ce que la vie? Quel est son but?
Quelle est sa fin?" "I will write my answer on the margin," he
cried, and wrote, "Jouir et puis mourir;" and then handed the
book to me. I seized the pencil, and hastily added these
words, "Souffrir, et puis mourir." Edward read them, and
looked at me less sternly than before, but with an earnest
inquiring expression of countenance; then lightly drawing a
line with a pencil across the two preceding sentences, he
wrote this one underneath them, "Bien vivre, pour bien
mourir," and gave me back the book.

In general he spoke little; but there was much meaning in what
he said. His reserve gave me a feeling of embarrassment with
him, which, at the time I am writing of, was particularly
irksome. He forced one to _think_, and I preferred dreaming
alone, or drowning thought in talk with Henry. With the latter
I became more intimate than ever: we read together, and it
seemed to me that he always chose such books as excited my
imagination to the utmost, and wrought upon my feelings,
without touching on any of the subjects that would have
painfully affected me. I tried to write too. From my earliest
childhood I had felt great facility in composition, and it was
one of Mrs. Middleton's favourite amusements to look over my
various attempts, and to encourage the talent which she
fancied I possessed; but now I vainly tried to exert it; my
mind was not capable of a continued effort. I believe it is
Madame de Stael who remarks (and how truly) that to write one
must have suffered, and have struggled; one must have been
acquainted with passion and with grief; but they must have
passed away from the soul ere the mind can concentrate its
powers, and bring its energies to bear on the stores which an
experience in suffering has accumulated within us. And it was
this very helplessness of mind, this fever in the intellect,
which threw me, with such fatal dependence, on the resources
which Henry Lovell's conversation and society afforded me. If
he left Elmsley for a single day I felt the want of them so
keenly, that I welcomed him back in a way that may have
deceived others, deceived him, deceived myself perhaps--I know
not--I lived but for excitement, and if the stimulus failed, I
sunk for the time into momentary apathy. We sung together
sometimes, and my voice seemed to have gained strength during
the last few mont