IV.

I must hurry rapidly over a part of my history, on which I should rejoice
to linger, if I could invoke the living spirit of departed time. But the
beautiful associations which animated it once, and which alone could
animate its memory, are now extinguished within me. When I seek
them--that influence which ruled so mightily over my joys and sorrows--my
mingled destiny,--I strike in vain against a rock, that gives out a
living stream no longer; the divinity is fled. O how changed is the
aspect of those days of old! My intention was now to act an heroic
character; but it was badly studied, and I a novice on the stage, was
forgetting my part while fascinated by a pair of blue eyes. In the
intoxication of the scene, the parents seem eager to close the bargain,
and the farce ends in a common mockery. And this is all! So stale, so
unprofitable, and so melancholy are the revisitings of what beat once so
nobly and proudly in my bosom. Mina! as I wept when I lost thee, even
now I weep to have lost thee within me. Am I become so old! Pitiful
intellect of man! Oh, for a pulse-beat of those days, a moment of that
consciousness,--but no! I am a solitary wave in the dark and desolate
sea: and the sparkling glass I drank was drugged with misery.

I had previously sent Bendel with bags of gold to fit out a dwelling
suitable for me in the town. He had scattered about a great deal of
money, and talked mysteriously of the illustrious stranger whom he had
the honour to serve (for I did not choose to be named), and this filled
the good people with strange notions. As soon as the house was ready for
me, Bendel returned to convey me thither. We started immediately.

About an hour's distance from the place, on a sunny plain, a great number
of persons in gala dresses arrested our progress. The coach stopped:
music, bell-ringing, and cannonading were heard; a loud acclamation rent
the air, and a chorus of singularly beautiful maidens in white robes
appeared at the door of the carriage, one of whom, surpassing the rest as
the sun surpasses in brightness the stars of evening, stepped forward,
and with graceful and modest blushes knelt before me, and presented to me
on a silken cushion a wreath of laurel, olive, and rose branches,
garlanded together, while she uttered some words, which I understood not,
of majesty, awe, and love, whose soft and silver tones enchanted my ear
and my bosom: it seemed to me as if the heavenly ap