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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
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