"Quoi! vous parlez de cheveux blancs!
Laissez, laissez courir le temps;
Que vous importe son ravage?
Les tendres coeurs en sont exempts;
_Les Amours sont toujours enfants,
Et les Graces sont de tout age._
Pour moi, Themire, je le sens.
Je suis toujours dans mon printemps,
Quand je vous offre mon hommage.
Si je n'avais que dixhuit ans,
Je pourrais aimer plus longtemps,
Mais, non pas aimer davantage."[10]

[10]

Lovely and loved! shall one slight hair
Touch thy delicious lip with care?
A heart like thine may laugh at Time--
The Soul is ever in its prime.
All Loves, you know, have infant faces,
A thousand years can't chill the Graces!
While thou art in my soul enshrined,
I give all sorrows to the wind.
Were I this hour but gay eighteen,
Thou couldst be but my bosom's queen;
I might for longer years adore,
But could not, could not love thee more.

On returning to look for my distinguished prisoner, I found a packet
lying on the table of my apartment; it had arrived in my absence with
the troops in advance; and I must acknowledge that I opened it with a
trembling hand, when I saw that it came from London and Mordecai.

It was written in evident anxiety, and the chief subject was the
illness of his daughter. She had some secret on her mind, which
utterly baffled even the Jew's paternal sagacity. No letters had
reached either of them from France, and he almost implored me to
return, or, if that were impossible, to write without delay. Mariamne
had grown more fantastic, and capricious, and wayward than ever. Her
eyes had lost their brightness, and her cheek its colour. Yet she
complained of nothing, beyond a general distaste to existence. She had
seen the Comtesse de Tourville, and they had many a long conference
together, from which, however, Mariamne always returned more
melancholy than ever. She had refused the match which he had provided
for her, and declared her determination to live, like the daughter of
Jephthah, single to her grave.

The letter then turned to my own circumstances, and entered into them
with the singular mixture of ardour and sneering which formed this
extraordinary character.

"I am doing your business here as indefatigably as if I were
robbing nabobs in India, or setting up republics at home. The
tardiness of the Horse-Guards