rds spoken to Diotima in the Elysian
Fields: "I am here, not with my father, but listening to lessons of
wisdom, which will one day bring me to him when we shall never part.
THE END." Some passages are scored out, but not this final sentence.
Tenses are changed from past to future. The name _Herbert_ is changed
to _Woodville_. The explanation must be that Mary was hurrying to
finish the revision (quite drastic on these final pages) and the
transcription of her story before her confinement, and that in her
haste she copied the pages from _F of F--B_ as they stood. Then,
realizing that they did not fit _Mathilda_, she began to revise them;
but to keep her MS neat, she cut out these pages and wrote the fair
copy. There is no break in _Mathilda_ in story or in pagination. This
fair copy also shows signs of haste: slips of the pen, repetition of
words, a number of unimportant revisions.

[84] Here in _F of F--B_ there is an index number which evidently
points to a note at the bottom of the next page. The note is omitted
in _Mathilda_. It reads:

"Dante in his Purgatorio describes a grifon as remaining unchanged but
his reflection in the eyes of Beatrice as perpetually varying (Purg.
Cant. 31) So nature is ever the same but seen differently by almost
every spectator and even by the same at various times. All minds, as
mirrors, receive her forms--yet in each mirror the shapes apparently
reflected vary & are perpetually changing--"

[85] See note 20. Mary Shelley had suffered this torture when Clara
and William died.

[86] See the end of Chapter V.

[87] This sentence is not in _F of F--B_ or in _S-R fr_.

THE FIELDS OF FANCY[88]

It was in Rome--the Queen of the World that I suffered a misfortune
that reduced me to misery & despair[89]--The bright sun & deep azure
sky were oppressive but nought was so hateful as the voice of Man--I
loved to walk by the shores of the Tiber which were solitary & if the
sirocco blew to see the swift clouds pass over St. Peters and the many
domes of Rome or if the sun shone I turned my eyes from the sky whose
light was too dazzling & gay to be reflected in my tearful eyes I
turned them to the river whose swift course was as the speedy
departure of happiness and whose turbid colour was gloomy as grief--

Whether I slept I know not or whether it was in one of those many
hours which I spent seated on the ground my mind a chaos of despair &
my eyes for ever wet by tears but I was