rhaps,
though in a less degree, in all other highly artificial states,
enthusiasm or even feeling of any kind is ridiculous; and I could not
endure the thought that my treasured and secret affections should be
dragged from their retreat to be cavilled and carped at by--

"Every beardless, vain comparative."

This weakness brought on the catastrophe of my love; for, mark me,
Clarence, it is through our weaknesses that our vices are punished!
One night I went to a masquerade; and, while I was sitting in a remote
corner, three of my acquaintances, whom I recognized, though they knew
it not, approached and rallied me upon my romantic attachment to Lady
Merton. One of them was a woman of a malicious and sarcastic wit; the
other two were men whom I disliked, because their pretensions interfered
with mine; they were diners-out and anecdote-mongers. Stung to the
quick by their sarcasms and laughter, I replied in a train of mingled
arrogance and jest; at last I spoke slightingly of the person in
question; and these profane and false lips dared not only to disown the
faintest love to that being who was more to me than all on earth, but
even to speak of herself with ridicule and her affection with disdain.

In the midst of this, I turned and beheld, within hearing, a figure
which I knew upon the moment. O Heaven! the burning shame and agony of
that glance! It raised its mask--I saw that blanched cheek, and that
trembling lip! I knew that the iron had indeed entered into her soul.

Clarence, I never beheld her again alive. Within a week from that time
she was a corpse. She had borne much, suffered much, and murmured not;
but this shock pressed too hard, came too home, and from the hand of
him for whom she would have sacrificed all! I stood by her in death;
I beheld my work; and I turned away, a wanderer and a pilgrim upon the
face of the earth. Verily, I have had my reward.

The old man paused, in great emotion; and Clarence, who could offer
him no consolation, did not break the silence. In a few minutes Talbot
continued--

From that time the smile of woman was nothing to me: I seemed to grow
old in a single day. Life lost to me all its objects. A dreary and
desert blank stretched itself before me: the sounds of creation had only
in my ears one voice; the past, the future, one image. I left my country
for twenty years, and lived an idle and hopeless man in the various
courts of the Continent.

At the age of fifty I return