to suffer
contumely on his account than to forego his company; and philosophers
have said: 'It is less arduous to persist in the labor of courting than
to restrain the eye from contemplating a beloved object':--Whoever
devotes his heart to a soul deluder puts his beard or reputation into
the hands of another. That person, without whom thou canst not exist, if
he do thee a violence, thou must bear with it. The antelope, that is led
by a string, cannot bound from this side to that. One day I asked a
compact of my mistress; how often have I since that day craved her
forgiveness! A lover exacts not terms of his charmer; I relinquished my
heart to whatever she desired me, whether to call me up to her with
kindness, or drive me from her with harshness she knows best, or it is
her pleasure."

X

In my early youth such an event (as you know) will come to pass. I held
a mystery and intercourse with a young person, because he had a pipe of
exquisite melody, and a form silver bright as the full moon:--"He is
sipping the fountain of immortality, who may taste the down of his
cheek; and he is eating a sweetmeat, who can fancy the sugar of his
lips."

It happened that something in his behavior having displeased me, I
withdrew the skirt of communication, and removed the seal of my
affection from him, and said: "Go, and take what course best suits thee;
thou regardest not my counsel, follow thine own." I overheard him as he
was going, and saying:--"If the bat does not relish the company of the
sun, the all-current brilliancy of that luminary can suffer no
diminution." He so expressed himself and departed, and his vagabond
condition much distressed me:--_the opportunity of enjoyment was lost,
and a man is insensible to the relish of prosperity till he_ _has
tasted adversity_:--return and slay me, for to die before thy face were
far more pleasant than to survive in thy absence.

But, thanksgiving and praise to the Almighty, he did not return till
after some interval, when that melodious pipe of David was cracked, and
that handsome form of Joseph in its wane; when that apple his chin was
overgrown with hair, like a quince, and the all-current lustre of his
charms tarnished. He expected me to fold him in my arms; but I took
myself aside and said: "When the down of loveliness flourished on thy
cheek, thou drovest the lord of thy attractions from thy sight; now thou
hast come to court his peace when thy face is thick set with fathahs