dly
expressions, invited the exile to revisit his native land, towards which
for some time past G------'s heart had secretly yearned. The meeting
was extremely trying, though apparently warm and cordial, as if they had
only separated a few days before. The prince looked earnestly at his
favorite, as if trying to recall features so well known to him, and yet
so strange; he appeared as if numbering the deep furrows which he had
himself so cruelly traced there. He looked searchingly in the old man's
face for the beloved features of the youth, but found not what he
sought. The welcome and the look of mutual confidence were evidently
forced on both sides; shame on one side and dread on the other had
forever separated their hearts. A sight which brought back to the
prince's soul the full sense of his guilty precipitancy could not be
gratifying to him, while G------ felt that he could no longer love the
author of his misfortunes. Comforted, nevertheless, and in
tranquillity, he looked back upon the past as the remembrance of a
fearful dream.

In a short time G------ was reinstated in all his former dignities, and
the prince smothered his feelings of secret repugnance by showering upon
him the most splendid favors as some indemnification for the past. But
could he also restore to him the heart which he had forever untuned for
the enjoyment of life? Could he restore his years of hope? or make
even a shadow of reparation to the stricken old man for what he had
stolen from him in the days of his youth?

For nineteen years G------- continued to enjoy this clear, unruffled
evening of his days. Neither misfortune nor age had been able to quench
in him the fire of passion, nor wholly to obscure the genial humor of
his character. In his seventieth year he was still in pursuit of the
shadow of a happiness which he had actually possessed in his twentieth.
He at length died governor of the fortress where state prisoners are
confined. One would naturally have expected that towards these he would
have exercised a humanity, the value of which he had been so thoroughly
taught to appreciate in his own person; but he treated them with
harshness and caprice; and a paroxysm of rage, in which he broke out
against one of his prisoners, laid him in his coffin, in his eightieth
year.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ghost-Seer (or The Apparitionist),
and Sport of Destiny, by Frederich Schiller

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG