court. For,
notwithstanding the manifold reasons he had to expect a happy issue to
his aim, his imagination was incessantly infected with something that
chilled his nerves and saddened his heart, recurring, with quick
succession, like the unwearied wave that beats upon the bleak,
inhospitable Greenland shore. This, the reader will easily suppose, was
no other than the remembrance of the forlorn Monimia, whose image
appeared to his fancy in different attitudes, according to the prevalence
of the passions which raged in his bosom. Sometimes he viewed her in the
light of apostasy, and then his soul was maddened with indignation and
despair. But these transitory blasts were not able to efface the
impressions she had formerly made upon his heart; impressions which he
had so often and so long contemplated with inconceivable rapture. These
pictures still remained, representing her fair as the most perfect idea
of beauty, soft and tender as an angel of mercy and compassion, warmed
with every virtue of the heart, and adorned with every accomplishment of
human nature. Yet the alarming contrast came still in the rear of this
recollection; so that his soul was by turns agitated by the tempests of
horror, and overwhelmed by the floods of grief.

He recalled the moment on which he first beheld her, with that pleasing
regret which attends the memory of a dear deceased friend. Then he
bitterly cursed it, as the source of all his misfortunes and affliction.
He thanked Heaven for having blessed him with a friend to detect her
perfidy and ingratitude; and then ardently wished he had still continued
under the influence of her delusion. In a word, the loneliness of his
situation aggravated every horror of his reflection; for, as he found
himself without company, his imagination was never solicited, or his
attention diverted from these subjects of woe; and he travelled to
Brussels in a reverie, fraught with such torments as must have entirely
wrecked his reason, had not Providence interposed in his behalf. He was,
by his postillion, conducted to one of the best inns of the place, where
he understood the cloth was already laid for supper; and as the ordinary
is open to strangers in all these houses of entertainment, he introduced
himself into the company, with a view to alleviate, in some measure, his
sorrow and chagrin, by the conversation of his fellow-guests. Yet he was
so ill prepared to obtain the relief which he courted, that