he unprofitable pursuit, because, even while making the
discovery, he still hopes vainly that he may yet, in his own person,
give the maxim the lie. For ever soaring to the sun, he was for ever
realizing the fine Grecian fable of Icarus; and the sea of
disappointment into which he perpetually fell, with its tumultuous tides
and ever-chafing billows, bearing him on from whirlpool to whirlpool,
for ever battling and for ever lost. He was unconscious, as we have
said, of the entrance and approach of his lieutenant, and words of
bitterness, in soliloquy, fell at brief periods from his lips.--

"It is after all the best--" he mused. "Despair is the true philosophy,
since it begets indifference. Why should I hope? What prospect is there
now, that these eyes, that lip, these many graces, and the imperial
pride of that expression, which looks out like a high soul from the
heaven that men talk and dream of--what delusion is there now to bid me
hope they ever can be more to me than they are now? I care not for the
world's ways--nor feel I now the pang of its scorn and its outlawry; yet
I would it were not so, that I might, upon a field as fair as that of
the most successful, assert my claim, and woo and win her--not with
those childish notes of commonplace--that sickly cant of sentimental
stuff which I despise, and which I know she despises no less than I.

"Yet, when this field was mine, as I now desire it, what more did it
avail me? Where was the strong sense--the lofty reason that should then
have conquered with an unobstructed force, sweeping all before it, as
the flame that rushes through the long grass of the prairies?
Gone--prostrate--dumb. The fierce passion was upward, and my heart was
then more an outlaw than I myself am now.

"Yet there is one hope--one chance--one path, if not to her affections,
at least to her. It shall be done, and then, most beautiful witch, cold,
stern, and to me heartless, as thou hast ever been--thou shalt not
always triumph. I would that I could sleep on this--I would that I could
sleep. There is but one time of happiness--but one time when the thorn
has no sting--when the scorn bites not--when the sneer chafes not--when
the pride and the spirit shrink not--when there is no wild passion to
make everything a storm and a conflagration among the senses--and that
is--when one forgets!--I would that I could sleep!"

As he spoke, his head sunk upon the table with a heavy sound, as if
unconsciousne