ht, and no neck
of wintry snow, that can compensate to thee for the absent one? Tarry
and forget, as doubtless in absence even thou art forgotten!"

"Lady," answered Adrian, with great gravity, not unmixed with an
ill-suppressed disdain, "I have not sojourned long enough amidst the
sights and sounds of woe, to blunt my heart and spirit into callousness
to all around. Enjoy, if thou canst, and gather the rank roses of the
sepulchre; but to me, haunted still by funeral images, Beauty fails to
bring delight, and Love,--even holy love--seems darkened by the Shadow
of Death. Pardon me, and farewell."

"Go, then," said the Florentine, stung and enraged at his coldness; "go
and find your mistress amidst the associations on which it pleases your
philosophy to dwell. I did but deceive thee, blind fool! as I had hoped
for thine own good, when I told thee Irene--(was that her name?)--was
gone from Florence. Of her I know nought, and heard nought, save from
thee. Go back and search the vault, and see whether thou lovest her
still!"

Chapter 6.IV. We Obtain What We Seek, and Know it Not.

In the fiercest heat of the day, and on foot, Adrian returned to
Florence. As he approached the city, all that festive and gallant scene
he had quitted seemed to him like a dream; a vision of the gardens and
bowers of an enchantress, from which he woke abruptly as a criminal
may wake on the morning of his doom to see the scaffold and the
deathsman;--so much did each silent and lonely step into the funeral
city bring back his bewildered thoughts at once to life and to death.
The parting words of Mariana sounded like a knell at his heart. And
now as he passed on--the heat of the day, the lurid atmosphere, long
fatigue, alternate exhaustion and excitement, combining with the
sickness of disappointment, the fretting consciousness of precious
moments irretrievably lost, and his utter despair of forming any
systematic mode of search--fever began rapidly to burn through his
veins. His temples felt oppressed as with the weight of a mountain; his
lips parched with intolerable thirst; his strength seemed suddenly to
desert him; and it was with pain and labour that he dragged one languid
limb after the other.

"I feel it," thought he, with the loathing nausea and shivering dread
with which nature struggles ever against death; "I feel it upon me--the
Devouring and the Viewless--I shall perish, and without saving her; nor
shall even one grave contain