convulsions with
me end in rhyme." To overcome certain agitations of heart, he wrote the
"Bride of Abydos," and directly afterward the "Corsair."

But if the melancholy, more or less deep, that cast its shadows over
this brilliant period of his triumphs, wore specially the above
character, it changed somewhat after his marriage. Thenceforward his
melancholy sprang less from the heart, than from bitter disenchantment;
from the suffering of a proud nature, cruelly wounded in its sentiment
of justice by indignities, calumnies, persecutions, unexampled under
such circumstances. Having already spoken of this marriage, I shall
leave to regular biographers the detailed account of this painful
period, so as only to consider it here under the sole aspect of the
griefs it caused. I will not even stop to mention the unaccountable
melancholy occasioned by a presentiment before marriage, nor the
mysterious sort of agony that seized upon him just as he was about to
kneel for the nuptial ceremony in church, nor even the sadness brought
about by his first experience of the disposition of the person with whom
he had so imprudently linked his fate. I will say, rather, that the
melancholy caused and produced by this marriage was really grief; and of
the kind that most harshly tries, not only firmness of soul, but
likewise true virtue. For all the baseness, cowardice and spirit of
revenge that had lain hidden a moment while his triumphal car passed on,
united at this moment to overwhelm and cast him down. And the means
employed were, instinct with such perversity, that his great moral
courage, always so powerful in helping him to bear contradictions,
disappointments, and personal misfortunes, were no longer of any
assistance, threatened as he was with the greatest calamity that can
possibly befall a man of honor--namely, to be misjudged, calumniated,
accused, thought capable of deeds quite contrary to his high nature.
Neither his courage, firmness, nor even the testimony of conscience
could shield him from great unhappiness. And he suffered all the more
that the blame incurred proceeded from worthy persons who had been
mischievously led into error; nor could he conceal from himself that he
had voluntarily contributed to produce this unhappy state of things, by
not sufficiently avoiding certain appearances, by not attaching
sufficient importance to the opinion of his fellow-men, and having lent
himself, too easily, to misinterpretation.