Alice, or the Mysteries — Book 08

								

would not be subdued, and that the world should not hear me groan.
Amidst strange and far-distant scenes, amidst hordes to whom my very
language was unknown, in wastes and forests, which the step of civilized
man, with his sorrows and his dreams, had never trodden, I wrestled with
my soul, as the patriarch of old wrestled with the angel,--and the angel
was at last the victor!  You do not mistake me: you know that it was not
the death of Florence alone that worked in me that awful revolution; but
with that death the last glory fled from the face of things that had
seemed to me beautiful of old.  Hers was a love that accompanied and
dignified the schemes and aspirations of manhood,--a love that was an
incarnation of ambition itself; and all the evils and disappointments
that belong to ambition seemed to crowd around my heart like vultures to
a feast allured and invited by the dead.  But this at length was over;
the barbarous state restored me to the civilized.  I returned to my
equals, prepared no more to be an actor in the strife, but a calm
spectator of the turbulent arena.  I once more laid my head beneath the
roof of my fathers; and if without any clear and definite object, I at
least hoped to find amidst "my old hereditary trees" the charm of
contemplation and repose.  And scarce--in the first hours of my
arrival--had I indulged that dream, when a fair face, a sweet voice, that
had once before left deep and unobliterated impressions on my heart,
scattered all my philosophy to the winds.  I saw Evelyn! and if ever
there was love at first sight, it was that which I felt for her: I lived
in her presence, and forgot the Future!  Or, rather, I was with the
Past,--in the bowers of my springtide of life and hope!  It was an
after-birth of youth--my love for that young heart!
It is, indeed, only in maturity that we know how lovely were our earliest
years!  What depth of wisdom in the old Greek myth, that allotted Hebe as
the prize to the god who had been the arch-labourer of life! and whom the
satiety of all that results from experience had made enamoured of all
that belongs to the Hopeful and the New!
This enchanting child, this delightful Evelyn, this ray of undreamed of
sunshine, smiled away all my palaces of ice.  I loved, Cleveland,--I
loved more ardently, more passionately, more wildly than ever I did of
old!  But suddenly I learned that she was affianced to another, and felt
that it was not for me to question, to seek the annulment of the bond.  I
had been unworthy to love Evelyn if I had not loved honour more!  I fled
from her presence, honestly and resolutely; I sought to conquer a
forbidden passion; I believed that I had not won affection in return; I
believed, from certain expressions that I overheard Evelyn utter to
another, that her heart as well as her hand was given to Vargrave.  I
came hither; you know how sternly and resolutely I strove to eradicate a
weakness that seemed without even the justification of hope!  If I