"Ellinor (let me do her justice) was shocked at my silent emotion. No
human lip could utter more tender sympathy, more noble self-reproach;
but that was no balm to my wound. So I left the house--so I never
returned to the law--so all impetus, all motive for exertion, seemed
taken from my being--so I went back into books. And so, a moping,
despondent, worthless mourner might I have been to the end of my days,
but that heaven, in its mercy, sent thy mother, Pisistratus, across my
path; and day and night I bless God and her, for I have been, and
am--oh, indeed, I am, a happy man!"
My mother threw herself on my father's breast, sobbing violently, and
then turned from the room without a word,--my father's eye, swimming
in tears, followed her; and then, after pacing the room for some
moments in silence, he came up to me, and leaning his arm on my
shoulder, whispered, "Can you guess why I have now told you all this,
my son?"
"Yes, partly: thank you, father," I faltered, and sate down, for I
felt faint.
"Some sons," said my father, seating himself beside me, "would find in
their father's follies and errors an excuse for their own: not so will
you, Pisistratus."
"I see no folly, no error, sir--only nature and sorrow."
"Pause, ere you thus think," said my father. "Great was the folly, and
great the error of indulging imagination that had no basis--of linking
the whole usefulness of my life to the will of a human creature like
myself. Heaven did not design the passion of love to be this tyrant;
nor is it so with the mass and multitude of human life. We dreamers,
solitary students like me, or half poets like poor Roland, make our
own disease. How many years, even after I had regained serenity, as
your mother gave me a home long not appreciated, have I wasted. The
main-spring of my existence was snapped--I took no note of time. And
therefore now, you see, late in life the Nemesis wakes. I look back
with regret at powers neglected, opportunities gone. Galvanically I
brace up energies half palsied by disuse, and you see me, rather than
rest quiet and good for nothing, talked into what, I dare say, are sad
follies, by an Uncle Jack! And now I behold Ellinor again; and I say,
in wonder, All this--all this--all this agony, all this torpor for
that haggard face, that worldly spirit! So is it ever in life. Mortal
things fade; immortal things spring more freshly with every step to
the tomb.
"Ah!" continued my father, with a sigh, "it would not have been so, if
at your age I had found out the secret of the saffron bag!"