Something More Of The Prince
Previous to recording our stay in his dominions, it only remains to be
related of Donjalolo, that after assuming the girdle, a change came
over him.
During the lifetime of his father, he had been famed for his temperance
and discretion. But when Mardi was forever shut out; and he remembered
the law of his isle, interdicting abdication to its kings; he gradually
fell into desperate courses, to drown the emotions at times distracting
him.
His generous spirit thirsting after some energetic career, found itself
narrowed down within the little glen of Willamilla, where ardent
impulses seemed idle. But these are hard to die; and repulsed all
round, recoil upon themselves.
So with Donjalolo; who, in many a riotous scene, wasted the powers
which might have compassed the noblest designs.
Not many years had elapsed since the death of the king, his father. But
the still youthful prince was no longer the bright-eyed and elastic boy
who at the dawn of day had sallied out to behold the landscapes of the
neighboring isles.
Not more effeminate Sardanapalus, than he. And, at intervals, he was
the victim of unaccountable vagaries; haunted by specters, and beckoned
to by the ghosts of his sires.
At times, loathing his vicious pursuits, which brought him no solid
satisfaction, but ever filled him with final disgust, he would resolve
to amend his ways; solacing himself for his bitter captivity, by the
society of the wise and discreet.
But brief the interval of repentance. Anew, he burst into excesses, a
hundred fold more insane than ever.
Thus vacillating between virtue and vice; to neither constant, and
upbraided by both; his mind, like his person in the glen, was
continually passing and repassing between opposite extremes.