ALMORAN, for now I know that it was not thee, ALMORAN, when he possessed
thy form, was with me: he prophaned thy love, by attempts to supplant my
virtue; I resisted his importunity, and escaped perdition; but the guilt
of ALMORAN drew my resentment upon HAMET. I thought the vices which,
under thy form, I discovered in his bosom, were thine; and in the
anguish of grief, indignation, and disappointment, my heart renounced
thee: yet, as I could not give thee up to death, I could not discover to
ALMORAN the attempt which I imputed to thee; when you questioned me,
therefore, as ALMORAN, I was betrayed to dissimulation, by the
tenderness which still melted my heart for HAMET.' 'I believe thee,'
said HAMET, catching her in a transport to his breast: 'I love thee for
thy virtue; and may the pure and exalted beings, who are superior to the
passions that now throb in my heart, forgive me, if I love thee also for
thy fault. Yet, let the danger to which it betrayed thee, teach us still
to walk in the strait path, and commit the keeping of our peace to the
Almighty; for he that wanders in the maze of falsehood, shall pass by
the good that he would meet, and shall meet the evil that he would shun.
I also was tempted; but I was strengthened to resist: if I had used the
power, which I derived from the arts that have been practised against
me, to return evil for evil; if I had not disdained a secret and
unavowed revenge, and the unhallowed pleasures of a brutal appetite; I
might have possessed thee in the form of ALMORAN, and have wronged
irreparably myself and thee: for how could I have been admitted, as
HAMET, to the beauties which I had enjoyed as ALMORAN? and how couldst
thou have given, to ALMORAN, what in reality had been appropriated by
HAMET?'
CHAP.
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