Yea! my great heart could crack, worn out, worn out; my mighty passions,
with their fierce but flickering flame, sink down and die; and the
strong brain that ever hath urged my course, and pricked me onward with
perpetual thought, desert the rudder it so long hath held, like some
baffled pilot in blank discomfiture, in the far centre of an unknown
sea.
'Study and toil, anxiety and sorrow, mighty action, perchance Time, and
disappointment, which is worse than all, have done their work, and not
in vain. I am no longer the same Jabaster that gazed upon the stars of
Caucasus. Methinks even they look dimmer than of yore. The glory of my
life is fading. My leaves are sear, tinged, but not tainted. I am still
the same in one respect; I have not left my God, in deed or thought. Ah!
who art thou?'
'A friend to Israel.'
'I am glad that Israel hath a friend. Noble Abi-dan, I have well
considered all that hath passed between us. Sooth to say, you touched
upon a string I've played before, but kept it for my loneliness; a
jarring tune, indeed a jarring tune, but so it is, and being so, let me
at once unto your friends, Abi-dan.'
'Noble Jabaster, thou art what I deemed thee.'
'Abidan, they say the consciousness of doing justly is the best basis of
a happy mind.
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