Alroy recoiled with a sensation of
woe-begone dismay. His shaken nerves could not sustain him under this
base danger, and these foul and novel trials. He could not refrain from
an exclamation of despair; and, when he remembered that he was now far
beyond the reach of all human solace and sympathy, even all human aid,
for a moment his mind seemed to desert him; and he wrung his hands in
forlorn and almost idiotic woe. An awful thing it is, the failure of
the energies of a master-mind. He who places implicit confidence in his
genius will find himself some day utterly defeated and deserted. 'Tis
bitter! Every paltry hind seems but to breathe to mock you. Slow,
indeed, is such a mind to credit that the never-failing resource can at
least be wanting. But so it is. Like a dried-up fountain, the perennial
flow and bright fertility have ceased, and ceased for ever. Then comes
the madness of retrospection.
Draw a curtain! draw a curtain! and fling it over this agonising
anatomy.
The days of childhood, his sweet sister's voice and smiling love, their
innocent pastimes, and the kind solicitude of faithful servants, all the
soft detail of mild domestic life: these were the sights and memories
that flitted in wild play before the burning vision of Alroy, and
rose upon his tortured mind.
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