The Steam-Packet: A Tale of the River and the Ocean — page 150: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE STEAM PACKET, 109 stantly following him. He rushed into the country, and endeavoured by long walks to forget her ;—but her countenance beamed upon him from the crystal stream—the melody of her sweet voice was wafted to his ear in the harmony of nature’s sounds ;—by day her glances seemed to mingle wit: the sunbeams, and penetrate to his very brain— to drive him mad with raving; by night her eyes appeared to look - upon him through the star-light to make him mad with melancholy. The crowded saloon of fashion, and the solitude of the deep wood,— the hurry of business, and the musings of his lonely chamber, seemed all alike congenial to the nourishment of his. fatal passion—all to furnish means of encouragement for that luckless love which met with “no encouragement from her “10 caused it. ‘Yes—Jules de Renal lovec as seldom man loves woman. He had attended Marie during a shor. period of three weeks, and during that time he had drunk from her eyes, and her words, and her ‘smiles, draughts of honey which had turned to gall and wormwood within him. No human pen can depict how he was tried—how he often writhed under the torture of his own thoughts till his brain reeled in the agony. None ever felt as he felt—none ever loved as he loved; for he loved till heaven itself was nothing in the balance! The idea that she was possessed by another, and never could be his, was one of ineffable torture ;—boiling lead, poured drop by drop upon the bare and living fibre was nothing to what he suffered ! Seven or eight months passed away; and, during that interval, the surgeon, urged-by an invincible power over which he exercised no more control than the worm against the foot which treads upon it, called several times at the archdeacon’s residence, in spite of the positive and emphatic injunctions he had received to the contrary. But never could he obtain a glimpse of Marie; and the priest was inva- riably so abrupt in his replies, that he received little or no encourage- ment either to prolong his visits or renew them. All that he ever succeeded in learning was that Marie was well, and that the child was _ strong and healthy. - Chance threw in his way an opportunity of again eens her for whom he was literally dying by inches. He accidentally learnt | that the authorities had received the most strict and positive com- mands from Paris to arrest all priests living within their jurisdiction ; and this step was a certain and brief preliminary to the dread ceremony of the guillotine. The intelligence was communicated to De Renal late one evening; and he imstantaneously proceeded to the dwelling of the archdeacon to warn him of his danger. : ~ He knocked at the gate, and Count Hyacinth made his appearance. Gomichooks (E@)