Page:Nightmare Abbey (1818).djvu/155

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144
NIGHTMARE ABBEY.

the inward and spiritual graces of his respective charmers. Passing and re-passing several times a day from the company of the one to that of the other, he was like a shuttlecock between two battledores, changing its direction as rapidly as the oscillations of a pendulum, receiving many a hard knock on the cork of a sensitive heart, and flying from point to point on the feathers of a super-sublimated head. This was an awful state of things. He had now as much mystery about him as any romantic transcendentalist or transcendental romancer could desire. He had his esoterical and his exoterical love. He could not endure the thought of losing either of them, but he trembled when he imagined the possibility that some fatal discovery might deprive him of both. The old, proverb concerning two strings to a bow gave him some gleams of comfort: