more what I was, when I began my mad career, the world would be an Eden to me, and I would make it an Eden to you. Noble maiden! you sacrifice yourself for a wretch, a beggar, who has no other patrimony, but a heart filled with love and despair, because he cannot offer you a fate worthy of your virtues! A thousand times he struck his forehead during these fits of phrensied discontent, calling himself a thoughtless wretch! a fool! too late comes thy repentance!
Despair was not however, the only fruit of his reflections. The powers of his mind were roused; a warm desire arose to alter his present condition, by exertion and activity, and he was induced to try what he could effect. Among the many means he thought of as likely to mend his fortune, the one which promised most success, and which appeared most rational, was to look over all his late father’s accounts, and find out what debts were still due to him. With these fragments of a once princely fortune; should he be fortunate enough to collect them, he hoped to lay the foundation of another; if not
