the vanity, which encircles me, and distrust my own power to animate or to interest: I deeply feel that the people surrounding me are inferior to myself, and I despise their suffrages—I grow vain and mean myself, and am involuntarily actuated by hopes and desires apart from what should be the one sole aim of my existence. I lose my power: I am like a magician who has forgotten the spell by which he once governed the spiritual world. What has the poet to do with the present? Suddenly I feel the shame and misery of such a life; I fly to solitude—I cast the shackles from my hands, the dust from my feet; I think my own thoughts—I dream my own dreams: again the future is to me a great and glorious reward; the feeling rushes to my heart, my lips overflow with music—again the beautiful and the true rise visible before me, and I am happy, very, very happy!"
From that evening he delighted in the society of Rebecca, to whom it was a source of true enjoyment; it was so long since speech had been to her more than the expression of daily regrets and wants—it was as if the higher faculties of her being had lain dormant for a protracted season, and now awoke, as the blossoms on the bough awaken beneath the soft spring rains. Still, she saw with regret that the fiery temper, the excited mind of her companion preyed on his health—the cheek grew paler, the shining eye more restless, every day; and sleep forsook the pillow haunted by fantastic creations.
