CHAPTER XXVII.
A STRANGE STORY OF TRUE LOVE.
Sick-bed Fancies. Reflections on my military Career. I almost resolve to abandon the Garb of a Soldier. Difficulties in 'the Way of achieving Greatness. Warfare as a laborious Business. The Favors of Fortune sparingly bestowed. Prospective Meeting with my Lover. Anxiety to know what he would think of the Course I had been pursuing in figuring in the Army as a Man. A strange Courtship. More like a Chapter of Romance than a grave Reality. My Recollections of an old Spanish Story, read in my Childhood, that in some respects reminds me of my own Experiences. The Story of Estela. How the Desires of a Pair of Lovers were opposed by stern Parents. An Elopement planned. The Abduction of Estela through the Instrumentality of a Rival. She is carried off by Moorish Pirates, and sold as a Slave. Her Escape from Slavery, and how she entered the Army of the Emperor disguised as a Man. Estela saves the Emperor's Life, and is promoted to a high Office. Her Meeting with her Lover, and her Endeavors to make him confess his Faith in her Honor. The Appointment of Estela as Governor of her native City. The Trial of her Lover on the Charge of having murdered her. Happy Ending of the Story. I am inspired, by my Recollections of the Story of Estela, to hear from the Lips of my Lover his Opinion of me before I reveal myself to him. Impatient Waiting for the Hour of Meeting.
HILE tossing upon my sick-bed in the hospital, I was compelled, for very lack of other occupation, to think of many things that, under ordinary circumstances, busied as I habitually was with innumerable ambitious schemes, would never have pressed themselves upon my mind with the force they now did. This was a strange life I had been leading now for more than two years, and yet it was the kind of a life that, from my earliest childhood, I had ardently longed to lead. I had some understanding
now of what the great discoverers, adventurers, and soldiers, who were the idols of my childish imagination, had been compelled to go through with before they won the undying fame
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