Reader, hast thou known what it is to live with a heart inflamed by love for thy fellow-creatures which thou couldst manifest neither by word nor deed?  To pine with fruitless longings for good? and to consume with vain yearnings for usefulness?  To be misjudged and haply reviled by thy fellows for failing to do what it is not given thee to do?  If so, thou wilt pity poor Mithridata, whose nature was most ardent, expansive, and affectionate, but who, from the necessity under which she laboured of avoiding as much as possible all contact with human beings, saw herself condemned to a life of solitude, and knew that she was regarded as a monster of pride and exclusiveness.  She dared bestow no kind look, no encouraging gesture on any one, lest this small beginning should lead to the manifestation of her fatal power.  Her own servants, whose minds were generally as deformed as their bodies, hated her, and bitterly resented what they deemed her haughty disdain of them.  Her munificence none could deny, but bounty without tenderness receives no more gratitude than it deserves.  The young of her own sex secretly rejoiced at her unamiability, regarding it as a providential set-off against her beauty, while they detested and denounced her as a—­well, they would say viper in the manger, who spoiled everybody else’s lovers and would have none of her own.  For with all Mithridata’s severity, there was no getting rid of the young men, the giddy moths that flew around her brilliant but baleful candle.  Not all the cold water thrown upon them, literally as well as figuratively, could keep them from her door.  They filled her house with bouquets and billets doux; they stood before the windows, they sat on the steps, they ran beside her litter when she was carried abroad, they assembled at night to serenade her, fighting desperately among themselves.  They sought to gain admission as tradesmen, as errand boys, even as scullions male and female.  To such lengths did they proceed, that a particularly audacious youth actually attempted to carry her off one evening, and would have succeeded but for the interposition of another, who flew at him with a drawn sword, and after a fierce contest smote him bleeding to the ground.  Mithridata had fainted, of course.  What was her horror on reviving to find herself in the arms of a young man of exquisite beauty and princely mien, sucking death from her lips with extraordinary relish!  She shrieked, she struggled; if she made any unfeminine use of her hands, let the urgency of the case plead her apology.  The youth reproached her bitterly for her ingratitude.  She listened in silent misery, unable to defend herself.  The shaft of love had penetrated her bosom also, and it cost her almost as much for her own sake to dismiss the young man as it did to see him move away, slowly and languidly staggering to his doom.