I was transported by violent emotion, and rising from his feet, at which I had thrown myself, I leant against a tree, wildly raising my eyes to heaven.  He began to answer with violence:  “Yes, yes, I hate you!  You are my bane, my poison, my disgust!  Oh!  No[!]” And then his manner changed, and fixing his eyes on me with an expression that convulsed every nerve and member of my frame—­“you are none of all these; you are my light, my only one, my life.—­My daughter, I love you!” The last words died away in a hoarse whisper, but I heard them and sunk on the ground, covering my face and almost dead with excess of sickness and fear:  a cold perspiration covered my forehead and I shivered in every limb—­But he continued, clasping his hands with a frantic gesture: 

“Now I have dashed from the top of the rock to the bottom!  Now I have precipitated myself down the fearful chasm!  The danger is over; she is alive!  Oh, Mathilda, lift up those dear eyes in the light of which I live.  Let me hear the sweet tones of your beloved voice in peace and calm.  Monster as I am, you are still, as you ever were, lovely, beautiful beyond expression.  What I have become since this last moment I know not; perhaps I am changed in mien as the fallen archangel.  I do believe I am for I have surely a new soul within me, and my blood riots through my veins:  I am burnt up with fever.  But these are precious moments; devil as I am become, yet that is my Mathilda before me whom I love as one was never before loved:  and she knows it now; she listens to these words which I thought, fool as I was, would blast her to death.  Come, come, the worst is past:  no more grief, tears or despair; were not those the words you uttered?—­We have leapt the chasm I told you of, and now, mark me, Mathilda, we are to find flowers, and verdure and delight, or is it hell, and fire, and tortures?  Oh!  Beloved One, I am borne away; I can no longer sustain myself; surely this is death that is coming.  Let me lay my head near your heart; let me die in your arms!”—­He sunk to the earth fainting, while I, nearly as lifeless, gazed on him in despair.

Yes it was despair I felt; for the first time that phantom seized me; the first and only time for it has never since left me—­After the first moments of speechless agony I felt her fangs on my heart:  I tore my hair; I raved aloud; at one moment in pity for his sufferings I would have clasped my father in my arms; and then starting back with horror I spurned him with my foot; I felt as if stung by a serpent, as if scourged by a whip of scorpions which drove me—­Ah!  Whither—­Whither?