Well, this could not last.  One idea rushed on my mind; never, never may I speak to him again.  As this terrible conviction came upon him [me?] it melted my soul to tenderness and love—­I gazed on him as to take my last farewell—­he lay insensible—­his eyes closed as [and?] his cheeks deathly pale.  Above, the leaves of the beech wood cast a flickering shadow on his face, and waved in mournful melody over him—­I saw all these things and said, “Aye, this is his grave!” And then I wept aloud, and raised my eyes to heaven to entreat for a respite to my despair and an alleviation for his unnatural suffering—­the tears that gushed in a warm & healing stream from my eyes relieved the burthen that oppressed my heart almost to madness.  I wept for a long time untill I saw him about to revive, when horror and misery again recurred, and the tide of my sensations rolled back to their former channel:  with a terror I could not restrain—­I sprung up and fled, with winged speed, along the paths of the wood and across the fields untill nearly dead I reached our house and just ordering the servants to seek my father at the spot I indicated, I shut myself up in my own room[.][33]

CHAPTER VI

My chamber was in a retired part of the house, and looked upon the garden so that no sound of the other inhabitants could reach it; and here in perfect solitude I wept for several hours.  When a servant came to ask me if I would take food I learnt from him that my father had returned, and was apparently well and this relieved me from a load of anxiety, yet I did not cease to weep bitterly.  As [At] first, as the memory of former happiness contrasted to my present despair came across me, I gave relief to the oppression of heart that I felt by words, and groans, and heart rending sighs:  but nature became wearied, and this more violent grief gave place to a passionate but mute flood of tears:  my whole soul seemed to dissolve [in] them.  I did not wring my hands, or tear my hair, or utter wild exclamations, but as Boccacio describes the intense and quiet grief [of] Sigismunda over the heart of Guiscardo,[34] I sat with my hands folded, silently letting fall a perpetual stream from my eyes.  Such was the depth of my emotion that I had no feeling of what caused my distress, my thoughts even wandered to many indifferent objects; but still neither moving limb or feature my tears fell untill, as if the fountains were exhausted, they gradually subsided, and I awoke to life as from a dream.

When I had ceased to weep reason and memory returned upon me, and I began to reflect with greater calmness on what had happened, and how it became me to act—­A few hours only had passed but a mighty revolution had taken place with regard to me—­the natural work of years had been transacted since the morning:  my father was as dead to me, and I felt for a moment as if he with white hairs were laid in his coffin