Your heart I fear, replied Diotima, was broken by your sufferings—­but if you had struggled—­if when you found all hope of earthly happiness wither within you while desire of it scorched your soul—­if you had near you a friend to have raised you to the contemplation of beauty & the search of knowledge you would have found perhaps not new hopes spring within you but a new life distinct from that of passion by which you had before existed[99]—­relate to me what this misery was that thus engroses you—­tell me what were the vicissitudes of feeling that you endured on earth—­after death our actions & worldly interest fade as nothing before us but the traces of our feelings exist & the memories of those are what furnish us here with eternal subject of meditation.

A blush spread over the cheek of the lovely girl—­Alas, replied she what a tale must I relate what dark & phre[n]zied passions must I unfold—­When you Diotima lived on earth your soul seemed to mingle in love only with its own essence & to be unknowing of the various tortures which that heart endures who if it has not sympathized with has been witness of the dreadful struggles of a soul enchained by dark deep passions which were its hell & yet from which it could not escape—­Are there in the peaceful language used by the inhabitants of these regions—­words burning enough to paint the tortures of the human heart—­Can you understand them? or can you in any way sympathize with them—­alas though dead I do and my tears flow as when I lived when my memory recalls the dreadful images of the past—­

—­As the lovely girl spoke my own eyes filled with bitter drops—­the spirit of Fantasia seemed to fade from within me and when after placing my hand before my swimming eyes I withdrew it again I found myself under the trees on the banks of the Tiber—­The sun was just setting & tinging with crimson the clouds that floated over St. Peters—­all was still no human voice was heard—­the very air was quiet I rose—­& bewildered with the grief that I felt within me the recollection of what I had heard—­I hastened to the city that I might see human beings not that I might forget my wandering recollections but that I might impress on my mind what was reality & what was either dream—­or at least not of this earth—­The Corso of Rome was filled with carriages and as I walked up the Trinita dei’ Montes I became disgusted with the crowd that I saw about me & the vacancy & want of beauty not to say deformity of the many beings who meaninglessly buzzed about me—­I hastened to my room which overlooked the whole city which as night came on became tranquil—­Silent lovely Rome I now gaze on thee—­thy domes are illuminated by the moon—­and the ghosts of lovely memories float with the night breeze among thy ruins—­ contemplating thy loveliness which half soothes my miserable heart I record what I have seen—­Tomorrow I will again woo Fantasia to lead me to the same walks & invite her to visit me with her visions which I before neglected—­Oh let me learn this lesson while yet it may be useful to me that to a mind hopeless & unhappy as mine—­a moment of forgetfullness a moment [in] which it can pass out of itself is worth a life of painful recollection.