lamentation could re-illumine the extinguished spark, or call to its shattered prison-house of flesh the liberated spirit.  Yesterday those limbs were worth an universe; they then enshrined a transcendant power, whose intents, words, and actions were worthy to be recorded in letters of gold; now the superstition of affection alone could give value to the shattered mechanism, which, incapable and clod-like, no more resembled Raymond, than the fallen rain is like the former mansion of cloud in which it climbed the highest skies, and gilded by the sun, attracted all eyes, and satiated the sense by its excess of beauty.

Such as he had now become, such as was his terrene vesture, defaced and spoiled, we wrapt it in our cloaks, and lifting the burthen in our arms, bore it from this city of the dead.  The question arose as to where we should deposit him.  In our road to the palace, we passed through the Greek cemetery; here on a tablet of black marble I caused him to be laid; the cypresses waved high above, their death-like gloom accorded with his state of nothingness.  We cut branches of the funereal trees and placed them over him, and on these again his sword.  I left a guard to protect this treasure of dust; and ordered perpetual torches to be burned around.

When I returned to Perdita, I found that she had already been informed of the success of my undertaking.  He, her beloved, the sole and eternal object of her passionate tenderness, was restored her.  Such was the maniac language of her enthusiasm.  What though those limbs moved not, and those lips could no more frame modulated accents of wisdom and love!  What though like a weed flung from the fruitless sea, he lay the prey of corruption—­ still that was the form she had caressed, those the lips that meeting hers, had drank the spirit of love from the commingling breath; that was the earthly mechanism of dissoluble clay she had called her own.  True, she looked forward to another life; true, the burning spirit of love seemed to her unextinguishable throughout eternity.  Yet at this time, with human fondness, she clung to all that her human senses permitted her to see and feel to be a part of Raymond.

Pale as marble, clear and beaming as that, she heard my tale, and enquired concerning the spot where he had been deposited.  Her features had lost the distortion of grief; her eyes were brightened, her very person seemed dilated; while the excessive whiteness and even transparency of her skin, and something hollow in her voice, bore witness that not tranquillity, but excess of excitement, occasioned the treacherous calm that settled on her countenance.  I asked her where he should be buried.  She replied, “At Athens; even at the Athens which he loved.  Without the town, on the acclivity of Hymettus, there is a rocky recess which he pointed out to me as the spot where he would wish to repose.”

My own desire certainly was that he should not be removed from the spot where he now lay.  But her wish was of course to be complied with; and I entreated her to prepare without delay for our departure.