The beautiful Cephalis, being thus freed from his _surveillance_, was
enabled, during the course of the evening, to develop to his preserver
the full extent of her gratitude.




CHAPTER IX
The Sexton


Mr Escot passed a sleepless night, the ordinary effect of love,
according to some amatory poets, who seem to have composed their
whining ditties for the benevolent purpose of bestowing on others that
gentle slumber of which they so pathetically lament the privation. The
deteriorationist entered into a profound moral soliloquy, in which he
first examined _whether a philosopher ought to be in love?_ Having
decided this point affirmatively against Plato and Lucretius, he next
examined, _whether that passion ought to have the effect of keeping a
philosopher awake?_ Having decided this negatively, he resolved to go
to sleep immediately: not being able to accomplish this to his
satisfaction, he tossed and tumbled, like Achilles or Orlando, first
on one side, then on the other; repeated to himself several hundred
lines of poetry; counted a thousand; began again, and counted another
thousand: in vain: the beautiful Cephalis was the predominant image in
all his soliloquies, in all his repetitions: even in the numerical
process from which he sought relief, he did but associate the idea of
number with that of his dear tormentor, till she appeared to his
mind's eye in a thousand similitudes, distinct, not different. These