Tales of a Traveller by Washington Irving
page 84 of 380 (22%)
page 84 of 380 (22%)
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pledge of love, and cover it with tears and kisses! Heavens! There is a
delight even in the parting agony of two lovers worth a thousand tame pleasures of the world. I have her at this moment before my eyes--at the window of the pavilion, putting aside the vines that clustered about the casement--her light form beaming forth in virgin white--her countenance all tears and smiles--sending a thousand and a thousand adieus after me, as, hesitating, in a delirium of fondness and agitation, I faltered my way down the avenue. As the bark bore me out of the harbor of Genoa, how eagerly my eyes Stretched along the coast of Sestri, till it discerned the villa gleaming from among trees at the foot of the mountain. As long as day lasted, I gazed and gazed upon it, till it lessened and lessened to a mere white speck in the distance; and still my intense and fixed gaze discerned it, when all other objects of the coast had blended into indistinct confusion, or were lost in the evening gloom. On arriving at Naples, I hastened to my paternal home. My heart yearned for the long-withheld blessing of a father's love. As I entered the proud portal of the ancestral palace, my emotions were so great that I could not speak. No one knew me. The servants gazed at me with curiosity and surprise. A few years of intellectual elevation and development had made a prodigious change in the poor fugitive stripling from the convent. Still that no one should know me in my rightful home was overpowering. I felt like the prodigal son returned. I was a stranger in the house of my father. I burst into tears, and wept aloud. When I made myself known, however, all was changed. I who had once been almost repulsed from its walls, and forced to fly as an exile, was welcomed back with acclamation, with servility. One of the servants hastened to prepare my father for my reception; my eagerness to receive |
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