taught me in a manner few are obliged to receive it. I lament now, I
must ever lament, those few short months of Paradisaical bliss; I
disobeyed no command, I ate no apple, and yet I was ruthlessly driven
from it. Alas! my companion did, and I was precipitated in his
fall.[19] But I wander from my relation--let woe come at its appointed
time; I may at this stage of my story still talk of happiness.

Three months passed away in this delightful intercourse, when my aunt
fell ill. I passed a whole month in her chamber nursing her, but her
disease was mortal and she died, leaving me for some time
inconsolable, Death is so dreadful to the living;[20] the chains of
habit are so strong even when affection does not link them that the
heart must be agonized when they break. But my father was beside me to
console me and to drive away bitter memories by bright hopes:
methought that it was sweet to grieve that he might dry my tears.

Then again he distracted my thoughts from my sorrow by comparing it
with his despair when he lost my mother. Even at that time I shuddered
at the picture he drew of his passions: he had the imagination of a
poet, and when he described the whirlwind that then tore his feelings
he gave his words the impress of life so vividly that I believed while
I trembled. I wondered how he could ever again have entered into the
offices of life after his wild thoughts seemed to have given him
affinity with the unearthly; while he spoke so tremendous were the
ideas which he conveyed that it appeared as if the human heart were
far too bounded for their conception. His feelings seemed better
fitted for a spirit whose habitation is the earthquake and the volcano
than for one confined to a mortal body and human lineaments. But these
were merely memories; he was changed since then. He was now all love,
all softness; and when I raised my eyes in wonder at him as he spoke