better one in its place, until my word conquers yours."






Chapter 19

Although deprived for the present of all intercourse with Chastel and
Yoletta, now in constant attendance on her mother, I ought to have been
happy, for all things seemed conspiring to make my life precious to me.
Nevertheless, I was far from happy; and, having heard so much said about
reason in my late conversations with the father and mother of the house,
I began to pay an unusual amount of attention to this faculty in me, in
order to discover by its aid the secret of the sadness which continued
at all times during this period to oppress my heart. I only discovered,
what others have discovered before me, that the practice of
introspection has a corrosive effect on the mind, which only serves to
aggravate the malady it is intended to cure. During those restful days
in the Mother's Room, when I had sat with Chastel, this spirit of
melancholy had been with me; but the mother's hallowing presence had
given something of a divine color to it, my passions had slumbered, and,
except at rare intervals, I had thought of sorrow as of something at an
immeasurable distance from me. Then to my spirit

"_The gushing of the wave
Far, far away, did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores_";