"Pause ere you thus think," said my father. "Great was the folly and
great the error of indulging imagination that has no basis, of linking
the whole usefulness of my life to the will of a human creature like
myself. Heaven did not design the passion of love to be this tyrant;
nor is it so with the mass and multitude of human life. We dreamers,
solitary students like me, or half-poets like poor Roland, make our own
disease. How many years, even after I had regained serenity, as your
mother gave me a home long not appreciated, have I wasted! The
mainstring of my existence was snapped; I took no note of time. And
therefore now, you see, late in life, Nemesis wakes. I look back with
regret at powers neglected, opportunities gone. Galvanically I brace up
energies half-palsied by disuse; and you see me, rather than rest quiet
and good for nothing, talked into what, I dare say, are sad follies, by
an Uncle Jack! And now I behold Ellinor again; and I say in wonder:
'All this--all this--all this agony, all this torpor, for that, haggard
face, that worldly spirit!' So is it ever in life: mortal things fade;
immortal things spring more freshly with every step to the tomb.

"Ah!" continued my father, with a sigh, "it would not have been so if at
your age I had found out the secret of the saffron bag!"




CHAPTER IX.


"And Roland, sir," said I, "how did he take it?"