had left it.

From this cessation of the aims, hopes, and thoughts of life I was
awakened by the spreading, as it were, of another disease: the dead,
dull, aching pain at my heart was succeeded by one acute and intense;
the absence of thought gave way to one thought more terrible, more dark,
more despairing than any which had haunted me since the first year of
Isora's death; and from a numbness and pause, as it were, of existence,
existence became too keen and intolerable a sense. I will enter into an
explanation.

At the court of ------, there was an Italian, not uncelebrated for his
wisdom, nor unbeloved for an innocence and integrity of life rarely
indeed to be met with among his countrymen. The acquaintance of this
man, who was about fifty years of age, and who was devoted almost
exclusively to the pursuit of philosophical science, I had sedulously
cultivated. His conversation pleased me; his wisdom improved; and his
benevolence, which reminded me of the traits of La Fontaine, it was so
infantine, made me incline to love him. Upon the growth of the fearful
malady of mind which seized me, I had discontinued my visits and my
invitations to the Italian; and Bezoni (so was he called) felt a little
offended by my neglect. As soon, however, as he discovered my state of
mind, the good man's resentment left him. He forced himself upon my
solitude, and would sit by me whole evenings,--sometimes without
exchanging a word, sometimes with vain attempts to interest, to arouse,
or to amuse me.

At last, one evening--it was the era of a fearful suffering to me--our
conversation turned upon those subjects which are at once the most
important and the most rarely discussed. We spoke of /religion/. We