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Paul Clifford — Volume 06 by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton
page 77 of 107 (71%)
of feeling struggled for expression.

"You say, Julia, that were you to marry one who thinks so much of
what he surrenders for you, and who requires from yourself so vast a
return of love, you should tremble for the future happiness of both
of us. Julia, the triteness of that fear proves that you love not
at all. I do not tremble for our future happiness; on the contrary,
the intensity of my passion for you makes me know that we never can
be happy, never beyond the first rapture of our union. Happiness is
a quiet and tranquil feeling. No feeling that I can possibly bear
to you will ever receive those epithets,--I know that I shall be
wretched and accursed when I am united to you. Start not! I will
presently tell you why. But I do not dream of happiness, neither
(could you fathom one drop of the dark and limitless ocean of my
emotions) would you name to me that word. It is not the mercantile
and callous calculation of chances for 'future felicity' (what
homily supplied you with so choice a term?) that enters into the
heart that cherishes an all-pervading love. Passion looks only to
one object, to nothing beyond; I thirst, I consume, not for
happiness, but you. Were your possession inevitably to lead me to a
gulf of anguish and shame, think you I should covet it one jot the
less! If you carry one thought, one hope, one dim fancy, beyond the
event that makes you mine, you may be more worthy of the esteem of
others, but you are utterly undeserving of my love.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"I will tell you now why I know we cannot be happy. In the first
place, when you say that I am proud of birth, that I am morbidly
ambitious, that I am anxious to shine in the great world, and that
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