were it ten thousand! with what a moral delight will it crown my
journey, in sharing in the sickening incidents of a tale of misery
told to me by such a sufferer? To see her weep! and, though I
cannot dry up the fountain of her tears, what an exquisite
sensation is there still left, in wiping them away from off the
cheeks of the first and fairest of women, as I'm sitting with my
handkerchief in my hand in silence the whole night beside her?

There was nothing wrong in the sentiment; and yet I instantly
reproached my heart with it in the bitterest and most reprobate of
expressions.

It had ever, as I told the reader, been one of the singular
blessings of my life, to be almost every hour of it miserably in
love with some one; and my last flame happening to be blown out by
a whiff of jealousy on the sudden turn of a corner, I had lighted
it up afresh at the pure taper of Eliza but about three months
before,--swearing, as I did it, that it should last me through the
whole journey.--Why should I dissemble the matter? I had sworn to
her eternal fidelity;--she had a right to my whole heart: --to
divide my affections was to lessen them;--to expose them was to
risk them: where there is risk there may be loss: --and what wilt
thou have, Yorick, to answer to a heart so full of trust and
confidence--so good, so gentle, and unreproaching!

- I will not go to Brussels, replied I, interrupting myself.--But
my imagination went on,--I recalled her looks at that crisis of our
separation, when neither of us had power to say adieu! I look'd at
the picture she had tied in a black riband about my neck,--and
blush'd as I look'd at it.--I would have given the world to have