looked in on the marble features of the dead.

I religiously obeyed his instructions with regard to the papers in the
escritoire, and burned them in a heap without looking into one, though
sorely tempted. But the old journal I kept. Perhaps in strict
conscience I ought also to have burned that; but casting my eye over
some half-torn leaves the other day, I could not resist an impulse to
give some fragments of it to the public. To do this satisfactorily,
I am obliged to twist this thread, so as to string together into a
semblance of order my Oberon's "random pearls."

If anybody that holds any commerce with his fellowmen can be called
solitary, Oberon was a "solitary man." He lived in a small village at
some distance from the metropolis, and never came up to the city except
once in three months for the purpose of looking into a bookstore, and of
spending two hours and a half with me. In that space of time I would
tell him all that I could remember of interest which had occurred in the
interim of his visits. He would join very heartily in the conversation;
but as soon as the time of his usual tarrying had elapsed, he would take
up his hat and depart. He was unequivocally the most original person I
ever knew. His style of composition was very charming. No tales that
have ever appeared in our popular journals have been so generally
admired as his. But a sadness was on his spirit; and this, added to the
shrinking sensitiveness of his nature, rendered him not misanthropic,
but singularly averse to social intercourse. Of the disease, which was
slowly sapping the springs of his life, he first became fully conscious
after one of those long abstractions in which lie was wont to indulge.
It is remarkable, however, that his first idea of this sort, instead of
deepening his spirit with a more melancholy hue, restored him to a more
natural state of mind.