Never did I feel such raptures as since I have received this fortunate,
this happy wound!--Yet why?--Is not her heart exactly what it was? It
is. I should be an idiot not to perceive it is. Strange contradiction!
Hopeless yet happy!--But it is a felicity of short duration.

Would it were possible for me to accompany her to France! My restless
foreboding imagination has persuaded me she will be in danger the
moment she is from under my protection. Vain fool! Who, what am
I?--Because a couple of dastardly highwaymen have galloped away at the
first report of a pistol, my inflated fancy has been busy in persuading
me that I am her hero!

Yet I wish I might go with her! Tell me, Oliver, wouldst not thou wish
so too? Would not all the world wish the same? Didst thou ever in thy
life behold her without feelings unusual, throbs, doubts, desires, and
fears; wild, incoherent, yet deriving ecstasy from that divinity which
irradiates her form and beams on every object around her?--Do!--Think
me a poor, raving, lovesick blockhead! And yet it is true! All I have
said of her, and infinitely more, is true! Thou nor the world cannot
disprove it! Would I might go with her!

I have seen the fellow with whom I had the rencounter. His wound is
much more severe than mine. Sir Arthur sent information to the office
in Bow Street. Wouldst thou think a highwayman could be so foolish a
coxcomb as to rob in a bright scarlet coat, and to ride a light grey
horse? The bloodhunters [I am sorry that our absurd, our iniquitous
laws oblige me to call them so] the bloodhunters soon discovered the
wounded man. Forty pounds afforded a sufficient impulse. They were
almost ready to quarrel with me, because I did not choose to swear as