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love, honour, and duty will again be manifested towards you. Master
yourself, Raymond, and the world is subject to you."
"All this would be very good sense, if addressed to another," replied
Raymond, moodily, "con the lesson yourself, and you, the first peer of the
land, may become its sovereign. You the good, the wise, the just, may rule
all hearts. But I perceive, too soon for my own happiness, too late for
England's good, that I undertook a task to which I am unequal. I cannot
rule myself. My passions are my masters; my smallest impulse my tyrant. Do
you think that I renounced the Protectorate (and I have renounced it) in a
fit of spleen? By the God that lives, I swear never to take up that bauble
again; never again to burthen myself with the weight of care and misery, of
which that is the visible sign.
"
Once I desired to be a king. It was in the hey-day of youth, in the pride
of boyish folly. I knew myself when I renounced it. I renounced it to gain
-no matter what--for that also I have lost. For many months I have
-
submitted to this mock majesty--this solemn jest. I am its dupe no
longer. I will be free.
"I have lost that which adorned and dignified my life; that which linked me
to other men. Again I am a solitary man; and I will become again, as in my
early years, a wanderer, a soldier of fortune. My friends, for Verney, I
feel that you are my friend, do not endeavour to shake my resolve. Perdita,
wedded to an imagination, careless of what is behind the veil, whose
charactery is in truth faulty and vile, Perdita has renounced me. With her
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