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--perhaps to cure the malady of my first and best friend. I shall
immediately depart for Dunkeld."
"
Thou bird of night," replied Raymond, "what an eclipse do you throw across
my bright thoughts, forcing me to call to mind that melancholy ruin, which
stands in mental desolation, more irreparable than a fragment of a carved
column in a weed-grown field. You dream that you can restore him? Daedalus
never wound so inextricable an error round Minotaur, as madness has woven
about his imprisoned reason. Nor you, nor any other Theseus, can thread the
labyrinth, to which perhaps some unkind Ariadne has the clue."
"You allude to Evadne Zaimi: but she is not in England."
"And were she," said Raymond, "I would not advise her seeing him. Better to
decay in absolute delirium, than to be the victim of the methodical
unreason of ill-bestowed love. The long duration of his malady has probably
erased from his mind all vestige of her; and it were well that it should
never again be imprinted. You will find him at Dunkeld; gentle and
tractable he wanders up the hills, and through the wood, or sits listening
beside the waterfall. You may see him--his hair stuck with wild flowers
--his eyes full of untraceable meaning--his voice broken--his person
wasted to a shadow. He plucks flowers and weeds, and weaves chaplets of
them, or sails yellow leaves and bits of bark on the stream, rejoicing in
their safety, or weeping at their wreck. The very memory half unmans me. By
Heaven! the first tears I have shed since boyhood rushed scalding into my
eyes when I saw him."
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