For this I did not hope; I did not even desire it. I
knew the season of love was past; I knew too well in what contempt the
ridiculous pretensions of superannuated gallants were held, ever to
add one to the number, and I was not a man to become an impudent
coxcomb in the decline of life, after having been so little such
during the flower of my age. Besides, as a friend to peace, I should
have been apprehensive of domestic dissensions; and I too sincerely
loved Theresa to expose her to the mortification of seeing me
entertain for others more lively sentiments than those with which
she inspired me for herself.
What step did I take upon this occasion? My reader will already have
guessed it, if he has taken the trouble to pay the least attention
to my narrative. The impossibility of attaining real beings threw me
into the regions of chimera, and seeing nothing in existence worthy of
my delirium, I sought food for it in the ideal world, which my
imagination quickly peopled with beings after my own heart. This
resource never came more apropos, nor was it ever so fertile. In my
continual ecstasy I intoxicated my mind with the most delicious
sentiments that ever entered the heart of man. Entirely forgetting the
human species, I formed to myself societies of perfect beings, whose
virtues were as celestial as their beauty, tender and faithful
friends, such as I never found here below. I became so fond of soaring
in the empyrean, in the midst of the charming objects with which I was
surrounded, that I thus passed hours and days without perceiving it;
and, losing the remembrance of all other things, I scarcely had
eaten a morsel in haste before I was impatient to make my escape and
run to regain my groves.
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