Chapter XXX.
We rest--a dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise--one wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away.
Shelley.
The tale of Balthazar was simple but eloquent His union with Marguerite,
in spite of the world's obloquy and injustice, had been blest by the wise
and merciful Being who knew how to temper the wind to the shorn lamb.
"We knew we were all to each other," he continued, after briefly alluding
to the early history of their births and love; "and we felt the necessity
of living for ourselves. Ye that are born to honors, who meet with smiles
and respectful looks in all ye meet, can know little of the feeling which
binds together the unhappy. When God gave us our first-born, as he lay a
smiling babe in her lap, looking up into her eye with the innocence that
most likens man to angels, Marguerite shed bitter tears at the thought of
such a creature's being condemned by the laws to shed the blood of men.
The reflection that he was to live for ever an outcast from his kind was
bitter to a mother's heart.
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