"It was in vain that my family sought to awaken me to a
sense of the acknowledged loveliness of the daughters of
more than one ancient house in the county, with one of
whom an alliance was, in many respects, considered
desirable. Their beauty, or rather their whole, was
insufficient to stir up into madness the dormant passions
of my nature; and although my breast was like a glowing
furnace, in which fancy cast all the more exciting images
of her coinage to secure the last impress of the heart's
approval, my outward deportment to some of the fairest
and loveliest of earth's realities was that of one on
whom the influence of woman's beauty could have no power.
From my earliest boyhood I had loved to give the rein to
these feelings, until they at length rendered me their
slave. Woman was the idol that lay enshrined within my
inmost heart; but it was woman such as I had not yet met
with, yet felt must somewhere exist in the creation. For
her I could have resigned title, fortune, family, every
thing that is dear to man, save the life, through which
alone the reward of such sacrifice could have been tasted,
and to this phantom I had already yielded up all the
manlier energies of my nature; but, deeply as I felt the
necessity of loving something less unreal, up to the
moment of my joining the regiment, my heart had never
once throbbed for created woman.
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