Yes, Clara de
Haldimar, your mother was the child of nature THEN.
Unspoiled by the forms, unvitiated by the sophistries of
a world with which she had never mixed, her intelligent
innocence made the most artless avowals to my enraptured
ear,--avowals that the more profligate minded woman of
society would have blushed to whisper even to herself.
And for these I loved her to my own undoing.
"Blind vanity, inconceivable folly!" continued Wacousta,
again pressing his forehead with force; "how could I be
so infatuated as not to perceive, that although her heart
was filled with a new and delicious passion, it was less
the individual than the man she loved. And how could it
be otherwise, since I was the first, beside her father,
she had ever seen or recollected to have seen? Still,
Clara de Haldimar," he pursued, with haughty energy, "I
was not always the rugged being I now appear. Of surpassing
strength I had ever been, and fleet of foot, but not then
had I attained to my present gigantic stature; neither
was my form endowed with the same Herculean rudeness;
nor did my complexion wear the swarthy hue of the savage;
nor had my features been rendered repulsive, from the
perpetual action of those fierce passions which have
since assailed my soul.
Pages:
684
685
686
687
688
689
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708