Chapter 6

My chamber was in a retired part of the house, and looked upon the
garden so that no sound of the other inhabitants could reach it; and
here in perfect solitude I wept for several hours. When a servant came
to ask me if I would take food I learnt from him that my father had
returned, and was apparently well and this relieved me from a load of
anxiety, yet I did not cease to weep bitterly. As [_At_] first, as the
memory of former happiness contrasted to my present despair came
across me, I gave relief to the oppression of heart that I felt by
words, and groans, and heart rending sighs: but nature became wearied,
and this more violent grief gave place to a passionate but mute flood
of tears: my whole soul seemed to dissolve [in] them. I did not wring
my hands, or tear my hair, or utter wild exclamations, but as Boccacio
describes the intense and quiet grief [of] Sigismunda over the heart
of Guiscardo,[34] I sat with my hands folded, silently letting fall a
perpetual stream from my eyes. Such was the depth of my emotion that I
had no feeling of what caused my distress, my thoughts even wandered
to many indifferent objects; but still neither moving limb or feature
my tears fell untill, as if the fountains were exhausted, they
gradually subsided, and I awoke to life as from a dream.

When I had ceased to weep reason and memory returned upon me, and I
began to reflect with greater calmness on what had happened, and how
it became me to act--A few hours only had passed but a mighty
revolution had taken place with regard to me--the natural work of
years had been transacted since the morning: my father was as dead to
me, and I felt for a moment as if he with white hairs were laid in his
coffin and I--youth vanished in approaching age, were weeping at his
timely dissolution. But it was not so, I was yet young, Oh! far too
young, nor was he dead to others; but I, most miserable, must never
see or speak to him again. I must fly from him with more earnestness
than from my greatest enemy: in solitude or in cities I must never
more behold him. That consideration made me breathless with anguish,
and impressing itself on my imagination I was unable for a time to
follow up any train of ideas. Ever after this, I thought, I would
live in the most dreary seclusion. I would retire to the Continent and
become a nun; not for religion's sake, for I was not a Catholic, but
that I might be for ever shut out from the world. I should there find
solitude where I might weep, and the voices of life might never reach
me.

But my father; my beloved and most wretched father? Would he die?
Would he never overcome the fierce passion that now held pityless
dominion over him? Might he not many, many years hence, when age had
quenched