As AEnone
slowly turned over leaf after leaf of the parchment roll, she felt her
heart perplexed within her. She could scarcely believe that none of
those tales of reckless dissipation were true, for she remembered that
some of them had reached her ear attended by evidence so circumstantial
that it was impossible to reject them; but, if true, how account for
these grand maxims of lofty morality? What object could their author
have in thus uselessly playing the hypocrite, when amatory and
bacchanalian choruses would not only have been more consonant with his
own feelings, but doubtless more acceptable to the world? She had not
yet learned what it often takes the wisest man a lifetime to
discover--that every inconsistency of conduct is not hypocrisy, but that
it is one of the most common idiosyncrasies of the mind to write and
believe one thing, and as self-approvingly to feel and act the reverse.
With a sigh she closed the volume, and restored it to its place within
the case. Why ponder upon such things as these? The real character of
the poet Emilius was, after all, a matter of but little consequence to
her. Whether the meeting at his house was a wild, reckless orgy, or a
mere intellectual gathering of literary genius, it was none the less
certain that her lord was tarrying there, away from her side.
Pages:
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123