That entertaining no doubt of this intelligence
--hopeless of ever seeing me again, and indifferent to every
thing besides, she had been led an unresisting victim to the altar.
"Such was the vindication which she considered it just to make me. But
all the entreaties of Fatima--all my letters, impassioned as they were,
appealing at once to her generosity, humanity, and love,--could not
prevail on her to grant me an interview.
"'Tell him,' said she, 'that heaven has forbid it, and to its decrees we
are bound to submit. I am now the wife of another, and it is our duty to
forget all that is past. But if this be possible, my heart tells me it
can be only by our never meeting!'
"In saying this, she wept bitterly; but at the same time exacted a
promise from Fatima, that she would never mention the subject to her
again. Finding her thus inexorable, I fell into a settled melancholy,
and my health was visibly declining. The Europeans consider the natives
of Hindostan to be feeble and effeminate; but the soul, that which
distinguishes man from brutes, acts with an intensity and constancy of
purpose of which they can furnish no examples.
"How long I could have withstood the corrosive effects of my hopeless
passion, irritated as it was by my being in the vicinity of its
object--by hearing perpetually of her beauty, and sometimes catching a
glimpse of it,--I know not; but the Omrah, after a few months spent with
his father-in-law, returned with his bride to his castle in the country.
Pages:
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212