Yet who was she? He was a father. It
was a fact, a fact alike full of solace and mortification, the
consciousness of which never deserted him. But he was the father of an
unknown child; to him the child of his poetic dreams, rather than his
reality. And now there came this radiant creature, and called him
'Father!' Was he awake, and in the harsh busy world; or was it the
apparition of au over-excited imagination, brooding too constantly on
one fond idea, on which he now gazed so fixedly? Was this some spirit?
Would that she would speak again! Would that those sealed lips would
part and utter but one word, would but again call him 'Father,' and he
asked no more!
'Father!' to be called 'Father' by one whom he could not name, by one
over whom he mused in solitude, by one to whom he had poured forth all
the passion of his desolate soul; to be called 'Father' by this being
was the aspiring secret of his life. He had painted her to himself in
his loneliness, he had conjured up dreams of ineffable loveliness, and
inexpressible love; he had led with her an imaginary life of thrilling
tenderness; he had indulged in a delicious fancy of mutual interchange
of the most exquisite offices of our nature; and then, when he had
sometimes looked around him, and found no daughter there, no beaming
countenance of purity to greet him with its constant smile, and
receive the quick and ceaseless tribute of his vigilant affection, the
tears had stolen down his lately-excited features, all the consoling
beauty of his visions had vanished into air, he had felt the deep
curse of his desolation, and had anathematised the cunning brain
that made his misery a thousand-fold keener by the mockery of its
transporting illusions.
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