I declare to you, most
solemnly I declare to you, that I know not what love is except to you.
The world has called me a libertine; the truth is, no other woman can
command my spirit for an hour. I see through them at a glance. I read
all their weakness, frivolity, vanity, affectation, as if they were
touched by the revealing rod of Asmodeus. You were born to be my
bride. Unite yourself with me, control my destiny, and my course shall
be like the sun of yesterday; but reject me, reject me, and I devote
all my energies to the infernal gods; I will pour my lava over the
earth until all that remains of my fatal and exhausted nature is a
black and barren cone surrounded by bitter desolation.'
'Plantagenet; be calm!'
'I am perfectly calm, Venetia. You talk to me of your sufferings.
What has occasioned them? A struggle against nature. Nature has now
triumphed, and you are happy. What necessity was there for all this
misery that has fallen on your house? Why is your father an exile? Do
not you think that if your mother had chosen to exert her influence
she might have prevented the most fatal part of his career?
Undoubtedly despair impelled his actions as much as philosophy, though
I give him credit for a pure and lofty spirit, to no man more.
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