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An acute fever, attended by severe pains in my head, followed this
interview. I could not take any nourishment; and I often said, how
happy it would be for me, were it indeed to prove mortal. Foolish
and cowardly wish! heaven refused to hear my prayer, and I now feel
grateful that it did. Though a stern teacher, adversity fortifies
the mind, and renders man what he seems to have been intended for;
at least, a good man, a being capable of struggling with difficulty
and danger; presenting an object not unworthy, even in the eyes of
the old Romans, of the approbation of the gods.
CHAPTER XV.
Two days afterwards I again saw my father. I had rested well the
previous night, and was free from fever; before him I preserved the
same calm and even cheerful deportment, so that no one could have
suspected I had recently suffered, and still continued to suffer so
much. "I am in hopes," observed my father, "that within a very few
days we shall see you at Turin. Your mother has got your old room
in readiness, and we are all expecting you to come. Pressing
affairs now call me away, but lose no time, I entreat you, in
preparing to rejoin us once more." His kind and affecting
expressions added to my grief. Compassion and filial piety, not
unmingled with a species of remorse, induced me to feign assent; yet
afterwards I reflected how much more worthy it had been, both of my
father and myself, to have frankly told him that most probably, we
should never see each other again, at least in this world. Let us
take farewell like men, without a murmur and without a tear, and let
me receive the benediction of a father before I die. As regarded
myself, I should wish to have adopted language like that; but when I
gazed on his aged and venerable features, and his grey hairs,
something seemed to whisper me, that it would be too much for the
affectionate old man to bear; and the words died in my heart. Good
God! I thought, should he know the extent of the EVIL, he might,
perhaps, run distracted, such is his extreme attachment to me: he
might fall at my feet, or even expire before my eyes. No! I could
not tell him the truth, nor so much as prepare him for it; we shed
not a tear, and he took his departure in the same pleasing delusion
as before. On returning into my dungeon I was seized in the same
manner, and with still more aggravated suffering, as I had been
after the last interview; and, as then, my anguish found no relief
from tears.
I had nothing now to do but resign myself to all the horrors of long
captivity, and to the sentence of death. But to prepare myself to
bear the idea of the immense load of grief that must fall on every
dear member of my family, on learning my lot, was beyond my power.
It haunted me like a spirit, and to fly from it I threw myself on my
knees, and in a passion of devotion uttered aloud the following
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