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90 turned home with the same sinking of the heart, the same utter depression of spirits. "For the first time I felt the wide difference between my circumstances and myself. Now, how I coveted riches—how I envied, ay hated, their possessors! Now, how I contrasted the splendid scenes in which I moved with the wretched home where I lived! Now, how worthless seemed all the former landmarks of my ambition! "God in heaven, how I loved her! I would sit for hours, dreaming all those brilliant impossibilities by which fate might unite our destinies. I placed myself in situations of the most varied interest at her side, and then woke from my phantasy in an agony of shame and regret. The mere mention of her name would make my heart beat even to pain; and yet, with all this inward violence, I was outwardly calm:—true love is like religion, it hath its silence and its sanctity. I felt myself worthy of her, even while I was in reality becoming less so; for the fever of my heart preyed upon my mind, and every hour I was conscious that the power and the glory were departing from me. "Poetry had been the passion that love now was; but poetry brought forth its fruit in due season: love made all a desert except itself. And yet how slight were the chains that bound me as in fetters of iron! A look, a word, a smile, were the hieroglyphics of the heart, as dazzling to decipher as the characters on Caliph Vathek's Damascus sabres;