Page:The genius - Carl Grosse tr Joseph Trapp 1796.djvu/332

 I was transported with fury at such an insolent and mortifying question, when, fortunately recollecting the part I had resolved to act, I exclaimed, after a short pause—"Poison, Madam? a man of sense might draw many fine inferences from such a question. He might, for instance, think you swayed by quite different principles, and wholly corrupted by the spirit of a certain society."

"Is that all that makes you so punctilious?" pursued she. "Is that all Marquis? who was it then that first made me acquainted with that spirit?"

"Do you think it is I, Adela? Look at the panes of these windows. You see the word Elmira, a sacred word, inscribed on them. This is brittle glass and has resisted storms and tempestuous weather; but my heart is as solid as marble, from which time itself can efface nothing."

She perfectly understood me and shrunk a little, I know not why; either she envied Elmira, or dreaded her fate. The first passion of the heart is always the most powerful,