And ever and anon, with a kind of
shiver, as if to keep alive my misery by the sight of my own dreams, the
marble busts would glimmer out, faintly visible amidst the fair, as if
about to reappear, and, dispossessing the vacuity of folly, assert the
noble and the true, and give me back my dead to love and worship once
more, in the loneliness of the pine-forest. Side by side with a greedy
human face, would shimmer out for a moment the ghostly marble face; and
the contrast all but drove me mad with perplexity and misery.
"Alas!" I cried, "where is my future? Where is my beautiful death?"
All at once I saw the face of a man who went round and round the skirts of
the market, and looked earnestly in amongst the busy idlers. He was head
and shoulders taller than any there; and his face was a pale face, with an
infinite future in it, visible in all its grief. I made my way through the
crowd, which regarded me with a look which I could not understand, and
came to the stranger. I threw myself at his feet and sobbed: "I have lost
them all.
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