ABSTRACT
A few weeks danced round the maze of tranquillity. Herman was happy; and Lok, who had not been prodigal of his sceptical opinions, was already a great favourite. All were content except Waldorf – but those / bitter reflections, which had never left him in the gay world, accompanied him in the desert, with accumulated horrors. Here was leisure to be unhappy, and solitude raised his misery nearly into madness. Sometimes he would start from thought, and sometimes greedily pursue it, as if anxious to familiarise himself to its terrible visions, and by that means to conquer its horrors. A thousand mental spectres would rise in his imagination; in vain he strove to fortify his mind against their intrusion – his timid conscience busily collected a host of fiends which haunted him continually both day and night. Unfortunately for him, employment had lost its zest: he even neglected his person; and finding every / struggle for happiness as ineffectual, as the convulsive gasps of one weighed down by the heavy hand of death, he abandoned the attempt, and sunk into despair. He sought no longer to conquer his anguish, but deserted his flinching soul to the horrors of reflection; his festering brain resigned to the flood of agony that came pouring in, and deluged him in a sea of despondency, from which there was no probable escape.
