His faith becomes, by a subtile
law of our being, his fact; the mountain is gifted with actual
motion, and rewards the temerity of his zeal by falling upon him and
crushing him forever. Such a person moves on, perchance, like a deep,
noble river, in calm and silence, but still moves on, inevitably
destined to lose himself in the common ocean. And this was the
promise of Clarian's case. Whatever was his hidden woe, however
trivial its rational results, or baseless its causes, it had beyond
remedy seized upon his soul, and we knew, that, unless it could be
done away with at the source, the end was certain: first the fury,
then the apathy of madness. He was no longer tortured with a visible
haunting presence, such as had borne him down on that fatal night,
but we saw plainly that he had taken the spectre into his own breast,
and nursed it, as a bosom serpent, upon his rapidly exhausting
energies.
Happily for us,--ere Clarian was quite beyond recovery, while Mac
still tore his hair in rage at his own impotence, while the Doctor
still pursued his researches with the sedateness of a philosopher,
and I was using what power I had to alleviate my little friend's
misery,--that subtile and mysterious agency, which, in our blindness
and need, we term Chance, interposed its offices, rolled away the
cloud from the mystery, and, like a good angel, rescued Clarian, even
as he was tottering upon the very brink of the dismal precipice to
whose borders he had innocently strayed.
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