reunion during thy visit of a year: leave of absence to bring my family to my home. The next year my chief died, and I quitted my pest; but thou didst not come. In the same year another appointment elsewhere, whence the messenger sent to fetch thee had barely started ere I again had left. Once more thou camest not. Yet I knew that had we gone eastwards together it would have been but for a short time, and that I should do better to make for the west, where we might all gather round the old home.
Alas! why leave me thus and die? To me it seemed that both were young in years, and that although separated for a time, we might still hope to pass our lives together. Therefore we parted, and I went to the capital in search of place; but could I have foreseen what was to happen, the many-charioted territory of a duke should not have tempted me one moment from thy side.
Last year I wrote thee, saying, “Not forty yet: sight dim, hair gray, strength sapped. Father and brothers, lusty men all, died in their prime;―can then this decaying frame last long? I may not go: thou wilt not come. Alas! I fear lest at any moment I may be cut off and leave thee to unutterable grief.” Yet who would have thought that the young man was to perish and the old man to live? the strong youth to sink into a premature grave, the sick man to be made whole? Is it reality or a dream? Was it truth they told me? Reality―that the line of my noble-hearted brother should be thus ended in premature death? Reality―that thy pure intelligence shall not survive to continue the traditions of his house? Reality―that the young and strong thus early fade and die, while the old and decaying live on and thrive? Reality indeed it is; and no dream, and no lie. Else why this letter, this notice of death, now lying before me? It is so. The line of my noble-hearted brother has indeed been prematurely cut off. Thy pure intelligence, hope of the family, survives not to continue the traditions of his house. Unfathomable are the appointments of what men call Heaven: inscrutable are the workings of the unseen: unknowable are the mysteries of eternal truth: unrecognisable those who are destined to attain to old age!
