life, man, at first, ever seeks to shun all conscious definitiveness in his thoughts and purposes; as assured, that the lines that shall precisely define his present misery, and thereby lay out his future path; these can only be defined by sharp stakes that cut into his heart.
III
Most melancholy of all the hours of earth, is that one long, gray hour, which to the watcher by the lamp, intervenes between the night and day; when both lamp and watcher, overtasked, grow sickly in the pallid light; and the watcher, seeking for no gladness in the dawn, sees naught but garish vapours there; and almost invokes a curse upon the public day, that shall invade his lonely night of sufferance.
The one small window of his closet looked forth upon the meadow, and across the river, and far away to the distant heights, storied with the great deeds of the Glendinnings. Many a time had Pierre sought this window before sunrise, to behold the blood-red, out-flinging dawn, that would wrap those purple hills as with a banner. But now the morning dawned in mist and rain, and came drizzlingly upon his heart. Yet as the day advanced, and once more showed to him the accustomed features of his room by that natural light, which, till this very moment, had never lighted him but to his joy; now that the day, and not the night, was witness to his woe; now first the dread reality came appallingly upon him. A sense of horrible forlornness, feebleness, impotence, and infinite eternal desolation possessed him. It was not merely mental, but corporeal also. He could not stand; and when he tried to sit, his arms fell floorward as tied to leaden weights. Dragging his ball and chain, he fell upon his bed; for when the mind is cast down, only in
