I was almost
obliged to tolerate his eloquence, and felt that he was in the right.
A rich man must have a shadow, and, as I desired to command the rank
which he had contrived again to make necessary to me, I saw but one
issue. By this, however, I stood fast: after having sacrificed my
love, after my life had been blighted, I would never sign away my soul
to this creature, for all the shadows in the world. I knew not how it
would end.
We sat, one day, before a cave which the strangers who frequent
these mountains are accustomed to visit. One hears there the rush
of subterranean streams roaring up from immeasurable depths, and the
stone cast in seemed, in its resounding fall, to find no bottom. He
painted to me, as he often did, with a vivid power of imagination
and in the lustrous charms of the most brilliant colors, the most
carefully finished pictures of what I might achieve in the world
by virtue of my purse, if I had but once again my shadow in my
possession. With my elbows resting on my knees, I kept my face
concealed in my hands and listened to the false one, my heart divided
between his seduction and my own strong will. I could not longer stand
such an inward conflict, and the deciding strife began.
"You appear, sir, to forget that I have indeed allowed you, upon
certain conditions, to remain in my company, but that I have reserved
my perfect freedom."
"If you command it, I pack up.
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