Drawing a cushioned seat to this secluded nook, where no person passing casually through the room would be able to see me, I sat down, and feeling too indolent to get myself a reading-stand, I supported the volume I had taken up to read on my knees. It was entitled _Conduct and Ceremonial,_ and the subject-matter was divided into short sections, each with an appropriate heading. Turning over the leaves, and reading a sentence here and there in different sections, it occurred to me that this might prove a most useful work for me to study, whenever I could bring my mind into the right frame for such a task; for it contained minute instructions upon all points relating to individual conduct in the house--as the entertainment of pilgrims, the dress to be worn, and the conduct to be observed at the various annual festivals, with other matters of the kind. Glancing through it in this rapid way, I soon finished with the first volume, then went through the second in even less time, for many of the concluding sections related to lugubrious subjects which I did not care to linger over; the titles alone were enough to trouble me--Decay through Age, Ailments of Mind and of Body; then Death, and, finally, the Disposal of the Dead. This done I took up the third volume, the last of the series, the first portion of which was headed, _Renewal of the Family_. This part I began to examine with some attention, and pretty soon discovered that I had now at last accidentally stumbled upon a perfect mine of information of the precise kind I had so long and so vainly been seeking. Struggling to overcome my agitation I read on, hurrying through page after page with the greatest rapidity; for there was here much matter that had no special interest for me, but incidentally the things which concerned me most to know were touched on, and in some cases minutely explained. As I proceeded, the prophetic gloom which had oppressed me all that day, and for so many days before, darkened to the blackness of despair, and suddenly throwing up my arms, the book slipped from my knees and fell with a crash upon the floor. There, face downwards, with its beautiful leaves doubled and broken under its weight, it rested unheeded at my feet. For now the desired knowledge was mine, and that dream of happiness which had illumined my life was over. Now I possessed the secret of that passionless, everlasting calm of beings who had for ever outlived, and left as immeasurably far behind as the instincts of the wolf and ape, the strongest emotion of which my heart was capable. For the children of the house there could be no union by marriage; in body and soul they differed from me: they had no name for that feeling which I had so often and so vainly declared; therefore they had told me again and again that there was only one kind of love, for they, alas! could experience one kind only. I did not, for the moment, seek further in the