During the day, he was Sir Henry's constant and gentle companion; giving
vent to no passionate display, and uttering few unavailing complaints. Yet
it was now, that a symptom of disease first showed itself, which Delmé
could not account for.
George would suddenly lean back, and complain of a spasm on the left side
of the chest. This would occasionally, but rarely, affect the circulation.
George's sleep too, was disturbed, and he frequently had to rise from his
bed, and pace the apartment; but this last circumstance, perhaps, was the
mere result of anxiety of mind.
Sir Henry, without informing George, consulted a medical gentleman, who
was well known to him, and who happened to be at Rome at the time,
regarding these novel symptoms.
He was reassured by being informed, that these pains were probably of a
neuralgic character, and not at all likely to proceed from any organic
affection.
George Delmé's mind was perfectly clear and collected; with the
exception, that he would occasionally allude to his loss, in connection
with some scene or subject of interest before them; and in a tone, and
with language, that, appeared to his brother eccentric, but
inexpressibly touching.
For instance, they were at Tivoli, and in the Syren's grotto, looking up
to the foaming fall, which dashes down a rude cleft, formed of
fantastically shaped rocks.
Immediately below this, the waters make a semicircular bend.
On their surface, a mimic rainbow was depicted in vivid colours.
"Not for me!" burst forth the mourner, "not for me! does the arc of
promise wear those radiant hues. Prismatic rays once gilded my existence.
With Acmé they are for ever fled. But look! how the stream dashes on! Thus
have the waters of bitterness passed over my soul!"
In the gallery of the Vatican, too, the very statues seemed to speak to
him of his loss.
"I like not," would he exclaim, "that disdainful Apollo. Thus cold,
callous, and triumphing in the work of destruction, must be the angel of
death, who winged the shaft at my bright Acmé.
"May the launching of his arrow, have been but the signal, for her
translation to a sphere, more pure than this.
"Let us believe her the habitant of some bright planet, such as she
pointed out to us in the Bay of Naples--a seraph with a golden lyre--and
shrouded in a white cymar! No, no!" would he continue, turning his
footsteps towards the adjacent room, where the suffering pangs of
Apollo's high priest are painfully told in marble, "let let me rather
contemplate the Laocoon! His agony seems to sympathise with mine--but was
his fate as hard? _He_ saw his sons dying before him; could a son, or
sons, be as the wife of one's bosom? The serpent twines around him, too,
awaking exquisite corporeal pangs, but would it not have been luxury to
have died with my Acmé?
"Can the body suffer as the mind?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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