Lovely and loved! shall one slight hair Touch thy delicious lip with care? A heart like thine may laugh at Time-- The Soul is ever in its prime. All Loves, you know, have infant faces, A thousand years can't chill the Graces! While thou art in my soul enshrined, I give all sorrows to the wind. Were I this hour but gay eighteen, Thou couldst be but my bosom's queen; I might for longer years adore, But could not, could not love thee more. On returning to look for my distinguished prisoner, I found a packet lying on the table of my apartment; it had arrived in my absence with the troops in advance; and I must acknowledge that I opened it with a trembling hand, when I saw that it came from London and Mordecai. It was written in evident anxiety, and the chief subject was the illness of his daughter. She had some secret on her mind, which utterly baffled even the Jew's paternal sagacity. No letters had reached either of them from France, and he almost implored me to return, or, if that were impossible, to write without delay. Mariamne had grown more fantastic, and capricious, and wayward than ever. Her eyes had lost their brightness, and her cheek its colour. Yet she complained of nothing, beyond a general distaste to existence. She had seen the Comtesse de Tourville, and they had many a long conference together, from which, however, Mariamne always returned more melancholy than ever. She had refused the match which he had provided for her, and declared her determination to live, like the daughter of Jephthah, single to her grave. The letter then turned to my own circumstances, and entered into them with the singular mixture of ardour and sneering which formed this extraordinary character.