"My faith dies with me. It is a part of my life. It was not taken up in an hour, to be as lightly thrown aside. Without it, life would be insupportable; with it, life in any shape of seclusion, privation, banishment, contains all the blessings I covet upon earth. It was not for that, or of that I spoke. Understand me clearly, and put no construction on my words outside their plain and ordinary meaning. All I ask, all that is necessary for me is your society; to hear you speak, to drink in the words of kindness and power that flow from your lips, to be ever near you, to tend, solace, and console you. I should be content to enjoy the privilege of seeing that you were happy, without even aspiring to the higher glory of creating happiness for you. That is my nature--capable of a wider range, and a loftier flight, but happiest in its devotion. In any capacity I will serve you--and feel that the servitude of love is dominion!" So firm and constant was the character of Astræa, tinged with a romantic inspiration, that all this homage was serious and real, and issued gravely from her heart through her lips. She meant every syllable she spoke in its true sense; and I felt that she was ready to fulfill it, and sustain it to the end. She believed that all endurances were possible for love's sake, and that she could even enact miracles of stoicism in the strength of her fidelity. For many months our intercourse, always thus sophisticating its aims and interpretations, was carried on in secret. We had become necessary to each other; but being still shut up in our mystery, we had not made as much advance toward any definite result as one single moment of disclosure to the people we were among would have inevitably compelled us to decide upon. We were very prudent in our outward bearing, and hardly aware of the avidity with which the concealed passion was devouring our hearts. The dwarf followed me, and hovered about me more than ever. But I learned to bear with him on account of his being in the house with Astræa. Any body who was constantly in her society, and admitted to terms of intimacy with her, was welcome to me--as relics from the altar of a saint are welcome to the devotee, or a leaf snatched, from a tree in the haunts of home is welcome to the exile. It was a pleasure when I met him even to ask for Astræa, to have an excuse for uttering her name, or to hear him speak of her, or to speak of her myself, or to talk of any thing that we had before talked of together. Such are the resources, the feints, the stratagems, the foibles of love! VI. One night my indefatigable Mephistophiles took me to a tavern. He was in a vagrant mood, and I indulged him. "Come, we shall see life to-night," he said. "With all my heart," I replied. It was not much to my taste, but I fancied there was something unusual in his manner, and my curiosity was awakened to see what it would lead to.