and the glens, and the water-falls, and the arbutus, and the myrtles,
and the upper and lower lakes, and the islands, and Mucruss, and Mucruss
Abbey, and the purple mountain, and the eagle’s nest, and the Grand
Turk, and the lights and the shades, and the echoes, and, above all, the
Lady Jocunda, fairly at the devil.
A nobleman in the neighbourhood had the politeness to invite us to see a
stag-hunt upon the water. The account of this diversion, which I had met
with in my Guide to the Lakes,[83] promised well. I consented to stay
another day: that day I really was revived by this spectacle, for it was
new. The sublime and the beautiful had no charms for me: novelty was the
only power that could waken me from my lethargy; perhaps there was in
this spectacle something more than novelty. The Romans had recourse
to shows of wild beasts and gladiators to relieve their ennui. At all
events, I was kept awake this whole morning, though I cannot say that I
felt in _such ecstasies as to be in any imminent danger of jumping out
of the boat_.
_Of our journey back from Killarney I remember nothing, but_ my being
discomfited by Lady Jocunda’s practical jests and overpowering gaiety.
When she addressed herself to me, my answers were as constrained and
as concise as possible; and, as I was afterwards told, I seemed, at the
close of my reply to each interrogative of her ladyship’s, to answer
with Odin’s prophetess,
“Now my weary lips I close;
Leave me, leave me to repose.”
This she never did till we parted; and, at that moment, I believe, my
satisfaction appeared so visible, that Lady Ormsby gave up all hopes of
me. Arrived at my own castle, I threw myself on my bed quite exhausted.
I took three hours’ additional sleep every day for a week, to recruit my
strength, and rest my nerves, after all that I had been made to suffer
by this young lady’s prodigious animal spirits.
CHAPTER XIV.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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