Tales and Stories: Now First CollectedShelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
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Tales and Stories: Now First Collected
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
English fiction -- 19th century; Short stories, English
They did pass. The dwarf had supplied me with a plenteous store of food.
At first I could hardly walk, so strange and out of joint were all my
limbs; and my voice—it was that of the fiend. But I kept silent, and
turned my face to the sun, that I might not see my shadow, and counted
the hours, and ruminated on my future conduct. To bring Torella to my
feet—to possess my Juliet in spite of him—all this my wealth could
easily achieve. During dark night I slept, and dreamt of the
accomplishment of my desires. Two suns had set—the third dawned. I was
agitated, fearful. Oh expectation, what a frightful thing art thou, when
kindled more by fear than hope! How dost thou twist thyself round the
heart, torturing its pulsations! How dost thou dart unknown pangs all
through our feeble mechanism, now seeming to shiver us like broken
glass, to nothingness—now giving us a fresh strength, which can _do_
nothing, and so torments us by a sensation, such as the strong man must
feel who cannot break his fetters, though they bend in his grasp. Slowly
paced the bright, bright orb up the eastern sky; long it lingered in the
zenith, and still more slowly wandered down the west: it touched the
horizon’s verge—it was lost! Its glories were on the summits of the
cliff—they grew dun and grey. The evening star shone bright. He will
soon be here.
He came not!—By the living heavens, he came not!—and night dragged out
its weary length, and, in its decaying age, “day began to grizzle its
dark hair;” and the sun rose again on the most miserable wretch that
ever upbraided its light. Three days thus I passed. The jewels and the
gold—oh, how I abhorred them!
Well, well—I will not blacken these pages with demoniac ravings. All too
terrible were the thoughts, the raging tumult of ideas that filled my
soul. At the end of that time I slept; I had not before since the third
sunset; and I dreamt that I was at Juliet’s feet, and she smiled, and
then she shrieked—for she saw my transformation—and again she smiled,
for still her beautiful lover knelt before her. But it was not I—it was
he, the fiend, arrayed in my limbs, speaking with my voice, winning her
with my looks of love. I strove to warn her, but my tongue refused its
office; I strove to tear him from her, but I was rooted to the ground—I
awoke with the agony. There were the solitary hoar precipices—there the
plashing sea, the quiet strand, and the blue sky over all. What did it
mean? was my dream but a mirror of the truth? was he wooing and winning
my betrothed? I would on the instant back to Genoa—but I was banished. I
laughed—the dwarf’s yell burst from my lips—_I_ banished! Oh no! they
had not exiled the foul limbs I wore; I might with these enter, without
fear of incurring the threatened penalty of death, my own, my native
city.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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