I saw a learned gentleman the captive of attachment for a certain person, and the victim of his reproach; and he would suffer much violence, and bear it with great patience. On one occasion I said, by way of admonition: "I know that in your attachment for this person you have no bad object, and that this friendship rests not on any criminal design; yet, under this interpretation, it accords not with the dignity of the learned to expose yourself to calumny, and put up with the rudeness of the rabble." He replied: "O my friend, withdraw the hand of reproach from the skirt of my fatality, for I have frequently reflected on this advice which you offer me, and find it easier to suffer contumely on his account than to forego his company; and philosophers have said: 'It is less arduous to persist in the labor of courting than to restrain the eye from contemplating a beloved object':--Whoever devotes his heart to a soul deluder puts his beard or reputation into the hands of another. That person, without whom thou canst not exist, if he do thee a violence, thou must bear with it. The antelope, that is led by a string, cannot bound from this side to that. One day I asked a compact of my mistress; how often have I since that day craved her forgiveness! A lover exacts not terms of his charmer; I relinquished my heart to whatever she desired me, whether to call me up to her with kindness, or drive me from her with harshness she knows best, or it is her pleasure." X In my early youth such an event (as you know) will come to pass. I held a mystery and intercourse with a young person, because he had a pipe of exquisite melody, and a form silver bright as the full moon:--"He is sipping the fountain of immortality, who may taste the down of his cheek; and he is eating a sweetmeat, who can fancy the sugar of his lips." It happened that something in his behavior having displeased me, I withdrew the skirt of communication, and removed the seal of my affection from him, and said: "Go, and take what course best suits thee; thou regardest not my counsel, follow thine own." I overheard him as he was going, and saying:--"If the bat does not relish the company of the sun, the all-current brilliancy of that luminary can suffer no diminution." He so expressed himself and departed, and his vagabond condition much distressed me:--_the opportunity of enjoyment was lost, and a man is insensible to the relish of prosperity till he_ _has tasted adversity_:--return and slay me, for to die before thy face were far more pleasant than to survive in thy absence.