She received my addresses
just as saucily as a pretty girl could do. But it were useless to go
over our courtship; it was the only happy period of my existence, and
every succeeding day has been misery. Matters were eventually brought to
a bearing, and the fatal day of final felicity appointed. I was yet
young, and my love possessed all the madness of a first passion. She not
only occupied my heart, but my whole thoughts; I could think of nothing
else, speak of nothing else, and, what was worse, do nothing else: it
burned up the very capabilities of action, and rendered my native
indolence yet more indolent. However, the day came (and a bitter stormy
day it was), the ceremony was concluded, and the honeymoon seemed to
pass away in a fortnight.
"About twelve months after our marriage, Heaven (as authors say) blest
our loves with a son and, I had almost said, heir. Deplorable
patrimony!--heir of his mother's features--the sacrifice of his father's
weakness." Kean could not have touched this last burst. The father, the
miserable man, parental affection, agony, remorse, repentance, were
expressed in a moment.
A tear was hurrying down his withered cheek as he dashed it away with
his dripping sleeve. "I am a weak old fool," said he, endeavouring to
smile; for there was a volatile gaiety in his disposition, which his
sorrows had subdued, but not extinguished.
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