Agnes Sorel (Volume 1); An Historical Romance

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1853. Excerpt: ... It would seem that the two--they were the only tenants of the cell--had been talking for some time, and that one of those pauses had taken place, in which each man continues for himself the train of thought suggested by what has gone before. The old man looked down upon the ground, with his shaggy eyebrows overhanging his eyes. Jean Charost looked up, as if catching inspiration from above. It was Hope and Memory. At length, the old man spoke. When one looks back, he said, upon the path of life, we lose in the mistiness of the distance a thousand objects which have influenced its course. We see it turn hither and thither, and wonder that we took not a course more direct to our end. We perceive that we have gone far out of the way; but the obstacles are not seen that were, or seemed, insurmountable--the stream, too deep to be forded--the rock, too high to be scaled--the thicket, too dense to be penetrated; and the mists and darkness too--the mists and darkness of the mind, for ever blinding us to the right way. Oh, my son, my son! Beware of the eye-sight of passion; for you know not how false and distorting it is. Things as plain as day become all dim and obscure, false lights glare around us, and nothing is real but our own sensations. Jean Charost smiled. I have escaped as yet, father, he said. It is true, indeed, that when I look back on some passages of my life--on the actions of other men, and on my own--I sometimes wonder how I could view the things around me as I did at the time, and all seems to me as if I had been acting in a dream. Passion, passion, interposed the monk, the dream of passion! Happily I have had no cause to regret that I did not see more clearly, resumed Jean Charost. But let me turn to other matters, good father. The...