Vainly, in her
hours of study, did she read the fierce anathemas against love, liberty,
and pleasure, poetry, painting, and music, gold, silver, and precious
stones, which the ancient fathers had composed for the benefit of the
submissive congregations of former days; vainly did she imagine, during
those long hours of theological instruction, that her heart's forbidden
longings were banished and destroyed--that her patient and childlike
disposition was bowed in complete subserviency to the most rigorous of
her father's commands. No sooner were her interviews with Numerian
concluded than the promptings of that nature within us, which artifice
may warp but can never destroy, lured her into a forgetfulness of all
that she had heard and a longing for much that was forbidden. We live,
in this existence, but by the companionship of some sympathy,
aspiration, or pursuit, which serves us as our habitual refuge from the
tribulations we inherit from the outer world. The same feeling which led
Antonina in her childhood to beg for a flower-garden, in her girlhood
induced her to gain possession of a lute.
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