Age, solitude, infirmity--hitherto the mournful sensations which were
proofs to him that he still continued to exist--suddenly vanished from
his perceptions, as things that were not; and now at length he forgot
that he was an outcast, and remembered triumphantly that he was still a
priest. He felt animated by the same hopes, elevated by the same
aspirations, as in those early days when he had harangued the wavering
Pagans in the Temple, and first plotted the overthrow of the Christian
Church.
It was a terrible and warning proof of the omnipotent influence that a
single idea may exercise over a whole life, to see that old man
wandering among the crowds around him, still enslaved, after years of
suffering and solitude, degradation, and crime, by the same ruling
ambition, which had crushed the promise of his early youth! It was an
awful testimony to the eternal and mysterious nature of thought, to
behold that wasted and weakened frame; and then to observe how the
unassailable mind within still swayed the wreck of body yet left to it--
how faithfully the last exhausted resources of failing vigour rallied
into action at its fierce command--how quickly, at its mocking voice,
the sunken eye lightened again with a gleam of hope, and the pale, thin
lips parted mechanically with an exulting smile!
The hours passed, but he still walked on--whither or among whom he
neither knew nor cared.
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