Was it with sensations resembling these (applied, however, rather to the
mind than to the eye) that the reader perused those pages devoted to
Hermanric and Antonina? Does the happiness there described now appear
to him to beam through the stormy progress of the narrative as the spot
of blue beams through the gathering clouds? Did that small prospect of
brightness present itself, at the time, like a garden of repose amid the
waste of fierce emotions which encompassed it? Did it encourage him,
when contrasted with what had gone before, to enter on the field of
gloomier interest which was to follow? If, indeed, it has thus affected
him, if he can still remember the scene at the farm-house beyond the
suburbs with emotions such as these, he will not now be unwilling to
turn again for a moment from the gathering clouds to the spot of blue,--
he will not deny us an instant's digression from Ulpius and the city of
famine to Antonina and the lonely plains.
During the period that has elapsed since we left her, Antonina has
remained secure in her solitude, happy in her well-chosen concealment.
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