The conqueror, doubly misled by fierce and unruly passions and by his
inauspicious commerce with the goblins of the abyss, retired not
immediately to his couch, but walked up and down his apartments, with a
hasty and irregular step. "Thanks to my favourable stars," exclaimed he,
"I am triumphant! What power can resist me? Where is the being that
shall dare to say, that one wish of my heart shall go unfulfilled? Well
then, I have got the fair the charming she into my power. She is shut up
in a palace, unseen by every human eye, to which no human foot ever
found its way but at my bidding. She is closed round with spells and
enchantment. I can by a word deprive her every limb of motion. If I but
wave this wand, the leaden God of sleep shall sink her in a moment in
the arms of forgetfulness, whatever were before her anxieties and her
wakeful terrors. In what manner then shall I, thus absolute and
uncontroled in all I bid exist, proceed? Shall I press the unwilling
beauty to my bosom, and riot in her hoard of charms, without waiting
like meaner mortals to sue for the consent of her will? There is
something noble, royal, and independent, in the thought. Beauty never
appears so attractive as from behind a veil of tears. Oh, how I enjoy
infancy [sic] the anger that shall flush her lovely cheek! Perhaps she
will even kneel to me to deprecate that which an education of prejudices
has taught her to consider as the worst of evils.
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