But his
vexatious captivity, and the enfeebling consequences of this wound,
dulled his spirit. Alone, among strangers and foes, in pain and in
peril, and without that energy which finds excitement in difficulty,
and can mock at danger, which requires no counsellor but our own quick
brain, and no champion but our own right arm, the high spirit of Tancred
for the first time flagged. As the twilight descended over the rocky
city, its sculptured tombs and excavated temples, and its strewn remains
of palaces and theatres, his heart recurred with tenderness to the halls
and towers of Montacute and Bellamont, and the beautiful affections
beneath those stately roofs, that, urged on, as he had once thought,
by a divine influence, now, as he was half tempted to credit, by a
fantastic impulse, he had dared to desert. Brooding in dejection, his
eyes were suffused with tears.
It was one of those moments of amiable weakness which make us all akin,
when sublime ambition, the mystical predispositions of genius, the
solemn sense of duty, all the heaped-up lore of ages, and the dogmas of
a high philosophy alike desert us, or sink into nothingness. The voice
of his mother sounded in his ear, and he was haunted by his father's
anxious glance.
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