II
WITH A WISP OF PAPER
There are those who throw away a cigar, when once gone out; they must needs have plenty more. But nobody that I ever heard of keeps a cedar box of hearts, labeled at Havana. Alas, there is but one to light!
But can a heart once lit be lighted again? Authority on this point is worth something; yet it should be impartial authority. I should be loth to take in evidence, for the fact—however it might tally with my hope—the affidavit of some rakish old widower, who had cast his weeds before the grass had started on the mound of his affliction; and I should be as slow to take, in way of rebutting testimony, the oath of any sweet young girl, just becoming conscious of her heart’s existence—by its loss.
Very much, it seems to me, depends upon the quality of the fire: and I can easily conceive of one so pure, so constant, so exhausting, that if it were once gone out, whether in the chills of death or under the blasts of pitiless fortune, there would be no rekindling, simply because there would be nothing left to kindle. And I can imagine, too, a fire so earnest and so true that, whatever malice might urge, or a devilish ingenuity devise, there could be no other found, high or low, far or near, which should not so contrast with the first as to make it seem cold as ice.
I remember in an old play of Davenport’s, the hero is led to doubt his mistress; he is worked upon by slanders to quit her altogether—though he has loved and does still love passionately. She bids him adieu, with large tears dropping from her eyes (and I lay down my cigar to recite it aloud, fancying all the while, with a varlet impudence, that some Abstemia is repeating it to me):
—Farewell, Lorenzo,
Whom my soul doth love; if you ever marry
May you meet a good wife; so good, that you
May not suspect her, nor may she be worthy
Of your suspicion; and if you hear hereafter