George Delmé's mind was perfectly clear and collected; with the exception, that he would occasionally allude to his loss, in connection with some scene or subject of interest before them; and in a tone, and with language, that, appeared to his brother eccentric, but inexpressibly touching.
For instance, they were at Tivoli, and in the Syren's grotto, looking up to the foaming fall, which dashes down a rude cleft, formed of fantastically shaped rocks.
Immediately below this, the waters make a semicircular bend.
On their surface, a mimic rainbow was depicted in vivid colours.
"Not for me!" burst forth the mourner, "not for me! does the arc of promise wear those radiant hues. Prismatic rays once gilded my existence. With Acmé they are for ever fled. But look! how the stream dashes on! Thus have the waters of bitterness passed over my soul!"
In the gallery of the Vatican, too, the very statues seemed to speak to him of his loss.
"I like not," would he exclaim, "that disdainful Apollo. Thus cold, callous, and triumphing in the work of destruction, must be the angel of death, who winged the shaft at my bright Acmé.
"May the launching of his arrow, have been but the signal, for her translation to a sphere, more pure than this.
"Let us believe her the habitant of some bright planet, such as she pointed out to us in the Bay of Naples--a seraph with a golden lyre--and shrouded in a white cymar! No, no!" would he continue, turning his footsteps towards the adjacent room, where the suffering pangs of Apollo's high priest are painfully told in marble, "let let me rather contemplate the Laocoon! His agony seems to sympathise with mine--but was his fate as hard? He saw his sons dying before him; could a son, or sons, be as the wife of one's bosom? The serpent twines around him, too, awaking exquisite corporeal pangs, but would it not have been luxury to have died with my Acmé?
"Can the body suffer as the mind?"