Pagina 377 di 483

My father was enraptured on finding me freed from the vexations

of a criminal charge, that I was again allowed to breathe the

fresh atmosphere and permitted to return to my native country. I

did not participate in these feelings, for to me the walls of a

dungeon or a palace were alike hateful. The cup of life was

poisoned for ever, and although the sun shone upon me, as upon

the happy and gay of heart, I saw around me nothing but a dense

and frightful darkness, penetrated by no light but the glimmer of

two eyes that glared upon me. Sometimes they were the expressive

eyes of Henry, languishing in death, the dark orbs nearly covered

by the lids and the long black lashes that fringed them;

sometimes it was the watery, clouded eyes of the monster, as I

first saw them in my chamber at Ingolstadt.