4
"Almet," said the stranger, "thou seest before thee a man, whom the hand of Prosperity has overwhelmed with wretchedness. Whatever I once desired as the means of happiness, I now possess but I am not yet happy, and therefore I despair. I regret the lapse of time, because it glides away without enjoyment and as I expect nothing in the future but the vanities of the past, I do not wish that the future should arrive. Yet ⟨I⟩ tremble lest it should be cut off; and my heart sinks, when I anticipate the moment in which eternity shall close even the vacuity of my life, like the seas upon the path of a ship, and leave no traces of my existence more durable than the furrow which remains after the waves have united. If, in the treasures of thy wisdom, there is any precept to obtain felicity, vouchsafe it to me: for this purpose I am come; a purpose which I yet fear to reveal, lest, like all the former, it should be disappointed."
Almet listened with looks of astonishment ind pity, to this complaint of a being, an whom reason was known to be a pledge of immortality: bnt the serenity
