Then,
proudly and impetuously, he followed the lady.
"From that great day of the trumpet these two understood one another
to admiration. Charles Edward's ideas on the subject of love are as
sound as possible. According to him, a man cannot love twice, there is
but one love in his lifetime, but that love is a deep and shoreless
sea. It may break in upon him at any time, as the grace of God found
St. Paul; and a man may live sixty years and never know love. Perhaps,
to quote Heine's superb phrase, it is 'the secret malady of the heart'
--a sense of the Infinite that there is within us, together with the
revelation of the ideal Beauty in its visible form. This love, in
short, comprehends both the creature and creation. But so long as
there is no question of this great poetical conception, the loves that
cannot last can only be taken lightly, as if they were in a manner
snatches of song compared with Love the epic.
"To Charles Edward the adventure brought neither the thunderbolt
signal of love's coming, nor yet that gradual revelation of an inward
fairness which draws two natures by degrees more and more strongly
each to each.
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