Mardi: Chapter 73

Chapter 73

Something More Of The Prince

Previous to recording our stay in his dominions, it only remains to
be related of Donjalolo, that after assuming the girdle, a change
came over him.

During the lifetime of his father, he had been famed for his
temperance and discretion. But when Mardi was forever shut out; and
he remembered the law of his isle, interdicting abdication to its
kings; he gradually fell into desperate courses, to drown the
emotions at times distracting him.

His generous spirit thirsting after some energetic career, found
itself narrowed down within the little glen of Willamilla, where
ardent impulses seemed idle. But these are hard to die; and repulsed
all round, recoil upon themselves.

So with Donjalolo; who, in many a riotous scene, wasted the powers
which might have compassed the noblest designs.

Not many years had elapsed since the death of the king, his father.
But the still youthful prince was no longer the bright-eyed and
elastic boy who at the dawn of day had sallied out to behold the
landscapes of the neighboring isles.

Not more effeminate Sardanapalus, than he. And, at intervals, he was
the victim of unaccountable vagaries; haunted by specters, and
beckoned to by the ghosts of his sires.

At times, loathing his vicious pursuits, which brought him no solid
satisfaction, but ever filled him with final disgust, he would
resolve to amend his ways; solacing himself for his bitter captivity,
by the society of the wise and discreet.

But brief the interval of repentance. Anew, he burst into excesses, a
hundred fold more insane than ever.

Thus vacillating between virtue and vice; to neither constant, and
upbraided by both; his mind, like his person in the glen, was
continually passing and repassing between opposite extremes.

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