"My good friend, when you get a little older, you will cease to marvel
at such things, or imagine, because a man has been very wretched, he
is to be for ever. My friend once felt as you do (Lord Seales changed
his tone to one of impressive seriousness); but he was wise enough
to abide by the counsels of the beloved one he had lost, struggle to
shake off the sluggish misery which was crushing him, cease to wish
for death, and welcome life as a solemn path of usefulness and good,
still to be trodden, though its flowers might have faded. Gradually as
he awoke to outward things, and sought the companionship of her whom
his lost one had loved, he became sensible that, spiritless as he had
thought himself, he could yet, did he see fit, win and rivet regard;
and so he married, loving less than he was loved, perchance at the
time but scarcely so now. His marriage, and his present happiness, are
far less mysterious than his extraordinary interference in the event
which followed the conquest of the Moors--I mean the expulsion of the
Jews."
"By the way, what caused that remarkable edict?" demanded one of the
circle more interested in politics than in individuals. "It is a good
thing indeed to rid a land of such vermin; but in Spain they had
so much to do with the successful commerce of the country, that it
appears as impolitic as unnecessary.
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