He would give way to that hope, because it pleased him most, and
flattered best his heart. Yet this served not altogether to make him
cease his different passions, which sometimes raged within him, and
softened into showers. 'Twas not enough to appease him, to tell him
his grandfather was old, and could not that way injure him, while he
retained that awful duty which the young men are used there to pay
to their grave relations. He could not be convinced he had no cause to
sigh and mourn for the loss of a mistress he could not with all his
strength and courage retrieve. And he would often cry, "O, my friends!
were she in walled cities, or confined from me in fortifications of
the greatest strength; did enchantments or monsters detain her from
me; I would venture through any hazard to free her: but here, in the
arms of a feeble old man, my youth, my violent love, my trade in arms,
and all my vast desire of glory, avail me nothing. Imoinda is as
irrecoverably lost to me as if she were snatched by the cold arms of
death. Oh! she is never to be retrieved. If I would wait tedious
years, till fate should bow the old king to his grave, even that would
not leave me Imoinda free; but still that custom that makes it so vile
a crime for a son to marry his father's wives or mistresses would
hinder my happiness; unless I would either ignobly set an ill
precedent to my successors, or abandon my country, and fly with her to
some unknown world who never heard our story.
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