But when the boy began to be lost in youth, the attentive
father saw cause for alarm. Shades of sadness, which gradually assumed
a darker character, began to overcloud the young man's temper. Tears,
which seemed involuntary, broken sleep, moonlight wanderings, and a
melancholy for which he could assign no reason, seemed to threaten at
once his bodily health and the stability of his mind. The astrologer
was consulted by letter, and returned for answer, that this fitful state
of mind was but the commencement of his trial, and that the poor youth
must undergo more and more desperate struggles with the evil that
assailed him. There was no hope of remedy, save that he showed steadiness
of mind in the study of the Scriptures. "He suffers," continued the
letter of the sage, "from the awakening of these harpies, the passions,
which have slept with him as with others, till the period of life which
he has now attained. Better, far better, that they torment him by
ungrateful cravings, than that he should have to repent having satiated
them by criminal indulgence.
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