The Comedy of Human Life Volume 2 - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ... and his restless uneasiness seemed to be symptoms of insanity, or rather of many forms of insanity. A sudden gleam of hope would give him the look of a monomaniac; an access of impatience, that he could not guess this secret which flitted before him and eluded his grasp like a will-o'-the-wisp, would blaze out into impotent anger like madness, to be followed by a burst of laughter at his own folly; but as a rule he lived in a state of the deepest dejection, and every phase of frenzy was merged in the dull melancholy of the idiot. However fleeting and imperceptible these changes of expression might be to strangers, they were unhappily only too obvious for those who had known the once noble face, the Claes of former years, so sublime in goodness and so great-hearted, of whom scarcely a trace could now be recognized. Lemulquinier, like his master, was old and worn by incessant toil, but he had not borne the same burden, nor endured the constant strain of thought; a curious mixture of anxiety and admiration in the way in which he looked at his master might easily have misled a casual observer; he listened respectfully to Claes' slightest word, and watched his movements with a kind of tenderness; he looked after his great and learned master with a care like a mother's; he even seemed to protect him, and, in some ways, actually did protect him, for Balthazar never took any thought for the needs of physical existence. It was touching and painful to see the two old men, both wrapped in the same thought, both so sure of the reality of their hope, inspired by the same restless longing; it was as if they had but one life between them--the one was the soul, and the other the body. When Marguerite and M. Conyncks arrived they found...