But I hope still to be useful in my native isle,
therefore let me plead that your highness will abandon a poor
despised and outcast wretch to his fate, and betake you to your
realms, where your presence cannot but be greatly wanted."
"Would that I could do so!" said he woefully. "But to talk of that
is to talk of an impossibility. I am wedded to you so closely that I
feel as if I were the same person. Our essences are one, our
bodies and spirits being united, so that I am drawn towards you as
by magnetism, and. wherever you are, there must my presence be
with you."
Perceiving how this assurance affected me, he began to chide me
most bitterly for my ingratitude; and then he assumed such looks
that it was impossible for me longer to bear them; therefore I
staggered out of the way, begging and beseeching of him to give
me up to my fate, and hardly knowing what I said; for it struck
me that, with all his assumed appearance of misery and
wretchedness, there were traits of exultation in his hideous
countenance, manifesting a secret and inward joy at my utter
despair.
It was long before I durst look over my shoulder, but, when I did
so, I perceived this ruined and debased potentate coming slowly
on the same path, and I prayed that the Lord would hide me in the
bowels of the earth or depths of the sea.
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