We reached Madame Beck’s door. Jean Baptiste’s clock tolled nine. At this hour, in this house, eighteen months since, had this man at my side bent before me, looked into my face and eyes, and arbitered my destiny. This very evening he had again stooped, gazed, and decreed. How different the look⁠—how far otherwise the fate!

He deemed me born under his star: he seemed to have spread over me its beam like a banner. Once⁠—unknown, and unloved, I held him harsh and strange; the low stature, the wiry make, the angles, the darkness, the manner, displeased me. Now, penetrated with his influence, and living by his affection, having his worth by intellect, and his goodness by heart⁠—I preferred him before all humanity.

We parted: he gave me his pledge, and then his farewell. We parted: the next day⁠—he sailed.

Finis

Man cannot prophesy. Love is no oracle. Fear sometimes imagines a vain thing. Those years of absence! How had I sickened over their anticipation! The woe they must bring seemed certain as death. I knew the nature of their course: I never had doubt how it would harrow as it went. The juggernaut on his car towered there a grim load. Seeing him draw nigh, burying his broad wheels in the oppressed soil⁠—I, the prostrate votary⁠—felt beforehand the annihilating craunch.

Strange to say⁠—strange, yet true, and owning many parallels in life’s experience⁠—that anticipatory craunch proved all⁠—yes⁠—nearly all the torture. The great Juggernaut, in his great chariot, drew on lofty, loud, and sullen. He passed quietly, like a shadow sweeping the sky, at noon. Nothing but a chilling dimness was seen or felt. I looked up. Chariot and demon charioteer were gone by; the votary still lived.