But he made no
reply to it, except to tell the messenger that the mortification of his
exceeding passion had cost him so dear as to have taken from him both
the wish to live and the fear to die. He therefore requested her who
had been the cause of this, that since she had not chosen to satisfy
his passionate longings, she would, now that he was rid of them, abstain
from tormenting him, and rest content with the evil which was past. For
that evil he could find no remedy but the choice of an austere life,
which by continual penance might bring him to forget his grief, and, by
fasts and disciplines, subdue his body, till the thought of death should
be to him but a sovereign consolation. Above all, he begged that he
might never hear of her, since he found the mere remembrance of her name
a purgatory not to be endured.
The gentleman went back with this mournful reply, and reported it to the
maiden who did not hear it without intolerable sorrow. But Love, which
will not suffer the spirit utterly to fail, gave her the thought that,
if she could see him, her words and presence might be of more effect
than the writing. She therefore, with her father and the nearest of her
kin, went to the monastery where he abode.
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