Sayfa 434 / 483

How did I cling to their dear forms, as sometimes they haunted

even my waking hours, and persuade myself that they still lived!

At such moments vengeance, that burned within me, died in my

heart, and I pursued my path towards the destruction of the

daemon more as a task enjoined by heaven, as the mechanical

impulse of some power of which I was unconscious, than as the

ardent desire of my soul.

What his feelings were whom I pursued I cannot know. Sometimes,

indeed, he left marks in writing on the barks of the trees or cut

in stone that guided me and instigated my fury. "My reign is not

yet over"-these words were legible in one of these

inscriptions-"you live, and my power is complete. Follow me; I

seek the everlasting ices of the north, where you will feel the

misery of cold and frost, to which I am impassive. You will find

near this place, if you follow not too tardily, a dead hare; eat

and be refreshed. Come on, my enemy; we have yet to wrestle for

our lives, but many hard and miserable hours must you endure

until that period shall arrive."