Confessions in Elysium Author:Christoph Martin Wieland Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: As a judge, I felt her sorrows entitled to redress As a man.....I panted to avenge her wrongs. . - We insensibly forgot our situation; .and our conversa... more »tion became free and unrestrained....My fair cousin appeared to foresee all the variety of questions I had to ask, from the rapidity of her replies; and our meeting ended by her charging me with some family commissions, that opened the way to a second interview, which,.... begetting a third, it became, at length, absolutely necessary that we should see each other. '; When I reflect on this scene, with all that knowledge of the world which thirty or forty years of subsequent experience taught me, I wonder at the tameness of my conduct I almost doubt my memory ;....yet such was the strength of my platonic prin- ejples.i at that time, that I fanciedevery female, matron or virgin...... a sacred deposit in the temple of nature, which mankind should venerate as superior beings. '' With this disposition inexperience assisting the wife of Mene- crates, by consanguinity by beauty .....by misfortune,....claimed my services my respect,....my reverence ! But had I been educated in the common track of observation had I yielded to the voice of nature, and beerj influenced by such sentiments as most youths of my age possessed..... I should have seen in the behaviour of my beautiful cousin, such temptatipn - to sin, as would have been an insult to the whole sex to have avoided. Calippe, however, wag as safe with me, as if she had been my own sister; or a priestess of the chaste Diana My imagination was as pure as my senses. I loved to contemplateangelic beauty, which at that time was the soul of all my desires ; and gave a tint so opposite in its effects to the coloring of ma...« less