In his attached servant
the recluse boasted that he had a friend; a friend he might have, but
hardly a companion.
For the first days and even weeks, however, Huntingdon seemed a
paradise. The heart of its new inhabitant was full of the unspeakable
happiness that comes with calm after storm, with health after the most
terrible of maladies, with repose after the burning fever of the brain.
When first he went to church he was in a spiritual ecstasy; it was with
difficulty that he restrained his emotions, though his voice was
silent, being stopped by the intensity of his feelings, his heart
within him sang for joy; and when the Gospel for the day was read, the
sound of it was more than he could well bear. This brightness of his
mind communicated itself to all the objects round him, to the sluggish
waters of the Ouse, to dull, fenny Huntingdon, and to its commonplace
inhabitants.
For about three months his cheerfulness lasted, and with the help of
books, and his rides to meet his brother, he got on pretty well; but
then "the communion which he had so long been able to maintain with the
Lord was suddenly interrupted.
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