My soldier's life had become a passion with me.

I loved it for its bold and chivalrous enthusiasm, its hour of battle and strife, its days of endurance and hardship, its trials, its triumphs; its very reverses were endeared by those they were shared with; and the spirit of adventure and the love of danger--that most exciting of all gambling--had now entwined themselves in my very nature.

To surrender all these at once, and to exchange the daily, hourly enthusiasm of a campaign for the prospects now before me, was almost maddening.

But still a sustaining sense of duty of what I owed to him, who, in his love, had sacrificed all for me, overpowered every other consideration.

My mind was made up.
Father Rush's letter was little more than a recapitulation of the count's.
Debt, distress, sickness, and the heart-burnings of altered fortunes filled it; and when I closed it, I felt like one over all whose views in life a dark and ill-omened cloud was closing forever.