"It is on such nights as these," said Mordaunt, who first broke the
silence, but with a low and soft voice, "that we are tempted to
believe that in Plato's divine fancy there is as divine a truth; that
'our souls are indeed of the same essence as the stars,' and that the
mysterious yearning, the impatient wish which swells and soars within
us to mingle with their glory, is but the instinctive and natural
longing to re-unite the divided portion of an immortal spirit, stored
in these cells of clay, with the original lustre of the heavenly and
burning whole!"

And hence then," said his companion, pursuing the idea, "might we also
believe in that wondrous and wild influence which the stars have been
fabled to exercise over our fate; hence might we shape a visionary
clew to their imagined power over our birth, our destinies, and our
death."

"Perhaps," rejoined Mordaunt, and Lord Ulswater has since said that
his countenance as he spoke wore an awful and strange aspect, which
lived long and long afterwards in the memory of his companion,
"perhaps they are tokens and signs between the soul and the things of
Heaven which do not wholly shame the doctrine of him [Socrates, who
taught the belief in omens.] from whose bright wells Plato drew (while
he coloured with his own gorgeous errors) the waters of his sublime
lore." As Mordaunt thus spoke, his voice changed: he paused abruptly,
and, pointing to a distant quarter of the heavens, said,--

"Look yonder; do you see, in the far horizon, one large and solitary
star, that, at this very moment, seems to wax pale and paler, as my
hand points to it?"