[Volume III]
THE LAST MAN
CHAPTER I.
HEAR YOU not the rushing sound of the coming tempest?
Do you not behold the clouds open, and destruction
lurid and dire pour down on the blasted earth? See you
not the thunderbolt fall, and are deafened by the shout
of heaven that follows its descent? Feel you not the
earth quake and open with agonizing groans, while the
air is pregnant with shrieks and wailings,--all
announcing the last days of man?
No! none of these things accompanied our fall! The
balmy air of spring, breathed from nature's ambrosial
home, invested the lovely earth, which wakened as a
young mother about to lead forth in pride her beauteous
offspring to meet their sire who had been long absent.
The buds decked the trees, the flowers adorned the
land: the dark branches, swollen with seasonable
juices, expanded into leaves, and the variegated
foliage of spring, bending and singing in the breeze,
rejoiced in the genial warmth of the unclouded
empyrean: the brooks flowed murmuring, the sea was
waveless, and the promontories that over-hung it were
reflected in the placid waters; birds awoke in the
woods, while abundant food for man and beast sprung up
from the dark ground. Where was pain and evil? Not in
the calm air or weltering ocean; not in the woods or
fertile fields, nor among the birds that made the woods
resonant with song, nor the animals that in the midst
of plenty basked in the sunshine. Our enemy, like the
Calamity of Homer, trod our hearts, and no sound was
echoed from her steps--
With ills the land is rife, with ills the sea,
Diseases haunt our frail humanity,
Through noon, through night, on casual wing they
glide,
Silent,--a voice the power all-wise denied.*
[* Elton's translation of Hesiod.]
Once man was a favourite of the Creator, as the royal
psalmist sang, "God had made him a little lower than
the angels, and had crowned him with glory and honour.
God made him to have dominion over the works of his
hands, and put all things under his feet." Once it was
so; now is man lord of the creation? Look at him--ha! I
see plague! She has invested his form, is incarnate in
his flesh, has entwined herself with his being, and
blinds his heaven-seeking eyes. Lie down, O man, on the
flower-strown earth; give up all claim to your
inheritance, all you can ever possess of it is the
small cell which the dead require.
Plague is the companion of spring, of sunshine, and
plenty. We no longer struggle with her. We have
forgotten what we did when she was not. Of old navies
used to stem the giant ocean-waves betwixt Indus and
the Pole for slight articles of luxury. Men made
perilous journies to possess themselves of earth's
splendid trifles, gems and gold. Human labour was
wasted--human life set at nought. Now life is all that
we covet; that this automaton of flesh should, with
joints and springs in order, perform its functions,
that this dwelling of the soul should be capable of
containing its dweller. Our minds, late spread abroad
through countless spheres and endless combinations of
thought, now retrenched themselves behind this wall of
flesh, eager to preserve its well-being only. We were
surely sufficiently degraded.
At first the increase of sickness in spring brought
increase of toil to such of us, who, as yet spared to
life, bestowed our time and thoughts on our fellow
creatures. We nerved ourselves to the task: "in the
midst of despair we performed the tasks of hope." We
went out with the resolution of disputing with our foe.
We aided the sick, and comforted the sorrowing; turning
from the multitudinous dead to the rare survivors, with
an energy of desire that bore the resemblance of power,
we bade them--live. Plague sat paramount the while, and
laughed us to scorn.
Have any of you, my readers, observed the ruins of an
anthill immediately after its destruction? At first it
appears entirely deserted of its former inhabitants; in
a little time you see an ant struggling through the
upturned mould; they reappear by twos and threes,
running hither and thither in search of their lost
companions. Such were we upon earth, wondering aghast
at the effects of pestilence. Our empty habitations
remained, but the dwellers were gathered to the shades
of the tomb.
As the rules of order and pressure of laws were lost,
some began with hesitation and wonder to transgress the
accustomed uses of society. Palaces were deserted, and
the poor man dared at length, unreproved, intrude into
the splendid apartments, whose very furniture and
decorations were an unknown world to him. It was found,
that, though at first the stop put to to all
circulation of property, had reduced those before
supported by the factitious wants of society to sudden
and hideous poverty, yet when the boundaries of private
possession were thrown down, the products of human
labour at present existing were more, far more, than
the thinned generation could possibly consume. To some
among the poor this was matter of exultation. We were
all equal now; magnificent dwellings, luxurious
carpets, and beds of down, were afforded to all.
Carriages and horses, gardens, pictures, statues, and
princely libraries, there were enough of these even to
superfluity; and there was nothing to prevent each from
assuming possession of his share. We were all equal
now; but near at hand was an equality still more
levelling, a state where beauty and strength, and
wisdom, would be as vain as riches and birth. The grave
yawned beneath us all, and its prospect prevented any
of us from enjoying the ease and plenty which in so
awful a manner was presented to us.
Still the bloom did not fade on the cheeks of my babes;
and Clara sprung up in years and growth, unsullied by
disease. We had no reason to think the site of Windsor
Castle peculiarly healthy, for many other families had
expired beneath its roof; we lived therefore without
any particular precaution; but we lived, it seemed, in
safety. If Idris became thin and pale, it was anxiety
that occasioned the change; an anxiety I could in no
way alleviate. She never complained, but sleep and
appetite fled from her, a slow fever preyed on her
veins, her colour was hectic, and she often wept in
secret; gloomy prognostications, care, and agonizing
dread, ate up the principle of life within her. I could
not fail to perceive this change. I often wished that I
had permitted her to take her own course, and engage
herself in such labours for the welfare of others as
might have distracted her thoughts. But it was too late
now. Besides that, with the nearly extinct race of man,
all our toils grew near a conclusion, she was too weak;
consumption, if so it might be called, or rather the
over active life within her, which, as with Adrian,
spent the vital oil in the early morning hours,
deprived her limbs of strength. At night, when she
could leave me unperceived, she wandered through the
house, or hung over the couches of her children; and in
the day time would sink into a perturbed sleep, while
her murmurs and starts betrayed the unquiet dreams that
vexed her. As this state of wretchedness became more
confirmed, and, in spite of her endeavours at
concealment more apparent, I strove, though vainly, to
awaken in her courage and hope. I could not wonder at
the vehemence of her care; her very soul was
tenderness; she trusted indeed that she should not
outlive me if I became the prey of the vast calamity,
and this thought sometimes relieved her. We had for
many years trod the highway of life hand in hand, and
still thus linked, we might step within the shades of
death; but her children, her lovely, playful, animated
children--beings sprung from her own dear
side--portions of her own being--depositories of our
loves--even if we died, it would be comfort to know
that they ran man's accustomed course. But it would not
be so; young and blooming as they were, they would die,
and from the hopes of maturity, from the proud name of
attained manhood, they were cut off for ever. Often
with maternal affection she had figured their merits
and talents exerted on life's wide stage. Alas for
these latter days! The world had grown old, and all its
inmates partook of the decrepitude. Why talk of
infancy, manhood, and old age? We all stood equal
sharers of the last throes of time-worn nature. Arrived
at the same point of the world's age--there was no
difference in us; the name of parent and child had lost
their meaning; young boys and girls were level now with
men. This was all true; but it was not less agonizing
to take the admonition home.
Where could we turn, and not find a desolation pregnant
with the dire lesson of example? The fields had been
left uncultivated, weeds and gaudy flowers sprung
up,--or where a few wheat-fields shewed signs of the
living hopes of the husbandman, the work had been left
halfway, the ploughman had died beside the plough; the
horses had deserted the furrow, and no seedsman had
approached the dead; the cattle unattended wandered
over the fields and through the lanes; the tame
inhabitants of the poultry yard, baulked of their daily
food, had become wild--young lambs were dropt in
flower-gardens, and the cow stalled in the hall of
pleasure. Sickly and few, the country people neither
went out to sow nor reap; but sauntered about the
meadows, or lay under the hedges, when the inclement
sky did not drive them to take shelter under the
nearest roof. Many of those who remained, secluded
themselves; some had laid up stores which should
prevent the necessity of leaving their homes;--some
deserted wife and child, and imagined that they secured
their safety in utter solitude. Such had been Ryland's
plan, and he was discovered dead and half-devoured by
insects, in a house many miles from any other, with
piles of food laid up in useless superfluity. Others
made long journies to unite themselves to those they
loved, and arrived to find them dead.
London did not contain above a thousand inhabitants;
and this number was continually diminishing. Most of
them were country people, come up for the sake of
change; the Londoners had sought the country. The busy
eastern part of the town was silent, or at most you saw
only where, half from cupidity, half from curiosity,
the warehouses had been more ransacked than pillaged:
bales of rich India goods, shawls of price, jewels, and
spices, unpacked, strewed the floors. In some places
the possessor had to the last kept watch on his store,
and died before the barred gates. The massy portals of
the churches swung creaking on their hinges; and some
few lay dead on the pavement. The wretched female,
loveless victim of vulgar brutality, had wandered to
the toilet of high-born beauty, and, arraying herself
in the garb of splendour, had died before the mirror
which reflected to herself alone her altered
appearance. Women whose delicate feet had seldom
touched the earth in their luxury, had fled in fright
and horror from their homes, till, losing themselves in
the squalid streets of the metropolis, they had died on
the threshold of poverty. The heart sickened at the
variety of misery presented; and, when I saw a specimen
of this gloomy change, my soul ached with the fear of
what might befall my beloved Idris and my babes. Were
they, surviving Adrian and myself, to find themselves
protectorless in the world? As yet the mind alone had
suffered--could I for ever put off the time, when the
delicate frame and shrinking nerves of my child of
prosperity, the nursling of rank and wealth, who was my
companion, should be invaded by famine, hardship, and
disease? Better die at once--better plunge a poinard in
her bosom, still untouched by drear adversity, and then
again sheathe it in my own! But, no; in times of misery
we must fight against our destinies, and strive not to
be overcome by them. I would not yield, but to the last
gasp resolutely defended my dear ones against sorrow
and pain; and if I were vanquished at last, it should
not be ingloriously. I stood in the gap, resisting the
enemy--the impalpable, invisible foe, who had so long
besieged us--as yet he had made no breach: it must be
my care that he should not, secretly undermining, burst
up within the very threshold of the temple of love, at
whose altar I daily sacrificed.
The hunger of Death was now stung more sharply by the
diminution of his food: or was it that before, the
survivors being many, the dead were less eagerly
counted? Now each life was a gem, each human breathing
form of far, O! far more worth than subtlest imagery of
sculptured stone; and the daily, nay, hourly decrease
visible in our numbers, visited the heart with
sickening misery. This summer extinguished our hopes,
the vessel of society was wrecked, and the shattered
raft, which carried the few survivors over the sea of
misery, was riven and tempest tost. Man existed by twos
and threes; man, the individual who might sleep, and
wake, and perform the animal functions; but man, in
himself weak, yet more powerful in congregated numbers
than wind or ocean; man, the queller of the elements,
the lord of created nature, the peer of demi-gods,
existed no longer.
Farewell to the patriotic scene, to the love of liberty
and well earned meed of virtuous aspiration!--farewell
to crowded senate, vocal with the councils of the wise,
whose laws were keener than the sword blade tempered at
Damascus!--farewell to kingly pomp and warlike
pageantry; the crowns are in the dust, and the wearers
are in their graves!--farewell to the desire of rule,
and the hope of victory; to high vaulting ambition, to
the appetite for praise, and the craving for the
suffrage of their fellows! The nations are no longer!
No senate sits in council for the dead; no scion of a
time honoured dynasty pants to rule over the
inhabitants of a charnel house; the general's hand is
cold, and the soldier has his untimely grave dug in his
native fields, unhonoured, though in youth. The
market-place is empty, the candidate for popular favour
finds none whom he can represent. To chambers of
painted state farewell!--To midnight revelry, and the
panting emulation of beauty, to costly dress and
birth-day shew, to title and the gilded coronet,
farewell!
Farewell to the giant powers of man,--to knowledge that
could pilot the deep-drawing bark through the opposing
waters of shoreless ocean,--to science that directed
the silken balloon through the pathless air,--to the
power that could put a barrier to mighty waters, and
set in motion wheels, and beams, and vast machinery,
that could divide rocks of granite or marble, and make
the mountains plain!
Farewell to the arts,--to eloquence, which is to the
human mind as the winds to the sea, stirring, and then
allaying it;--farewell to poetry and deep philosophy,
for man's imagination is cold, and his enquiring mind
can no longer expatiate on the wonders of life, for
"there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor
wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest!"--to the
graceful building, which in its perfect proportion
transcended the rude forms of nature, the fretted
gothic and massy saracenic pile, to the stupendous arch
and glorious dome, the fluted column with its capital,
Corinthian, Ionic, or Doric, the peristyle and fair
entablature, whose harmony of form is to the eye as
musical concord to the ear!--farewell to sculpture,
where the pure marble mocks human flesh, and in the
plastic expression of the culled excellencies of the
human shape, shines forth the god!--farewell to
painting, the high wrought sentiment and deep knowledge
of the artists's mind in pictured canvas--to
paradisaical scenes, where trees are ever vernal, and
the ambrosial air rests in perpetual glow:--to the
stamped form of tempest, and wildest uproar of
universal nature encaged in the narrow frame, O
farewell! Farewell to music, and the sound of song; to
the marriage of instruments, where the concord of soft
and harsh unites in sweet harmony, and gives wings to
the panting listeners, whereby to climb heaven, and
learn the hidden pleasures of the eternals!--Farewell
to the well-trod stage; a truer tragedy is enacted on
the world's ample scene, that puts to shame mimic
grief: to high-bred comedy, and the low buffoon,
farewell!--Man may laugh no more.
Alas! to enumerate the adornments of humanity, shews,
by what we have lost, how supremely great man was. It
is all over now. He is solitary; like our first parents
expelled from Paradise, he looks back towards the scene
he has quitted. The high walls of the tomb, and the
flaming sword of plague, lie between it and him. Like
to our first parents, the whole earth is before him, a
wide desart. Unsupported and weak, let him wander
through fields where the unreaped corn stands in barren
plenty, through copses planted by his fathers, through
towns built for his use. Posterity is no more; fame,
and ambition, and love, are words void of meaning; even
as the cattle that grazes in the field, do thou, O
deserted one, lie down at evening-tide, unknowing of
the past, careless of the future, for from such fond
ignorance alone canst thou hope for ease!
Joy paints with its own colours every act and thought.
The happy do not feel poverty--for delight is as a
gold-tissued robe, and crowns them with priceless gems.
Enjoyment plays the cook to their homely fare, and
mingles intoxication with their simple drink. Joy
strews the hard couch with roses, and makes labour
ease.
Sorrow doubles the burthen to the bent-down back;
plants thorns in the unyielding pillow; mingles gall
with water; adds saltness to their bitter bread;
cloathing them in rags, and strewing ashes on their
bare heads. To our irremediable distress every small
and pelting inconvenience came with added force; we had
strung our frames to endure the Atlean weight thrown on
us; we sank beneath the added feather chance threw on
us, "the grasshopper was a burthen." Many of the
survivors had been bred in luxury--their servants were
gone, their powers of command vanished like unreal
shadows: the poor even suffered various privations; and
the idea of another winter like the last, brought
affright to our minds. Was it not enough that we must
die, but toil must be added?--must we prepare our
funeral repast with labour, and with unseemly drudgery
heap fuel on our deserted hearths--must we with servile
hands fabricate the garments, soon to be our shroud?
Not so! We are presently to die, let us then enjoy to
its full relish the remnant of our lives. Sordid care,
avaunt! menial labours, and pains, slight in
themselves, but too gigantic for our exhausted
strength, shall make no part of our ephemeral
existences. In the beginning of time, when, as now, man
lived by families, and not by tribes or nations, they
were placed in a genial clime, where earth fed them
untilled, and the balmy air enwrapt their reposing
limbs with warmth more pleasant than beds of down. The
south is the native place of the human race; the land
of fruits, more grateful to man than the hard-earned
Ceres of the north,--of trees, whose boughs are as a
palace-roof, of couches of roses, and of the
thirst-appeasing grape. We need not there fear cold and
hunger.
Look at England! the grass shoots up high in the
meadows; but they are dank and cold, unfit bed for us.
Corn we have none, and the crude fruits cannot support
us. We must seek firing in the bowels of the earth, or
the unkind atmosphere will fill us with rheums and
aches. The labour of hundreds of thousands alone could
make this inclement nook fit habitation for one man. To
the south then, to the sun!--where nature is kind,
where Jove has showered forth the contents of
Amalthea's horn, and earth is garden.
England, late birth-place of excellence and school of
the wise, thy children are gone, thy glory faded! Thou,
England, wert the triumph of man! Small favour was
shewn thee by thy Creator, thou Isle of the North; a
ragged canvas naturally, painted by man with alien
colours; but the hues he gave are faded, never more to
be renewed. So we must leave thee, thou marvel of the
world; we must bid farewell to thy clouds, and cold,
and scarcity for ever! Thy manly hearts are still; thy
tale of power and liberty at its close! Bereft of man,
O little isle! the ocean waves will buffet thee, and
the raven flap his wings over thee; thy soil will be
birth-place of weeds, thy sky will canopy barrenness.
It was not for the rose of Persia thou wert famous, nor
the banana of the east; not for the spicy gales of
India, nor the sugar groves of America; not for thy
vines nor thy double harvests, nor for thy vernal airs,
nor solstitial sun--but for thy children, their
unwearied industry and lofty aspiration. They are
gone, and thou goest with them the oft trodden path
that leads to oblivion,--
Farewell, sad Isle, farewell, thy fatal glory
Is summed, cast up, and cancelled in this story.*
[* Cleveland's Poems.]
[Vol. III]
THE LAST MAN
CHAPTER II.
IN the autumn of this year 2096, the spirit of
emigration crept in among the few survivors, who,
congregating from various parts of England, met in
London. This spirit existed as a breath, a wish, a far
off thought, until communicated to Adrian, who imbibed
it with ardour, and instantly engaged himself in plans
for its execution. The fear of immediate death vanished
with the heats of September. Another winter was before
us, and we might elect our mode of passing it to the
best advantage. Perhaps in rational philosophy none
could be better chosen than this scheme of migration,
which would draw us from the immediate scene of our
woe, and, leading us through pleasant and picturesque
countries, amuse for a time our despair. The idea once
broached, all were impatient to put it in execution.
We were still at Windsor; our renewed hopes medicined
the anguish we had suffered from the late tragedies.
The death of many of our inmates had weaned us from the
fond idea, that Windsor Castle was a spot sacred from
the plague; but our lease of life was renewed for some
months, and even Idris lifted her head, as a lily after
a storm, when a last sunbeam tinges its silver cup.
Just at this time Adrian came down to us; his eager
looks shewed us that he was full of some scheme. He
hastened to take me aside, and disclosed to me with
rapidity his plan of emigration from England.
To leave England for ever! to turn from its polluted
fields and groves, and, placing the sea between us, to
quit it, as a sailor quits the rock on which he has
been wrecked, when the saving ship rides by. Such was
his plan.
To leave the country of our fathers, made holy by their
graves!--We could not feel even as a voluntary exile of
old, who might for pleasure or convenience forsake his
native soil; though thousands of miles might divide
him, England was still a part of him, as he of her. He
heard of the passing events of the day; he knew that,
if he returned, and resumed his place in society, the
entrance was still open, and it required but the will,
to surround himself at once with the associations and
habits of boyhood. Not so with us, the remnant. We left
none to represent us, none to repeople the desart land,
and the name of England died, when we left her,
In vagabond pursuit of dreadful safety.
Yet let us go! England is in her shroud,--we may not
enchain ourselves to a corpse. Let us go--the world is
our country now, and we will choose for our residence
its most fertile spot. Shall we, in these desart halls,
under this wintry sky, sit with closed eyes and folded
hands, expecting death? Let us rather go out to meet it
gallantly: or perhaps--for all this pendulous orb, this
fair gem in the sky's diadem, is not surely
plague-striken--perhaps, in some secluded nook, amidst
eternal spring, and waving trees, and purling streams,
we may find Life. The world is vast, and England,
though her many fields and wide spread woods seem
interminable, is but a small part of her. At the close
of a day's march over high mountains and through snowy
vallies, we may come upon health, and committing our
loved ones to its charge, replant the uprooted tree of
humanity, and send to late posterity the tale of the
ante-pestilential race, the heroes and sages of the
lost state of things.
Hope beckons and sorrow urges us, the heart beats high
with expectation, and this eager desire of change must
be an omen of success. O come! Farewell to the dead!
farewell to the tombs of those we loved!--farewell to
giant London and the placid Thames, to river and
mountain or fair district, birth-place of the wise and
good, to Windsor Forest and its antique castle,
farewell! themes for story alone are they,--we must
live elsewhere.
Such were in part the arguments of Adrian, uttered with
enthusiasm and unanswerable rapidity. Something more
was in his heart, to which he dared not give words. He
felt that the end of time was come; he knew that one by
one we should dwindle into nothingness. It was not
adviseable to wait this sad consummation in our native
country; but travelling would give us our object for
each day, that would distract our thoughts from the
swift-approaching end of things. If we went to Italy,
to sacred and eternal Rome, we might with greater
patience submit to the decree, which had laid her
mighty towers low. We might lose our selfish grief in
the sublime aspect of its desolation. All this was in
the mind of Adrian; but he thought of my children, and,
instead of communicating to me these resources of
despair, he called up the image of health and life to
be found, where we knew not-- when we knew not; but if
never to be found, for ever and for ever to be sought.
He won me over to his party, heart and soul.
It devolved on me to disclose our plan to Idris. The
images of health and hope which I presented to her,
made her with a smile consent. With a smile she agreed
to leave her country, from which she had never before
been absent, and the spot she had inhabited from
infancy; the forest and its mighty trees, the woodland
paths and green recesses, where she had played in
childhood, and had lived so happily through youth; she
would leave them without regret, for she hoped to
purchase thus the lives of her children. They were her
life; dearer than a spot consecrated to love, dearer
than all else the earth contained. The boys heard with
childish glee of our removal: Clara asked if we were to
go to Athens. "It is possible," I replied; and her
countenance became radiant with pleasure. There she
would behold the tomb of her parents, and the territory
filled with recollections of her father's glory. In
silence, but without respite, she had brooded over
these scenes. It was the recollection of them that had
turned her infant gaiety to seriousness, and had
impressed her with high and restless thoughts.
There were many dear friends whom we must not leave
behind, humble though they were. There was the spirited
and obedient steed which Lord Raymond had given his
daughter; there was Alfred's dog and a pet eagle, whose
sight was dimmed through age. But this catalogue of
favourites to be taken with us, could not be made
without grief to think of our heavy losses, and a deep
sigh for the many things we must leave behind. The
tears rushed into the eyes of Idris, while Alfred and
Evelyn brought now a favourite rose tree, now a marble
vase beautifully carved, insisting that these must go,
and exclaiming on the pity that we could not take the
castle and the forest, the deer and the birds, and all
accustomed and cherished objects along with us. "Fond
and foolish ones," I said, "we have lost for ever
treasures far more precious than these; and we desert
them, to preserve treasures to which in comparison they
are nothing. Let us not for a moment forget our object
and our hope; and they will form a resistless mound to
stop the overflowing of our regret for trifles."
The children were easily distracted, and again returned
to their prospect of future amusement. Idris had
disappeared. She had gone to hide her weakness;
escaping from the castle, she had descended to the
little park, and sought solitude, that she might there
indulge her tears; I found her clinging round an old
oak, pressing its rough trunk with her roseate lips, as
her tears fell plenteously, and her sobs and broken
exclamations could not be suppressed; with surpassing
grief I beheld this loved one of my heart thus lost in
sorrow! I drew her towards me; and, as she felt my
kisses on her eyelids, as she felt my arms press her,
she revived to the knowledge of what remained to her.
"You are very kind not to reproach me," she said: "I
weep, and a bitter pang of intolerable sorrow tears my
heart. And yet I am happy; mothers lament their
children, wives lose their husbands, while you and my
children are left to me. Yes, I am happy, most happy,
that I can weep thus for imaginary sorrows, and that
the slight loss of my adored country is not dwindled
and annihilated in mightier misery. Take me where you
will; where you and my children are, there shall be
Windsor, and every country will be England to me. Let
these tears flow not for myself, happy and ungrateful
as I am, but for the dead world--for our lost
country--for all of love, and life, and joy, now choked
in the dusty chambers of death."
She spoke quickly, as if to convince herself; she
turned her eyes from the trees and forest-paths she
loved; she hid her face in my bosom, and we--yes, my
masculine firmness dissolved--we wept together
consolatory tears, and then calm--nay, almost cheerful,
we returned to the castle.
The first cold weather of an English October, made us
hasten our preparations. I persuaded Idris to go up to
London, where she might better attend to necessary
arrangements. I did not tell her, that to spare her the
pang of parting from inanimate objects, now the only
things left, I had resolved that we should none of us
return to Windsor. For the last time we looked on the
wide extent of country visible from the terrace, and
saw the last rays of the sun tinge the dark masses of
wood variegated by autumnal tints; the uncultivated
fields and smokeless cottages lay in shadow below; the
Thames wound through the wide plain, and the venerable
pile of Eton college, stood in dark relief, a prominent
object; the cawing of the myriad rooks which inhabited
the trees of the little park, as in column or thick
wedge they speeded to their nests, disturbed the
silence of evening. Nature was the same, as when she
was the kind mother of the human race; now, childless
and forlorn, her fertility was a mockery; her
loveliness a mask for deformity. Why should the breeze
gently stir the trees, man felt not its refreshment?
Why did dark night adorn herself with stars--man saw
them not? Why are there fruits, or flowers, or streams,
man is not here to enjoy them?
Idris stood beside me, her dear hand locked in mine.
Her face was radiant with a smile.--"The sun is alone,"
she said, "but we are not. A strange star, my Lionel,
ruled our birth; sadly and with dismay we may look upon
the annihilation of man; but we remain for each other.
Did I ever in the wide world seek other than thee? And
since in the wide world thou remainest, why should I
complain? Thou and nature are still true to me. Beneath
the shades of night, and through the day, whose garish
light displays our solitude, thou wilt still be at my
side, and even Windsor will not be regretted."
I had chosen night time for our journey to London, that
the change and desolation of the country might be the
less observable. Our only surviving servant drove us.
We past down the steep hill, and entered the dusky
avenue of the Long Walk. At times like these, minute
circumstances assume giant and majestic proportions;
the very swinging open of the white gate that admitted
us into the forest, arrested my thoughts as matter of
interest; it was an every day act, never to occur
again! The setting crescent of the moon glittered
through the massy trees to our right, and when we
entered the park, we scared a troop of deer, that fled
bounding away in the forest shades. Our two boys
quietly slept; once, before our road turned from the
view, I looked back on the castle. Its windows
glistened in the moonshine, and its heavy outline lay
in a dark mass against the sky--the trees near us waved
a solemn dirge to the midnight breeze. Idris leaned
back in the carriage; her two hands pressed mine, her
countenance was placid, she seemed to lose the sense of
what she now left, in the memory of what she still
possessed.
My thoughts were sad and solemn, yet not of unmingled
pain. The very excess of our misery carried a relief
with it, giving sublimity and elevation to sorrow. I
felt that I carried with me those I best loved; I was
pleased, after a long separation to rejoin Adrian;
never again to part. I felt that I quitted what I
loved, not what loved me. The castle walls, and long
familiar trees, did not hear the parting sound of our
carriage-wheels with regret. And, while I felt Idris to
be near, and heard the regular breathing of my
children, I could not be unhappy. Clara was greatly
moved; with streaming eyes, suppressing her sobs, she
leaned from the window, watching the last glimpse of
her native Windsor.
Adrian welcomed us on our arrival. He was all
animation; you could no longer trace in his look of
health, the suffering valetudinarian; from his smile
and sprightly tones you could not guess that he was
about to lead forth from their native country, the
numbered remnant of the English nation, into the
tenantless realms of the south, there to die, one by
one, till the LAST MAN should remain in a voiceless,
empty world.
Adrian was impatient for our departure, and had
advanced far in his preparations. His wisdom guided
all. His care was the soul, to move the luckless crowd,
who relied wholly on him. It was useless to provide
many things, for we should find abundant provision in
every town. It was Adrian's wish to prevent all labour;
to bestow a festive appearance on this funeral train.
Our numbers amounted to not quite two thousand persons.
These were not all assembled in London, but each day
witnessed the arrival of fresh numbers, and those who
resided in the neighbouring towns, had received orders
to assemble at one place, on the twentieth of November.
Carriages and horses were provided for all; captains
and under officers chosen, and the whole assemblage
wisely organized. All obeyed the Lord Protector of
dying England; all looked up to him. His council was
chosen, it consisted of about fifty persons.
Distinction and station were not the qualifications of
their election. We had no station among us, but that
which benevolence and prudence gave; no distinction
save between the living and the dead. Although we were
anxious to leave England before the depth of winter,
yet we were detained. Small parties had been dispatched
to various parts of England, in search of stragglers;
we would not go, until we had assured ourselves that in
all human probability we did not leave behind a single
human being.
On our arrival in London, we found that the aged
Countess of Windsor was residing with her son in the
palace of the Protectorate; we repaired to our
accustomed abode near Hyde Park. Idris now for the
first time for many years saw her mother, anxious to
assure herself that the childishness of old age did not
mingle with unforgotten pride, to make this high-born
dame still so inveterate against me. Age and care had
furrowed her cheeks, and bent her form; but her eye was
still bright, her manners authoritative and unchanged;
she received her daughter coldly, but displayed more
feeling as she folded her grand-children in her arms.
It is our nature to wish to continue our systems and
thoughts to posterity through our own offspring. The
Countess had failed in this design with regard to her
children; perhaps she hoped to find the next remove in
birth more tractable. Once Idris named me casually--a
frown, a convulsive gesture of anger, shook her mother,
and, with voice trembling with hate, she said--"I am of
little worth in this world; the young are impatient to
push the old off the scene; but, Idris, if you do not
wish to see your mother expire at your feet, never
again name that person to me; all else I can bear; and
now I am resigned to the destruction of my cherished
hopes: but it is too much to require that I should love
the instrument that providence gifted with murderous
properties for my destruction."
This was a strange speech, now that, on the empty
stage, each might play his part without impediment from
the other. But the haughty Ex-Queen thought as Octavius
Caesar and Mark Antony,
We could not stall together
In the whole world.
The period of our departure was fixed for the
twenty-fifth of November. The weather was temperate;
soft rains fell at night, and by day the wintry sun
shone out. Our numbers were to move forward in separate
parties, and to go by different routes, all to unite at
last at Paris. Adrian and his division, consisting in
all of five hundred persons, were to take the direction
of Dover and Calais.
On the twentieth of November, Adrian and I rode for the
last time through the streets of London. They were
grass-grown and desert. The open doors of the empty
mansions creaked upon their hinges; rank herbage, and
deforming dirt, had swiftly accumulated on the steps of
the houses; the voiceless steeples of the churches
pierced the smokeless air; the churches were open, but
no prayer was offered at the altars; mildew and damp
had already defaced their ornaments; birds, and tame
animals, now homeless, had built nests, and made their
lairs in consecrated spots. We passed St. Paul's.
London, which had extended so far in suburbs in all
direction, had been somewhat deserted in the midst, and
much of what had in former days obscured this vast
building was removed. Its ponderous mass, blackened
stone, and high dome, made it look, not like a temple,
but a tomb. Methought above the portico was engraved
the Hic jacet of England. We passed on eastwards,
engaged in such solemn talk as the times inspired. No
human step was heard, nor human form discerned. Troops
of dogs, deserted of their masters, passed us; and now
and then a horse, unbridled and unsaddled, trotted
towards us, and tried to attract the attention of those
which we rode, as if to allure them to seek like
liberty. An unwieldy ox, who had fed in an abandoned
granary, suddenly lowed, and shewed his shapeless form
in a narrow door-way; every thing was desert; but
nothing was in ruin. And this medley of undamaged
buildings, and luxurious accommodation, in trim and
fresh youth, was contrasted with the lonely silence of
the unpeopled streets.
Night closed in, and it began to rain. We were about to
return homewards, when a voice, a human voice, strange
now to hear, attracted our attention. It was a child
singing a merry, lightsome air; there was no other
sound. We had traversed London from Hyde Park even to
where we now were in the Minories, and had met no
person, heard no voice nor footstep. The singing was
interrupted by laughing and talking; never was merry
ditty so sadly timed, never laughter more akin to
tears. The door of the house from which these sounds
proceeded was open, the upper rooms were illuminated as
for a feast. It was a large magnificent house, in which
doubtless some rich merchant had lived. The singing
again commenced, and rang through the high-roofed
rooms, while we silently ascended the stair-case.
Lights now appeared to guide us; and a long suite of
splendid rooms illuminated, made us still more wonder.
Their only inhabitant, a little girl, was dancing,
waltzing, and singing about them, followed by a large
Newfoundland dog, who boisterously jumping on her, and
interrupting her, made her now scold, now laugh, now
throw herself on the carpet to play with him. She was
dressed grotesquely, in glittering robes and shawls fit
for a woman; she appeared about ten years of age. We
stood at the door looking on this strange scene, till
the dog perceiving us barked loudly; the child turned
and saw us: her face, losing its gaiety, assumed a
sullen expression: she slunk back, apparently
meditating an escape. I came up to her, and held her
hand; she did not resist, but with a stern brow, so
strange in childhood, so different from her former
hilarity, she stood still, her eyes fixed on the
ground. "What do you do here?" I said gently; "Who are
you?"--she was silent, but trembled violently.--"My
poor child," asked Adrian, "are you alone?" There was a
winning softness in his voice, that went to the heart
of the little girl; she looked at him, then snatching
her hand from me, threw herself into his arms, clinging
round his neck, ejaculating--"Save me! save me!" while
her unnatural sullenness dissolved in tears.
"I will save you," he replied, "of what are you afraid?
you need not fear my friend, he will do you no harm.
Are you alone ?"
"No, Lion is with me."
"And your father and mother?--"
"I never had any; I am a charity girl. Every body is
gone, gone for a great, great many days; but if they
come back and find me out, they will beat me so!"
Her unhappy story was told in these few words: an
orphan, taken on pretended charity, ill-treated and
reviled, her oppressors had died: unknowing of what had
passed around her, she found herself alone; she had not
dared venture out, but by the continuance of her
solitude her courage revived, her childish vivacity
caused her to play a thousand freaks, and with her
brute companion she passed a long holiday, fearing
nothing but the return of the harsh voices and cruel
usage of her protectors. She readily consented to go
with Adrian.
In the mean time, while we descanted on alien sorrows,
and on a solitude which struck our eyes and not our
hearts, while we imagined all of change and suffering
that had intervened in these once thronged streets,
before, tenantless and abandoned, they became mere
kennels for dogs, and stables for cattle:--while we
read the death of the world upon the dark fane, and
hugged ourselves in the remembrance that we possessed
that which was all the world to us--in the meanwhile---
We had arrived from Windsor early in October, and had
now been in London about six weeks. Day by day, during
that time, the health of my Idris declined: her heart
was broken; neither sleep nor appetite, the chosen
servants of health, waited on her wasted form. To watch
her children hour by hour, to sit by me, drinking deep
the dear persuasion that I remained to her, was all her
pastime. Her vivacity, so long assumed, her
affectionate display of cheerfulness, her light-hearted
tone and springy gait were gone. I could not disguise
to myself, nor could she conceal, her life-consuming
sorrow. Still change of scene, and reviving hopes might
restore her; I feared the plague only, and she was
untouched by that.
I had left her this evening, reposing after the
fatigues of her preparations. Clara sat beside her,
relating a story to the two boys. The eyes of Idris
were closed: but Clara perceived a sudden change in the
appearance of our eldest darling; his heavy lids veiled
his eyes, an unnatural colour burnt in his cheeks, his
breath became short. Clara looked at the mother; she
slept, yet started at the pause the narrator made--Fear
of awakening and alarming her, caused Clara to go on at
the eager call of Evelyn, who was unaware of what was
passing. Her eyes turned alternately from Alfred to
Idris; with trembling accents she continued her tale,
till she saw the child about to fall: starting forward
she caught him, and her cry roused Idris. She looked on
her son. She saw death stealing across his features;
she laid him on a bed, she held drink to his parched
lips.
Yet he might be saved. If I were there, he might be
saved; perhaps it was not the plague. Without a
counsellor, what could she do? stay and behold him die!
Why at that moment was I away? "Look to him, Clara,"
she exclaimed, "I will return immediately."
She inquired among those who, selected as the
companions of our journey, had taken up their residence
in our house; she heard from them merely that I had
gone out with Adrian. She entreated them to seek me:
she returned to her child, he was plunged in a
frightful state of torpor; again she rushed down
stairs; all was dark, desert, and silent; she lost all
self-possession; she ran into the street; she called on
my name. The pattering rain and howling wind alone
replied to her. Wild fear gave wings to her feet; she
darted forward to seek me, she knew not where; but,
putting all her thoughts, all her energy, all her being
in speed only, most misdirected speed, she neither
felt, nor feared, nor paused, but ran right on, till
her strength suddenly deserted her so suddenly, that
she had not thought to save herself. Her knees failed
her, and she fell heavily on the pavement.
She was stunned for a time; but at length rose, and
though sorely hurt, still walked on, shedding a
fountain of tears, stumbling at times, going she knew
not whither, only now and then with feeble voice she
called my name, adding with heart-piercing
exclamations, that I was cruel and unkind. Human being
there was none to reply; and the inclemency of the
night had driven the wandering animals to the
habitations they had usurped. Her thin dress was
drenched with rain; her wet hair clung round her neck;
she tottered through the dark streets; till, striking
her foot against an unseen impediment, she again fell;
she could not rise; she hardly strove; but, gathering
up her limbs, she resigned herself to the fury of the
elements, and the bitter grief of her own heart. She
breathed an earnest prayer to die speedily, for there
was no relief but death. While hopeless of safety for
herself, she ceased to lament for her dying child, but
shed kindly, bitter tears for the grief I should
experience in losing her.
While she lay, life almost suspended, she felt a warm,
soft hand on her brow, and a gentle female voice asked
her, with expressions of tender compassion, if she
could not rise? That another human being, sympathetic
and kind, should exist near, roused her; half rising,
with clasped hands, and fresh springing tears, she
entreated her companion to seek for me, to bid me
hasten to my dying child, to save him, for the love of
heaven, to save him!
The woman raised her; she led her under shelter, she
entreated her to return to her home, whither perhaps I
had already returned. Idris easily yielded to her
persuasions, she leaned on the arm of her friend, she
endeavoured to walk on, but irresistible faintness made
her pause again and again.
Quickened by the encreasing storm, we had hastened our
return, our little charge was placed before Adrian on
his horse. There was an assemblage of persons under the
portico of our house, in whose gestures I instinctively
read some heavy change, some new misfortune. With swift
alarm, afraid to ask a single question, I leapt from my
horse; the spectators saw me, knew me, and in awful
silence divided to make way for me. I snatched a light,
and rushing up stairs, and hearing a groan, without
reflection I threw open the door of the first room that
presented itself. It was quite dark; but, as I stept
within, a pernicious scent assailed my senses,
producing sickening qualms, which made their way to my
very heart, while I felt my leg clasped, and a groan
repeated by the person that held me. I lowered my lamp,
and saw a negro half clad, writhing under the agony of
disease, while he held me with a convulsive grasp. With
mixed horror and impatience I strove to disengage
myself, and fell on the sufferer; he wound his naked
festering arms round me, his face was close to mine,
and his breath, death-laden, entered my vitals. For a
moment I was overcome, my head was bowed by aching
nausea; till, reflection returning, I sprung up, threw
the wretch from me, and darting up the staircase,
entered the chamber usually inhabited by my family. A
dim light shewed me Alfred on a couch; Clara trembling,
and paler than whitest snow, had raised him on her arm,
holding a cup of water to his lips. I saw full well
that no spark of life existed in that ruined form, his
features were rigid, his eyes glazed, his head had
fallen back. I took him from her, I laid him softly
down, kissed his cold little mouth, and turned to speak
in a vain whisper, when loudest sound of thunderlike
cannon could not have reached him in his immaterial
abode.
And where was Idris? That she had gone out to seek me,
and had not returned, were fearful tidings, while the
rain and driving wind clattered against the window, and
roared round the house. Added to this, the sickening
sensation of disease gained upon me; no time was to be
lost, if ever I would see her again. I mounted my horse
and rode out to seek her, fancying that I heard her
voice in every gust, oppressed by fever and aching
pain.
I rode in the dark and rain through the labyrinthine
streets of unpeopled London. My child lay dead at home;
the seeds of mortal disease had taken root in my bosom;
I went to seek Idris, my adored, now wandering alone,
while the waters were rushing from heaven like a
cataract to bathe her dear head in chill damp, her fair
limbs in numbing cold. A female stood on the step of a
door, and called to me as I gallopped past. It was not
Idris; so I rode swiftly on, until a kind of second
sight, a reflection back again on my senses of what I
had seen but not marked, made me feel sure that another
figure, thin, graceful and tall, stood clinging to the
foremost person who supported her. In a minute I was
beside the suppliant, in a minute I received the
sinking Idris in my arms. Lifting her up, I placed her
on the horse; she had not strength to support herself;
so I mounted behind her, and held her close to my
bosom, wrapping my riding-cloak round her, while her
companion, whose well known, but changed countenance,
(it was Juliet, daughter of the Duke of L --- ) could
at this moment of horror obtain from me no more than a
passing glance of compassion. She took the abandoned
rein, and conducted our obedient steed homewards. Dare
I avouch it? That was the last moment of my happiness;
but I was happy. Idris must die, for her heart was
broken: I must die, for I had caught the plague; earth
was a scene of desolation; hope was madness; life had
married death; they were one; but, thus supporting my
fainting love, thus feeling that I must soon die, I
revelled in the delight of possessing her once more;
again and again I kissed her, and pressed her to my
heart.
We arrived at our home. I assisted her to dismount, I
carried her up stairs, and gave her into Clara's care,
that her wet garments might be changed. Briefly I
assured Adrian of her safety, and requested that we
might be left to repose. As the miser, who with
trembling caution visits his treasure to count it again
and again, so I numbered each moment, and grudged every
one that was not spent with Idris. I returned swiftly
to the chamber where the life of my life reposed;
before I entered the room I paused for a few seconds;
for a few seconds I tried to examine my state; sickness
and shuddering ever and anon came over me; my head was
heavy, my chest oppressed, my legs bent under me; but I
threw off resolutely the swift growing symptoms of my
disorder, and met Idris with placid and even joyous
looks. She was lying on a couch; carefully fastening
the door to prevent all intrusion; I sat by her, we
embraced, and our lips met in a kiss long drawn and
breathless--would that moment had been my last!
Maternal feeling now awoke in my poor girl's bosom, and
she asked: "And Alfred?" "Idris," I replied, "we are
spared to each other, we are together; do not let any
other idea intrude. I am happy; even on this fatal
night, I declare myself happy, beyond all name, all
thought--what would you more, sweet one?"
Idris understood me: she bowed her head on my shoulder
and wept. "Why," she again asked, "do you tremble,
Lionel, what shakes you thus?"
"Well may I be shaken," I replied, "happy as I am. Our
child is dead, and the present hour is dark and
ominous. Well may I tremble! but, I am happy, mine own
Idris, most happy."
"I understand thee, my kind love," said Idris,
"thus--pale as thou art with sorrow at our loss;
trembling and aghast, though wouldest assuage my grief
by thy dear assurances. I am not happy," (and the tears
flashed and fell from under her down-cast lids), "for
we are inmates of a miserable prison, and there is no
joy for us; but the true love I bear you will render
this and every other loss endurable."
"We have been happy together, at least," I said; "no
future misery can deprive us of the past. We have been
true to each other for years, ever since my sweet
princess-love came through the snow to the lowly
cottage of the poverty-striken heir of the ruined
Verney. Even now, that eternity is before us, we take
hope only from the presence of each other. Idris, do
you think, that when we die, we shall be divided?"
"Die! when we die! what mean you? What secret lies hid
from me in those dreadful words?"
"Must we not all die, dearest?" I asked with a sad
smile.
"Gracious God! are you ill, Lionel, that you speak of
death? My only friend, heart of my heart, speak!"
"I do not think," replied I, "that we have any of us
long to live; and when the curtain drops on this mortal
scene, where, think you, we shall find ourselves?"
Idris was calmed by my unembarrassed tone and look; she
answered:--"You may easily believe that during this
long progress of the plague, I have thought much on
death, and asked myself, now that all mankind is dead
to this life, to what other life they may have been
borne. Hour after hour, I have dwelt on these thoughts,
and strove to form a rational conclusion concerning the
mystery of a future state. What a scare-crow, indeed,
would death be, if we were merely to cast aside the
shadow in which we now walk, and, stepping forth into
the unclouded sunshine of knowledge and love, revived
with the same companions, the same affections, and
reached the fulfilment of our hopes, leaving our fears
with our earthly vesture in the grave. Alas! the same
strong feeling which makes me sure that I shall not
wholly die, makes me refuse to believe that I shall
live wholly as I do now. Yet, Lionel, never, never, can
I love any but you; through eternity I must desire your
society; and, as I am innocent of harm to others, and
as relying and confident as my mortal nature permits, I
trust that the Ruler of the world will never tear us
asunder."
"Your remarks are like yourself, dear love," replied I,
"gentle and good; let us cherish such a belief, and
dismiss anxiety from our minds. But, sweet, we are so
formed, (and there is no sin, if God made our nature,
to yield to what he ordains), we are so formed, that we
must love life, and cling to it; we must love the
living smile, the sympathetic touch, and thrilling
voice, peculiar to our mortal mechanism. Let us not,
through security in hereafter, neglect the present.
This present moment, short as it is, is a part of
eternity, and the dearest part, since it is our own
unalienably. Thou, the hope of my futurity, art my
present joy. Let me then look on thy dear eyes, and,
reading love in them, drink intoxicating pleasure."
Timidly, for my vehemence somewhat terrified her, Idris
looked on me. My eyes were bloodshot, starting from my
head; every artery beat, methought, audibly, every
muscle throbbed, each single nerve felt. Her look of
wild affright told me, that I could no longer keep my
secret:--"So it is, mine own beloved," I said, "the
last hour of many happy ones is arrived, nor can we
shun any longer the inevitable destiny. I cannot live
long--but, again and again, I say, this moment is
ours!"
Paler than marble, with white lips and convulsed
features, Idris became aware of my situation. My arm,
as I sat, encircled her waist. she felt the palm burn
with fever, even on the heart it pressed:--"One
moment," she murmured, scarce audibly, "only one
moment."--
She kneeled, and hiding her face in her hands, uttered
a brief, but earnest prayer, that she might fulfil her
duty, and watch over me to the last. While there was
hope, the agony had been unendurable;--all was now
concluded; her feelings became solemn and calm. Even as
Epicharis, unperturbed and firm, submitted to the
instruments of torture, did Idris, suppressing every
sigh and sign of grief, enter upon the endurance of
torments, of which the rack and the wheel are but faint
and metaphysical symbols.
I was changed; the tight-drawn cord that sounded so
harshly was loosened, the moment that Idris
participated in my knowledge of our real situation. The
perturbed and passion-tossed waves of thought subsided,
leaving only the heavy swell that kept right on without
any outward manifestation of its disturbance, till it
should break on the remote shore towards which I
rapidly advanced:--"It is true that I am sick," I said,
"and your society, my Idris is my only medicine; come,
and sit beside me."
She made me lie down on the couch, and, drawing a low
ottoman near, sat close to my pillow, pressing my
burning hands in her cold palms. She yielded to my
feverish restlessness, and let me talk, and talked to
me, on subjects strange indeed to beings, who thus
looked the last, and heard the last, of what they loved
alone in the world. We talked of times gone by; of the
happy period of our early love; of Raymond, Perdita,
and Evadne. We talked of what might arise on this
desert earth, if, two or three being saved, it were
slowly re-peopled.--We talked of what was beyond the
tomb; and, man in his human shape being nearly extinct,
we felt with certainty of faith, that other spirits,
other minds, other perceptive beings, sightless to us,
must people with thought and love this beauteous and
imperishable universe.
We talked--I know not how long--but, in the morning I
awoke from a painful heavy slumber; the pale cheek of
Idris rested on my pillow; the large orbs of her eyes
half raised the lids, and shewed the deep blue lights
beneath; her lips were unclosed, and the slight murmurs
they formed told that, even while asleep, she suffered.
"If she were dead," I thought, "what difference? now
that form is the temple of a residing deity; those eyes
are the windows of her soul; all grace, love, and
intelligence are throned on that lovely bosom--were she
dead, where would this mind, the dearer half of mine,
be? For quickly the fair proportion of this edifice
would be more defaced, than are the sand-choked ruins
of the desert temples of Palmyra."
[Vol. III]
THE LAST MAN
CHAPTER III.
IDRIS stirred and awoke; alas! she awoke to misery. She
saw the signs of disease on my countenance, and
wondered how she could permit the long night to pass
without her having sought, not cure, that was
impossible, but alleviation to my sufferings. She
called Adrian; my couch was quickly surrounded by
friends and assistants, and such medicines as were
judged fitting were administered. It was the peculiar
and dreadful distinction of our visitation, that none
who had been attacked by the pestilence had recovered.
The first symptom of the disease was the death-warrant,
which in no single instance had been followed by
pardon or reprieve. No gleam of hope therefore cheered
my friends.
While fever producing torpor, heavy pains, sitting like
lead on my limbs, and making my breast heave, were
upon me; I continued insensible to every thing but
pain, and at last even to that. I awoke on the fourth
morning as from a dreamless sleep. An irritating sense
of thirst, and, when I strove to speak or move, an
entire dereliction of power, was all I felt.
For three days and nights Idris had not moved from my
side. She administered to all my wants, and never slept
nor rested. She did not hope; and therefore she
neither endeavoured to read the physician's
countenance, nor to watch for symptoms of recovery.
All her thought was to attend on me to the last, and
then to lie down and die beside me. On the third night
animation was suspended; to the eye and touch of all I
was dead. With earnest prayer, almost with force,
Adrian tried to draw Idris from me. He exhausted every
adjuration, her child's welfare and his own. She shook
her head, and wiped a stealing tear from her sunk
cheek, but would not yield; she entreated to be
allowed to watch me that one night only, with such
affliction and meek earnestness, that she gained her
point, and sat silent and motionless, except when,
stung by intolerable remembrance, she kissed my closed
eyes and pallid lips, and pressed my stiffening hands
to her beating heart.
At dead of night, when, though it was mid winter, the
cock crowed at three o'clock, as herald of the morning
change, while hanging over me, and mourning in silent,
bitter thought for the loss of all of love towards her
that had been enshrined in my heart; her dishevelled
hair hung over her face, and the long tresses fell on
the bed; she saw one ringlet in motion, and the
scattered hair slightly stirred, as by a breath. It is
not so, she thought, for he will never breathe more.
Several times the same thing occurred, and she only
marked it by the same reflection; till the whole
ringlet waved back, and she thought she saw my breast
heave. Her first emotion was deadly fear, cold dew
stood on her brow; my eyes half opened; and,
re-assured, she would have exclaimed, "He lives!" but
the words were choked by a spasm, and she fell with a
groan on the floor.
Adrian was in the chamber. After long watching, he had
unwillingly fallen into a sleep. He started up, and
beheld his sister senseless on the earth, weltering in
a stream of blood that gushed from her mouth.
Encreasing signs of life in me in some degree
explained her state; the surprise, the burst of joy,
the revulsion of every sentiment, had been too much for
her frame, worn by long months of care, late shattered
by every species of woe and toil. She was now in far
greater danger than I, the wheels and springs of my
life, once again set in motion, acquired elasticity
from their short suspension. For a long time, no one
believed that I should indeed continue to live; during
the reign of the plague upon earth, not one person,
attacked by the grim disease, had recovered. My
restoration was looked on as a deception; every moment
it was expected that the evil symptoms would recur with
redoubled violence, until confirmed convalescence,
absence of all fever or pain, and encreasing strength,
brought slow conviction that I had recovered from the
plague.
The restoration of Idris was more problematical. When I
had been attacked by illness, her cheeks were sunk,
her form emaciated; but now, the vessel, which had
broken from the effects of extreme agitation, did not
entirely heal, but was as a channel that drop by drop
drew from her the ruddy stream that vivified her
heart. Her hollow eyes and worn countenance had a
ghastly appearance; her cheek-bones, her open fair
brow, the projection of the mouth, stood fearfully
prominent; you might tell each bone in the thin
anatomy of her frame. Her hand hung powerless; each
joint lay bare, so that the light penetrated through
and through. It was strange that life could exist in
what was wasted and worn into a very type of death.
To take her from these heart-breaking scenes, to lead
her to forget the world's desolation in the variety of
objects presented by travelling, and to nurse her
failing strength in the mild climate towards which we
had resolved to journey, was my last hope for her
preservation. The preparations for our departure,
which had been suspended during my illness, were
renewed. I did not revive to doubtful convalescence;
health spent her treasures upon me; as the tree in
spring may feel from its wrinkled limbs the fresh
green break forth, and the living sap rise and
circulate, so did the renewed vigour of my frame, the
cheerful current of my blood, the new-born elasticity
of my limbs, influence my mind to cheerful endurance
and pleasurable thoughts. My body, late the heavy
weight that bound me to the tomb, was exuberant with
health; mere common exercises were insufficient for my
reviving strength; methought I could emulate the speed
of the race-horse, discern through the air objects at a
blinding distance, hear the operations of nature in her
mute abodes; my senses had become so refined and
susceptible after my recovery from mortal disease.
Hope, among my other blessings, was not denied to me;
and I did fondly trust that my unwearied attentions
would restore my adored girl. I was therefore eager to
forward our preparations. According to the plan first
laid down, we were to have quitted London on the
twenty-fifth of November; and, in pursuance of this
scheme, two-thirds of our people--thepeople--all
that remained of England, had gone forward, and had
already been some weeks in Paris. First my illness,
and subsequently that of Idris, had detained Adrian
with his division, which consisted of three hundred
persons, so that we now departed on the first of
January, 2098. It was my wish to keep Idris as distant
as possible from the hurry and clamour of the crowd,
and to hide from her those appearances that would
remind her most forcibly of our real situation. We
separated ourselves to a great degree from Adrian, who
was obliged to give his whole time to public business.
The Countess of Windsor travelled with her son. Clara,
Evelyn, and a female who acted as our attendant, were
the only persons with whom we had contact. We occupied
a commodious carriage, our servant officiated as
coachman. A party of about twenty persons preceded us
at a small distance. They had it in charge to prepare
our halting places and our nightly abode. They had
been selected for this service out of a great number
that offered, on account of the superior sagacity of
the man who had been appointed their leader.
Immediately on our departure, I was delighted to find a
change in Idris, which I fondly hoped prognosticated
the happiest results. All the cheerfulness and gentle
gaiety natural to her revived. She was weak, and this
alteration was rather displayed in looks and voice
than in acts; but it was permanent and real. My
recovery from the plague and confirmed health instilled
into her a firm belief that I was now secure from this
dread enemy. She told me that she was sure she should
recover. That she had a presentiment, that the tide of
calamity which deluged our unhappy race had now turned.
That the remnant would be preserved, and among them
the dear objects of her tender affection; and that in
some selected spot we should wear out our lives
together in pleasant society. "Do not let my state of
feebleness deceive you," she said; "I feel that I am
better; there is a quick life within me, and a spirit
of anticipation that assures me, that I shall continue
long to make a part of this world. I shall throw off
this degrading weakness of body, which infects even my
mind with debility, and I shall enter again on the
performance of my duties. I was sorry to leave Windsor:
but now I am weaned from this local attachment; I am
content to remove to a mild climate, which will
complete my recovery. Trust me, dearest, I shall
neither leave you, nor my brother, nor these dear
children; my firm determination to remain with you to
the last, and to continue to contribute to your
happiness and welfare, would keep me alive, even if
grim death were nearer at hand than he really is."
I was only half re-assured by these expressions; I
could not believe that the over-quick flow of her
blood was a sign of health, or that her burning cheeks
denoted convalescence. But I had no fears of an
immediate catastrophe; nay, I persuaded myself that she
would ultimately recover. And thus cheerfulness
reigned in our little society. Idris conversed with
animation on a thousand topics. Her chief desire was to
lead our thoughts from melancholy reflections; so she
drew charming pictures of a tranquil solitude, of a
beauteous retreat, of the simple manners of our little
tribe, and of the patriarchal brotherhood of love,
which would survive the ruins of the populous nations
which had lately existed. We shut out from our thoughts
the present, and withdrew our eyes from the dreary
landscape we traversed. Winter reigned in all its
gloom. The leafless trees lay without motion against
the dun sky; the forms of frost, mimicking the foliage
of summer, strewed the ground; the paths were
overgrown; the unploughed cornfields were patched with
grass and weeds; the sheep congregated at the threshold
of the cottage, the horned ox thrust his head from the
window. The wind was bleak, and frequent sleet or
snow-storms, added to the melancholy appearance wintry
nature assumed.
We arrived at Rochester, and an accident caused us to
be detained there a day. During that time, a
circumstance occurred that changed our plans, and
which, alas! in its result changed the eternal course
of events, turning me from the pleasant new sprung
hope I enjoyed, to an obscure and gloomy desert. But I
must give some little explanation before I proceed with
the final cause of our temporary alteration of plan,
and refer again to those times when man walked the
earth fearless, before Plague had become Queen of the
World.
There resided a family in the neighbourhood of Windsor,
of very humble pretensions, but which had been an
object of interest to us on account of one of the
persons of whom it was composed. The family of the
Claytons had known better days; but, after a series of
reverses, the father died a bankrupt, and the mother
heartbroken, and a confirmed invalid, retired with her
five children to a little cottage between Eton and Salt
Hill. The eldest of these children, who was thirteen
years old, seemed at once from the influence of
adversity, to acquire the sagacity and principle
belonging to a more mature age. Her mother grew worse
and worse in health, but Lucy attended on her, and was
as a tender parent to her younger brothers and sisters,
and in the meantime shewed herself so good-humoured,
social, and benevolent, that she was beloved as well as
honoured, in her little neighbourhood.
Lucy was besides extremely pretty; so when she grew to
be sixteen, it was to be supposed, notwithstanding her
poverty, that she should have admirers. One of these
was the son of a country-curate; he was a generous,
frank-hearted youth, with an ardent love of knowledge,
and no mean acquirements. Though Lucy was
untaught, her mother's conversation and manners gave
her a taste for refinements superior to her present
situation. She loved the youth even without knowing
it, except that in any difficulty she naturally turned
to him for aid, and awoke with a lighter heart every
Sunday, because she knew that she would be met and
accompanied by him in her evening walk with her
sisters. She had another admirer, one of the
head-waiters at the inn at Salt Hill. He also was not
without pretensions to urbane superiority, such as he
learnt from gentlemen's servants and waiting-maids, who
initiating him in all the slang of high life below
stairs, rendered his arrogant temper ten times more
intrusive. Lucy did not disclaim him--she was incapable
of that feeling; but she was sorry when she saw him
approach, and quietly resisted all his endeavours to
establish an intimacy. The fellow soon discovered that
his rival was preferred to him; and this changed what
was at first a chance admiration into a passion, whose
main springs were envy, and a base desire to deprive
his competitor of the advantage he enjoyed over
himself.
Poor Lucy's sad story was but a common one. Her lover's
father died; and he was left destitute. He accepted
the offer of a gentleman to go to India with him,
feeling secure that he should soon acquire an
independence, and return to claim the hand of his
beloved. He became involved in the war carried on
there, was taken prisoner, and years elapsed before
tidings of his existence were received in his native
land. In the meantime disastrous poverty came on Lucy.
Her little cottage, which stood looking from its
trellice, covered with woodbine and jessamine, was
burnt down; and the whole of their little property was
included in the destruction. Whither betake them? By
what exertion of industry could Lucy procure them
another abode? Her mother nearly bed-rid, could not
survive any extreme of famine-struck poverty. At this
time her other admirer stept forward, and renewed his
offer of marriage. He had saved money, and was going to
set up a little inn at Datchet. There was nothing
alluring to Lucy in this offer, except the home it
secured to her mother; and she felt more sure of this,
since she was struck by the apparent generosity which
occasioned the present offer. She accepted it; thus
sacrificing herself for the comfort and welfare of her
parent.
It was some years after her marriage that we became
acquainted with her. The accident of a storm caused us
to take refuge in the inn, where we witnessed the
brutal and quarrelsome behaviour of her husband, and
her patient endurance. Her lot was not a fortunate one.
Her first lover had returned with the hope of making
her his own, and met her by accident, for the first
time, as the mistress of his country inn, and the wife
of another. He withdrew despairingly to foreign parts;
nothing went well with him; at last he enlisted, and
came back again wounded and sick, and yet Lucy was
debarred from nursing him. Her husband's brutal
disposition was aggravated by his yielding to the many
temptations held out by his situation, and the
consequent disarrangement of his affairs. Fortunately
she had no children; but her heart was bound up in her
brothers and sisters, and these his avarice and ill
temper soon drove from the house; they were dispersed
about the country, earning their livelihood with toil
and care. He even shewed an inclination to get rid of
her mother--but Lucy was firm here--she had sacrificed
herself for her; she lived for her--she would not part
with her--if the mother went, she would also go beg
bread for her, die with her, but never desert her. The
presence of Lucy was too necessary in keeping up the
order of the house, and in preventing the whole
establishment from going to wreck, for him to permit
her to leave him. He yielded the point; but in all
accesses of anger, or in his drunken fits, he recurred
to the old topic, and stung poor Lucy's heart by
opprobrious epithets bestowed on her parent.
A passion however, if it be wholly pure, entire, and
reciprocal, brings with it its own solace. Lucy was
truly, and from the depth of heart, devoted to her
mother; the sole end she proposed to herself in life,
was the comfort and preservation of this parent.
Though she grieved for the result, yet she did not
repent of her marriage, even when her lover returned to
bestow competence on her. Three years had intervened,
and how, in their pennyless state, could her mother
have existed during this time? This excellent woman
was worthy of her child's devotion. A perfect
confidence and friendship existed between them;
besides, she was by no means illiterate; and Lucy,
whose mind had been in some degree cultivated by her
former lover, now found in her the only person who
could understand and appreciate her. Thus, though
suffering, she was by no means desolate, and when,
during fine summer days, she led her mother into the
flowery and shady lanes near their abode, a gleam of
unmixed joy enlightened her countenance; she saw that
her parent was happy, and she knew that this happiness
was of her sole creating.
Meanwhile her husband's affairs grew more and more
involved; ruin was near at hand, and she was about to
lose the fruit of all her labours, when pestilence came
to change the aspect of the world. Her husband reaped
benefit from the universal misery; but, as the disaster
encreased, the spirit of lawlessness seized him; he
deserted his home to revel in the luxuries promised
him in London, and found there a grave. Her former
lover had been one of the first victims of the disease.
But Lucy continued to live for and in her mother. Her
courage only failed when she dreaded peril for her
parent, or feared that death might prevent her from
performing those duties to which she was unalterably
devoted.
When we had quitted Windsor for London, as the previous
step to our final emigration, we visited Lucy, and
arranged with her the plan of her own and her mother's
removal. Lucy was sorry at the necessity which forced
her to quit her native lanes and village, and to drag
an infirm parent from her comforts at home, to the
homeless waste of depopulate earth; but she was too
well disciplined by adversity, and of too sweet a
temper, to indulge in repinings at what was
inevitable.
Subsequent circumstances, my illness and that of Idris,
drove her from our remembrance; and we called her to
mind at last, only to conclude that she made one of
the few who came from Windsor to join the emigrants,
and that she was already in Paris. When we arrived at
Rochester therefore, we were surprised to receive, by a
man just come from Slough, a letter from this exemplary
sufferer. His account was, that, journeying from his
home, and passing through Datchet, he was surprised to
see smoke issue from the chimney of the inn, and
supposing that he should find comrades for his journey
assembled there, he knocked and was admitted. There was
no one in the house but Lucy, and her mother; the
latter had been deprived of the use of her limbs by an
attack of rheumatism, and so, one by one, all the
remaining inhabitants of the country set forward,
leaving them alone. Lucy intreated the man to stay with
her; in a week or two her mother would be better, and
they would then set out; but they must perish, if they
were left thus helpless and forlorn. The man said, that
his wife and children were already among the emigrants,
and it was therefore, according to his notion,
impossible for him to remain. Lucy, as a last resource,
gave him a letter for Idris, to be delivered to her
wherever he should meet us. This commission at least
he fulfilled, and Idris received with emotion the
following letter:--
"HONOURED LADY,
"I am sure that you will remember and pity me, and I
dare hope that you will assist me; what other hope
have I? Pardon my manner of writing, I am so
bewildered. A month ago my dear mother was deprived of
the use of her limbs. She is already better, and in
another month would I am sure be able to travel, in
the way you were so kind as to say you would arrange
for us. But now everybody is gone--everybody--as they
went away, each said, that perhaps my mother would be
better, before we were quite deserted. But three days
ago I went to Samuel Woods, who, on account of his
new-born child, remained to the last; and there being a
large family of them, I thought I could persuade them
to wait a little longer for us; but I found the house
deserted. I have not seen a soul since, till this good
man came.--What will become of us? My mother does not
know our state; she is so ill, that I have hidden it
from her.
"Will you not send some one to us? I am sure we must
perish miserably as we are. If I were to try to move my
mother now, she would die on the road; and if, when she
gets better, I were able, I cannot guess how, to find
out the roads, and get on so many many miles to the
sea, you would all be in France, and the great ocean
would be between us, which is so terrible even to
sailors. What would it be to me, a woman, who never saw
it? We should be imprisoned by it in this country,
all, all alone, with no help; better die where we are.
I can hardly write--I cannot stop my tears--it is not
for myself; I could put my trust in God; and let the
worst come, I think I could bear it, if I were alone.
But my mother, my sick, my dear, dear mother, who
never, since I was born, spoke a harsh word to me, who
has been patient in many sufferings; pity her, dear
Lady, she must die a miserable death if you do not pity
her. People speak carelessly of her, because she is
old and infirm, as if we must not all, if we are
spared, become so; and then, when the young are old
themselves, they will think that they ought to be
taken care of. It is very silly of me to write in this
way to you; but, when I hear her trying not to groan,
and see her look smiling on me to comfort me, when I
know she is in pain; and when I think that she does not
know the worst, but she soon must; and then she will
not complain; but I shall sit guessing at all that she
is dwelling upon, of famine and misery--I feel as if
my heart must break, and I do not know what I say or
do; my mother--mother for whom I have borne much, God
preserve you from this fate! Preserve her, Lady, and
He will bless you; and I, poor miserable creature as I
am, will thank you and pray for you while I live.
"Your unhappy and dutiful servant,
"Dec. 30th, 2097. LUCY MARTIN."
This letter deeply affected Idris, and she instantly
proposed, that we should return to Datchet, to assist
Lucy and her mother. I said that I would without delay
set out for that place, but entreated her to join her
brother, and there await my return with the children.
But Idris was in high spirits, and full of hope. She
declared that she could not consent even to a temporary
separation from me, but that there was no need of this,
the motion of the carriage did her good, and the
distance was too trifling to be considered. We could
dispatch messengers to Adrian, to inform him of our
deviation from the original plan. She spoke with
vivacity, and drew a picture after her own dear heart,
of the pleasure we should bestow upon Lucy, and
declared, if I went, she must accompany me, and that
she should very much dislike to entrust the charge of
rescuing them to others, who might fulfil it with
coldness or inhumanity. Lucy's life had been one act
of devotion and virtue; let her now reap the small
reward of finding her excellence appreciated, and her
necessity assisted, by those whom she respected and
honoured.
These, and many other arguments, were urged with gentle
pertinacity, and the ardour of a wish to do all the
good in her power, by her whose simple expression of a
desire and slightest request had ever been a law with
me. I, of course, consented, the moment that I saw that
she had set her heart upon this step. We sent half our
attendant troop on to Adrian; and with the other half
our carriage took a retrograde course back to Windsor.
I wonder now how I could be so blind and senseless, as
thus to risk the safety of Idris; for, if I had eyes,
surely I could see the sure, though deceitful, advance
of death in her burning cheek and encreasing weakness.
But she said she was better; and I believed her.
Extinction could not be near a being, whose vivacity
and intelligence hourly encreased, and whose frame was
endowed with an intense, and I fondly thought, a strong
and permanent spirit of life. Who, after a great
disaster, has not looked back with wonder at his
inconceivable obtuseness of understanding, that could
not perceive the many minute threads with which fate
weaves the inextricable net of our destinies, until he
is inmeshed completely in it?
The cross roads which we now entered upon, were even in
a worse state than the long neglected high-ways; and
the inconvenience seemed to menace the perishing frame
of Idris with destruction. Passing through Dartford, we
arrived at Hampton on the second day. Even in this
short interval my beloved companion grew sensibly
worse in health, though her spirits were still light,
and she cheered my growing anxiety with gay sallies;
sometimes the thought pierced my brain--Is she
dying?--as I saw her fair fleshless hand rest on mine,
or observed the feebleness with which she performed the
accustomed acts of life. I drove away the idea, as if
it had been suggested by insanity; but it occurred
again and again, only to be dispelled by the continued
liveliness of her manner.
About mid-day, after quitting Hampton, our carriage
broke down: the shock caused Idris to faint, but on her
reviving no other ill consequence ensued; our party of
attendants had as usual gone on before us, and our
coachman went in search of another vehicle, our former
one being rendered by this accident unfit for service.
The only place near us was a poor village, in which he
found a kind of caravan, able to hold four people, but
it was clumsy and ill hung; besides this he found a
very excellent cabriolet: our plan was soon arranged; I
would drive Idris in the latter; while the children
were conveyed by the servant in the former. But these
arrangements cost time; we had agreed to proceed that
night to Windsor, and thither our purveyors had gone:
we should find considerable difficulty in getting
accommodation, before we reached this place; after all,
the distance was only ten miles; my horse was a good
one; I would go forward at a good pace with Idris,
leaving the children to follow at a rate more consonant
to the uses of their cumberous machine.
Evening closed in quickly, far more quickly than I was
prepared to expect. At the going down of the sun it
began to snow heavily. I attempted in vain to defend
my beloved companion from the storm; the wind drove
the snow in our faces; and it lay so high on the
ground, that we made but small way; while the night was
so dark, that but for the white covering on the ground
we should not have been able to see a yard before us.
We had left our accompanying caravan far behind us; and
now I perceived that the storm had made me
unconsciously deviate from my intended route. I had
gone some miles out of my way. My knowledge of the
country enabled me to regain the right road; but,
instead of going, as at first agreed upon, by a cross
road through Stanwell to Datchet, I was obliged to take
the way of Egham and Bishopgate. It was certain
therefore that I should not be rejoined by the other
vehicle, that I should not meet a single
fellow-creature till we arrived at Windsor.
The back of our carriage was drawn up, and I hung a
pelisse before it, thus to curtain the beloved
sufferer from the pelting sleet. She leaned on my
shoulder, growing every moment more languid and feeble;
at first she replied to my words of cheer with
affectionate thanks; but by degrees she sunk into
silence; her head lay heavily upon me; I only knew that
she lived by her irregular breathing and frequent
sighs. For a moment I resolved to stop, and, opposing
the back of the cabriolet to the force of the tempest,
to expect morning as well as I might. But the wind was
bleak and piercing, while the occasional shudderings of
my poor Idris, and the intense cold I felt myself,
demonstrated that this would be a dangerous experiment.
At length methought she slept--fatal sleep, induced by
frost: at this moment I saw the heavy outline of a
cottage traced on the dark horizon close to us:
"Dearest love," I said, "support yourself but one
moment, and we shall have shelter; let us stop here,
that I may open the door of this blessed dwelling."
As I spoke, my heart was transported, and my senses
swam with excessive delight and thankfulness; I placed
the head of Idris against the carriage, and, leaping
out, scrambled through the snow to the cottage, whose
door was open. I had apparatus about me for procuring
light, and that shewed me a comfortable room, with a
pile of wood in one corner, and no appearance of
disorder, except that, the door having been left partly
open, the snow, drifting in, had blocked up the
threshold. I returned to the carriage, and the sudden
change from light to darkness at first blinded me. When
I recovered my sight--eternal God of this lawless
world! O supreme Death! I will not disturb thy silent
reign, or mar my tale with fruitless exclamations of
horror--I saw Idris, who had fallen from the seat to
the bottom of the carriage; her head, its long hair
pendent, with one arm, hung over the side. --Struck by
a spasm of horror, I lifted her up; her heart was
pulseless, her faded lips unfanned by the slightest
breath.
I carried her into the cottage; I placed her on the
bed. Lighting a fire, I chafed her stiffening limbs;
for two long hours I sought to restore departed life;
and, when hope was as dead as my beloved, I closed with
trembling hands her glazed eyes. I did not doubt what I
should now do. In the confusion attendant on my
illness, the task of interring our darling Alfred had
devolved on his grandmother, the Ex-Queen, and she,
true to her ruling passion, had caused him to be
carried to Windsor, and buried in the family vault, in
St. George's Chapel. I must proceed to Windsor, to
calm the anxiety of Clara, who would wait anxiously
for us--yet I would fain spare her the heart-breaking
spectacle of Idris, brought in by me lifeless from the
journey. So first I would place my beloved beside her
child in the vault, and then seek the poor children who
would be expecting me.
I lighted the lamps of my carriage; I wrapt her in
furs, and placed her along the seat; then taking the
reins, made the horses go forward. We proceeded through
the snow, which lay in masses impeding the way, while
the descending flakes, driving against me with
redoubled fury, blinded me. The pain occasioned by the
angry elements, and the cold iron of the shafts of
frost which buffetted me, and entered my aching flesh,
were a relief to me; blunting my mental suffering. The
horses staggered on, and the reins hung loosely in my
hands. I often thought I would lay my head close to the
sweet, cold face of my lost angel, and thus resign
myself to conquering torpor. Yet I must not leave her a
prey to the fowls of the air; but, in pursuance of my
determination place her in the tomb of her forefathers,
where a merciful God might permit me to rest also.
The road we passed through Egham was familiar to me;
but the wind and snow caused the horses to drag their
load slowly and heavily. Suddenly the wind veered from
south-west to west, and then again to north-west. As
Sampson with tug and strain stirred from their bases
the columns that supported the Philistine temple, so
did the gale shake the dense vapours propped on the
horizon, while the massy dome of clouds fell to the
south, disclosing through the scattered web the clear
empyrean, and the little stars, which were set at an
immeasurable distance in the crystalline fields,
showered their small rays on the glittering snow. Even
the horses were cheered, and moved on with renovated
strength. We entered the forest at Bishopgate, and at
the end of the Long Walk I saw the Castle, "the proud
Keep of Windsor, rising in the majesty of proportion,
girt with the double belt of its kindred and coeval
towers." I looked with reverence on a structure,
ancient almost as the rock on which it stood, abode of
kings, theme of admiration for the wise. With greater
reverence and, tearful affection I beheld it as the
asylum of the long lease of love I had enjoyed there
with the perishable, unmatchable treasure of dust,
which now lay cold beside me. Now indeed, I could have
yielded to all the softness of my nature, and wept;
and, womanlike, have uttered bitter plaints; while the
familiar trees, the herds of living deer, the sward
oft prest by her fairy-feet, one by one with sad
association presented themselves. The white gate at the
end of the Long Walk was wide open, and I rode up the
empty town through the first gate of the feudal tower;
and now St. George's Chapel, with its blackened fretted
sides, was right before me. I halted at its door, which
was open; I entered, and placed my lighted lamp on the
altar; then I returned, and with tender caution I bore
Idris up the aisle into the chancel, and laid her
softly down on the carpet which covered the step
leading to the communion table. The banners of the
knights of the garter, and their half drawn swords,
were hung in vain emblazonry above the stalls. The
banner of her family hung there, still surmounted by
its regal crown. Farewell to the glory and heraldry
of England!--I turned from such vanity with a slight
feeling of wonder, at how mankind could have ever been
interested in such things. I bent over the lifeless
corpse of my beloved; and, while looking on her
uncovered face, the features already contracted by the
rigidity of death, I felt as if all the visible
universe had grown as soulless, inane, and comfortless
as the clay-cold image beneath me. I felt for a moment
the intolerable sense of struggle with, and
detestation for, the laws which govern the world; till
the calm still visible on the face of my dead love
recalled me to a more soothing tone of mind, and I
proceeded to fulfil the last office that could now be
paid her. For her I could not lament, so much I envied
her enjoyment of "the sad immunities of the grave."
The vault had been lately opened to place our Alfred
therein. The ceremony customary in these latter days
had been cursorily performed, and the pavement of the
chapel, which was its entrance, having been removed,
had not been replaced. I descended the steps, and
walked through the long passage to the large vault
which contained the kindred dust of my Idris. I
distinguished the small coffin of my babe. With hasty,
trembling hands I constructed a bier beside it,
spreading it with the furs and Indian shawls, which
had wrapt Idris in her journey thither. I lighted the
glimmering lamp, which flickered in this damp abode of
the dead; then I bore my lost one to her last bed,
decently composing her limbs, and covering them with a
mantle, veiling all except her face, which remained
lovely and placid. She appeared to rest like one
over-wearied, her beauteous eyes steeped in sweet
slumber. Yet, so it was not--she was dead! How
intensely I then longed to lie down beside her, to gaze
till death should gather me to the same repose.
But death does not come at the bidding of the
miserable. I had lately recovered from mortal illness,
and my blood had never flowed with such an even
current, nor had my limbs ever been so instinct with
quick life, as now. I felt that my death must be
voluntary. Yet what more natural than famine, as I
watched in this chamber of mortality, placed in a world
of the dead, beside the lost hope of my life?
Meanwhile as I looked on her, the features, which bore
a sisterly resemblance to Adrian, brought my thoughts
back again to the living, to this dear friend, to
Clara, and to Evelyn, who were probably now in
Windsor, waiting anxiously for our arrival.
Methought I heard a noise, a step in the far chapel,
which was re-echoed by its vaulted roof, and borne to
me through the hollow passages. Had Clara seen my
carriage pass up the town, and did she seek me here? I
must save her at least from the horrible scene the
vault presented. I sprung up the steps, and then saw a
female figure, bent with age, and clad in long
mourning robes, advance through the dusky chapel,
supported by a slender cane, yet tottering even with
this support. She heard me, and looked up; the lamp I
held illuminated my figure, and the moon-beams,
struggling through the painted glass, fell upon her
face, wrinkled and gaunt, yet with a piercing eye and
commanding brow--I recognized the Countess of Windsor.
With a hollow voice she asked, "Where is the princess?"
I pointed to the torn up pavement: she walked to the
spot, and looked down into the palpable darkness; for
the vault was too distant for the rays of the small
lamp I had left there to be discernible.
"Your light," she said. I gave it her; and she regarded
the now visible, but precipitous steps, as if
calculating her capacity to descend. Instinctively I
made a silent offer of my assistance. She motioned me
away with a look of scorn, saying in an harsh voice, as
she pointed downwards, "There at least I may have her
undisturbed."
She walked deliberately down, while I, overcome,
miserable beyond words, or tears, or groans, threw
myself on the pavement near--the stiffening form of
Idris was before me, the death-struck countenance
hushed in eternal repose beneath. That was to me the
end of all! The day before, I had figured to my self
various adventures, and communion with my friends in
after time--now I had leapt the interval, and reached
the utmost edge and bourne of life. Thus wrapt in
gloom, enclosed, walled up, vaulted over by the
omnipotent present, I was startled by the sound of feet
on the steps of the tomb, and I remembered her whom I
had utterly forgotten, my angry visitant; her tall form
slowly rose upwards from the vault, a living statue,
instinct with hate, and human, passionate strife: she
seemed to me as having reached the pavement of the
aisle; she stood motionless, seeking with her eyes
alone, some desired object--till, perceiving me close
to her, she placed her wrinkled hand on my arm,
exclaiming with tremulous accents, "Lionel Verney, my
son!" This name, applied at such a moment by my
angel's mother, instilled into me more respect than I
had ever before felt for this disdainful lady. I bowed
my head, and kissed her shrivelled hand, and, remarking
that she trembled violently, supported her to the end
of the chancel, where she sat on the steps that led to
the regal stall. She suffered herself to be led, and
still holding my hand, she leaned her head back against
the stall, while the moon beams, tinged with various
colours by the painted glass, fell on her glistening
eyes; aware of her weakness, again calling to mind her
long cherished dignity, she dashed the tears away; yet
they fell fast, as she said, for excuse, "She is so
beautiful and placid, even in death. No harsh feeling
ever clouded her serene brow; how did I treat her?
wounding her gentle heart with savage coldness; I had
no compassion on her in past years, does she forgive me
now? Little, little does it boot to talk of repentance
and forgiveness to the dead, had I during her life once
consulted her gentle wishes, and curbed my rugged
nature to do her pleasure, I should not feel thus."
Idris and her mother were unlike in person. The dark
hair, deep-set black eyes, and prominent features of
the Ex-Queen were in entire contrast to the golden
tresses, the full blue orbs, and the soft lines and
contour of her daughter's countenance. Yet, in latter
days, illness had taken from my poor girl the full
outline of her face, and reduced it to the inflexible
shape of the bone beneath. In the form of her brow, in
her oval chin, there was to be found a resemblance to
her mother; nay in some moods, their gestures were not
unlike; nor, having lived so long together, was this
wonderful.
There is a magic power in resemblance. When one we love
dies, we hope to see them in another state, and half
expect that the agency of mind will inform its new
garb in imitation of its decayed earthly vesture. But
these are ideas of the mind only. We know that the
instrument is shivered, the sensible image lies in
miserable fragments, dissolved to dusty nothingness; a
look, a gesture, or a fashioning of the limbs similar
to the dead in a living person, touches a thrilling
chord, whose sacred harmony is felt in the heart's
dearest recess. Strangely moved, prostrate before this
spectral image, and enslaved by the force of blood
manifested in likeness of look and movement, I remained
trembling in the presence of the harsh, proud, and till
now unloved mother of Idris.
Poor, mistaken woman! in her tenderest mood before, she
had cherished the idea, that a word, a look of
reconciliation from her, would be received with joy,
and repay long years of severity. Now that the time was
gone for the exercise of such power, she fell at once
upon the thorny truth of things, and felt that neither
smile nor caress could penetrate to the unconscious
state, or influence the happiness of her who lay in the
vault beneath. This conviction, together with the
remembrance of soft replies to bitter speeches, of
gentle looks repaying angry glances; the perception of
the falsehood, paltryness and futility of her cherished
dreams of birth and power; the overpowering knowledge,
that love and life were the true emperors of our
mortal state; all, as a tide, rose, and filled her soul
with stormy and bewildering confusion. It fell to my
lot, to come as the influential power, to allay the
fierce tossing of these tumultuous waves. I spoke to
her; I led her to reflect how happy Idris had really
been, and how her virtues and numerous excellencies
had found scope and estimation in her past career. I
praised her, the idol of my heart's dear worship, the
admired type of feminine perfection. With ardent and
overflowing eloquence, I relieved my heart from its
burthen, and awoke to the sense of a new pleasure in
life, as I poured forth the funeral eulogy. Then I
referred to Adrian, her loved brother, and to her
surviving child. I declared, which I had before almost
forgotten, what my duties were with regard to these
valued portions of herself, and bade the melancholy
repentant mother reflect, how she could best expiate
unkindness towards the dead, by redoubled love of the
survivors. Consoling her, my own sorrows were assuaged;
my sincerity won her entire conviction.
She turned to me. The hard, inflexible, persecuting
woman, turned with a mild expression of face, and said,
"If our beloved angel sees us now, it will delight her
to find that I do you even tardy justice. You were
worthy of her; and from my heart I am glad that you
won her away from me. Pardon, my son, the many wrongs I
have done you; forget my bitter words and unkind
treatment--take me, and govern me as you will."
I seized this docile moment to propose our departure
from the church. "First," she said, "let us replace
the pavement above the vault."
We drew near to it; "Shall we look on her again?" I
asked.
"I cannot," she replied, "and, I pray you, neither do
you. We need not torture ourselves by gazing on the
soulless body, while her living spirit is buried quick
in our hearts, and her surpassing loveliness is so
deeply carved there, that sleeping or waking she must
ever be present to us."
For a few moments, we bent in solemn silence over the
open vault. I consecrated my future life, to the
embalming of her dear memory; I vowed to serve her
brother and her child till death. The convulsive sob
of my companion made me break off my internal orisons.
I next dragged the stones over the entrance of the
tomb, and closed the gulph that contained the life of
my life. Then, supporting my decrepid fellow-mourner,
we slowly left the chapel. I felt, as I stepped into
the open air, as if I had quitted an happy nest of
repose, for a dreary wilderness, a tortuous path, a
bitter, joyless, hopeless pilgrimage.
[Vol. III]
THE LAST MAN
CHAPTER IV.
OUR escort had been directed to prepare our abode for
the night at the inn, opposite the ascent to the
Castle. We could not again visit the halls and
familiar chambers of our home, on a mere visit. We had
already left for ever the glades of Windsor, and all
of coppice, flowery hedgerow, and murmuring stream,
which gave shape and intensity to the love of our
country, and the almost superstitious attachment with
which we regarded native England. It had been our
intention to have called at Lucy's dwelling in
Datchet, and to have re-assured her with promises of
aid and protection before we repaired to our quarters
for the night. Now, as the Countess of Windsor and I
turned down the steep hill that led from the Castle, we
saw the children, who had just stopped in their
caravan, at the inn-door. They had passed through
Datchet without halting. I dreaded to meet them, and to
be the bearer of my tragic story, so while they were
still occupied in the hurry of arrival, I suddenly left
them, and through the snow and clear moon-light air,
hastened along the well known road to Datchet.
Well known indeed it was. Each cottage stood on its
accustomed site, each tree wore its familiar
appearance. Habit had graven uneraseably on my memory,
every turn and change of object on the road. At a short
distance beyond the Little Park, was an elm half blown
down by a storm, some ten years ago; and still, with
leafless snow-laden branches, it stretched across the
pathway, which wound through a meadow, beside a shallow
brook, whose brawling was silenced by frost--that
stile, that white gate, that hollow oak tree, which
doubtless once belonged to the forest, and which now
shewed in the moonlight its gaping rent; to whose
fanciful appearance, tricked out by the dusk into a
resemblance of the human form, the children had given
the name of Falstaff;--all these objects were as well
known to me as the cold hearth of my deserted home,
and every moss-grown wall and plot of orchard ground,
alike as twin lambs are to each other in a stranger's
eye, yet to my accustomed gaze bore differences,
distinction, and a name. England remained, though
England was dead--it was the ghost of merry England
that I beheld, under those greenwood shade passing
generations had sported in security and ease. To this
painful recognition of familiar places, was added a
feeling experienced by all, understood by none--a
feeling as if in some state, less visionary than a
dream, in some past real existence, I had seen all I
saw, with precisely the same feelings as I now beheld
them--as if all my sensations were a duplex mirror of a
former revelation. To get rid of this oppressive sense
I strove to imagine change in this tranquil spot--this
augmented my mood, by causing me to bestow more
attention on the objects which occasioned me pain.
I reached Datchet and Lucy's humble abode--once noisy
with Saturday night revellers, or trim and neat on
Sunday morning it had borne testimony to the labours
and orderly habits of the housewife. The snow lay high
about the door, as if it had remained unclosed for many
days.
"What scene of death hath Roscius now to act?"
I muttered to myself as I looked at the dark casements.
At first I thought I saw a light in one of them, but it
proved to be merely the refraction of the moon-beams,
while the only sound was the crackling branches as the
breeze whirred the snow flakes from them--the moon
sailed high and unclouded in the interminable ether,
while the shadow of the cottage lay black on the
garden behind. I entered this by the open wicket, and
anxiously examined each window. At length I detected a
ray of light struggling through a closed shutter in one
of the upper rooms--it was a novel feeling, alas! to
look at any house and say there dwells its usual
inmate--the door of the house was merely on the latch:
so I entered and ascended the moon-lit staircase. The
door of the inhabited room was ajar: looking in, I saw
Lucy sitting as at work at the table on which the light
stood; the implements of needlework were about her,
but her hand had fallen on her lap, and her eyes, fixed
on the ground, shewed by their vacancy that her
thoughts wandered. Traces of care and watching had
diminished her former attractions--but her simple dress
and cap, her desponding attitude, and the single candle
that cast its light upon her, gave for a moment a
picturesque grouping to the whole. A fearful reality
recalled me from the thought--a figure lay stretched
on the bed covered by a sheet--her mother was dead,
and Lucy, apart from all the world, deserted and alone,
watched beside the corpse during the weary night. I
entered the room, and my unexpected appearance at first
drew a scream from the lone survivor of a dead nation;
but she recognised me, and recovered herself, with the
quick exercise of self-control habitual to her. "Did
you not expect me?" I asked, in that low voice which
the presence of the dead makes us as it were
instinctively assume.
"You are very good," replied she, "to have come
yourself; I can never thank you sufficiently; but it is
too late."
"Too late," cried I, "what do you mean? It is not too
late to take you from this deserted place, and conduct
you to---"
My own loss, which I had forgotten as I spoke, now made
me turn away, while choking grief impeded my speech. I
threw open the window, and looked on the cold, waning,
ghastly, misshaped circle on high, and the chill white
earth beneath--did the spirit of sweet Idris sail along
the moon-frozen crystal air?--No, no, a more genial
atmosphere, a lovelier habitation was surely hers!
I indulged in this meditation for a moment, and then
again addressed the mourner, who stood leaning against
the bed with that expression of resigned despair, of
complete misery, and a patient sufferance of it, which
is far more touching than any of the insane ravings or
wild gesticulation of untamed sorrow. I desired to draw
her from this spot; but she opposed my wish. That class
of persons whose imagination and sensibility have never
been taken out of the narrow circle immediately in
view, if they possess these qualities to any extent,
are apt to pour their influence into the very
realities which appear to destroy them, and to cling to
these with double tenacity from not being able to
comprehend any thing beyond. Thus Lucy, in desert
England, in a dead world, wished to fulfil the usual
ceremonies of the dead, such as were customary to the
English country people, when death was a rare
visitant, and gave us time to receive his dreaded
usurpation with pomp and circumstance--going forth in
procession to deliver the keys of the tomb into his
conquering hand. She had already, alone as she was,
accomplished some of these, and the work on which I
found her employed, was her mother's shroud. My heart
sickened at such detail of woe, which a female can
endure, but which is more painful to the masculine
spirit than deadliest struggle, or throes of
unutterable but transient agony.
This must not be, I told her; and then, as further
inducement, I communicated to her my recent loss, and
gave her the idea that she must come with me to take
charge of the orphan children, whom the death of Idris
had deprived of a mother's care. Lucy never resisted
the call of a duty, so she yielded, and closing the
casements and doors with care, she accompanied me back
to Windsor. As we went she communicated to me the
occasion of her mother's death. Either by some
mischance she had got sight of Lucy's letter to Idris,
or she had overheard her conversation with the
countryman who bore it; however it might be, she
obtained a knowledge of the appalling situation of
herself and her daughter, her aged frame could not
sustain the anxiety and horror this discovery
instilled--she concealed her knowledge from Lucy, but
brooded over it through sleepless nights, till fever
and delirium, swift forerunners of death, disclosed the
secret. Her life, which had long been hovering on its
extinction, now yielded at once to the united effects
of misery and sickness, and that same morning she had
died.
After the tumultuous emotions of the day, I was glad to
find on my arrival at the inn that my companions had
retired to rest. I gave Lucy in charge to the
Countess's attendant, and then sought repose from my
various struggles and impatient regrets. For a few
moments the events of the day floated in disastrous
pageant through my brain, till sleep bathed it in
forgetfulness; when morning dawned and I awoke, it
seemed as if my slumber had endured for years.
My companions had not shared my oblivion. Clara's
swollen eyes shewed that she has passed the night in
weeping. The Countess looked haggard and wan. Her firm
spirit had not found relief in tears, and she suffered
the more from all the painful retrospect and agonizing
regret that now occupied her. We departed from Windsor,
as soon as the burial rites had been performed for
Lucy's mother, and, urged on by an impatient desire to
change the scene, went forward towards Dover with
speed, our escort having gone before to provide horses;
finding them either in the warm stables they
instinctively sought during the cold weather, or
standing shivering in the bleak fields ready to
surrender their liberty in exchange for offered corn.
During our ride the Countess recounted to me the
extraordinary circumstances which had brought her so
strangely to my side in the chancel of St. George's
chapel. When last she had taken leave of Idris, as she
looked anxiously on her faded person and pallid
countenance, she had suddenly been visited by a
conviction that she saw her for the last time. It was
hard to part with her while under the dominion of this
sentiment, and for the last time she endeavoured to
persuade her daughter to commit herself to her nursing,
permitting me to join Adrian. Idris mildly refused,
and thus they separated. The idea that they should
never again meet grew on the Countess's mind, and
haunted her perpetually; a thousand times she had
resolved to turn back and join us, and was again and
again restrained by the pride and anger of which she
was the slave. Proud of heart as she was, she bathed
her pillow with nightly tears, and through the day was
subdued by nervous agitation and expectation of the
dreaded event, which she was wholly incapable of
curbing. She confessed that at this period her hatred
of me knew no bounds, since she considered me as the
sole obstacle to the fulfilment of her dearest wish,
that of attending upon her daughter in her last
moments. She desired to express her fears to her son,
and to seek consolation from his sympathy with, or
courage from his rejection of, her auguries.
On the first day of her arrival at Dover she walked
with him on the sea beach, and with the timidity
characteristic of passionate and exaggerated feeling
was by degrees bringing the conversation to the desired
point, when she could communicate her fears to him,
when the messenger who bore my letter announcing our
temporary return to Windsor, came riding down to them.
He gave some oral account of how he had left us, and
added, that notwithstanding the cheerfulness and good
courage of Lady Idris, he was afraid that she would
hardly reach Windsor alive.
"True," said the Countess, "your fears are just, she is
about to expire!"
As she spoke, her eyes were fixed on a tomblike hollow
of the cliff, and she saw, she averred the same to me
with solemnity, Idris pacing slowly towards this cave.
She was turned from her, her head was bent down, her
white dress was such as she was accustomed to wear,
except that a thin crape-like veil covered her golden
tresses, and concealed her as a dim transparent mist.
She looked dejected, as docilely yielding to a
commanding power; she submissively entered, and was
lost in the dark recess.
"Were I subject to visionary moods," said the venerable
lady, as she continued her narrative, "I might doubt my
eyes, and condemn my credulity; but reality is the
world I live in, and what I saw I doubt not had
existence beyond myself. From that moment I could not
rest; it was worth my existence to see her once again
before she died; I knew that I should not accomplish
this, yet I must endeavour. I immediately departed for
Windsor; and, though I was assured that we travelled
speedily, it seemed to me that our progress was
snail-like, and that delays were created solely for my
annoyance. Still I accused you, and heaped on your head
the fiery ashes of my burning impatience. It was no
disappointment, though an agonizing pang, when you
pointed to her last abode; and words would ill express
the abhorrence I that moment felt towards you, the
triumphant impediment to my dearest wishes. I saw her,
and anger, and hate, and injustice died at her bier,
giving place at their departure to a remorse (Great
God, that I should feel it!) which must last while
memory and feeling endure."
To medicine such remorse, to prevent awakening love and
new-born mildness from producing the same bitter fruit
that hate and harshness had done, I devoted all my
endeavours to soothe the venerable penitent. Our party
was a melancholy one; each was possessed by regret for
what was remediless; for the absence of his mother
shadowed even the infant gaiety of Evelyn. Added to
this was the prospect of the uncertain future. Before
the final accomplishment of any great voluntary change
the mind vacillates, now soothing itself by fervent
expectation, now recoiling from obstacles which seem
never to have presented themselves before with so
frightful an aspect. An involuntary tremor ran through
me when I thought that in another day we might have
crossed the watery barrier, and have set forward on
that hopeless, interminable, sad wandering, which but a
short time before I regarded as the only relief to
sorrow that our situation afforded.
Our approach to Dover was announced by the loud
roarings of the wintry sea. They were borne miles
inland by the sound-laden blast, and by their
unaccustomed uproar, imparted a feeling of insecurity
and peril to our stable abode. At first we hardly
permitted ourselves to think that any unusual eruption
of nature caused this tremendous war of air and water,
but rather fancied that we merely listened to what we
had heard a thousand times before, when we had watched
the flocks of fleece-crowned waves, driven by the
winds, come to lament and die on the barren sands and
pointed rocks. But we found upon advancing farther,
that Dover was overflowed--many of the houses were
overthrown by the surges which filled the streets, and
with hideous brawlings sometimes retreated leaving the
pavement of the town bare, till again hurried forward
by the influx of ocean, they returned with
thunder-sound to their usurped station.
Hardly less disturbed than the tempestuous world of
waters was the assembly of human beings, that from the
cliff fearfully watched its ravings. On the morning of
the arrival of the emigrants under the conduct of
Adrian, the sea had been serene and glassy, the slight
ripples refracted the sunbeams, which shed their
radiance through the clear blue frosty air. This
placid appearance of nature was hailed as a good
augury for the voyage, and the chief immediately
repaired to the harbour to examine two steamboats which
were moored there. On the following midnight, when all
were at rest, a frightful storm of wind and clattering
rain and hail first disturbed them, and the voice of
one shrieking in the streets, that the sleepers must
awake or they would be drowned; and when they rushed
out, half clothed, to discover the meaning of this
alarm, they found that the tide, rising above every
mark, was rushing into the town. They ascended the
cliff, but the darkness permitted only the white crest
of waves to be seen, while the roaring wind mingled its
howlings in dire accord with the wild surges. The
awful hour of night, the utter inexperience of many who
had never seen the sea before, the wailing of women
and cries of children added to the horror of the
tumult.
All the following day the same scene continued. When
the tide ebbed, the town was left dry; but on its flow,
it rose even higher than on the preceding night. The
vast ships that lay rotting in the roads were whirled
from their anchorage, and driven and jammed against the
cliff, the vessels in the harbour were flung on land
like sea-weed, and there battered to pieces by the
breakers. The waves dashed against the cliff, which if
in any place it had been before loosened, now gave way,
and the affrighted crowd saw vast fragments of the near
earth fall with crash and roar into the deep. This
sight operated differently on different persons. The
greater part thought it a judgment of God, to prevent
or punish our emigration from our native land. Many
were doubly eager to quit a nook of ground now become
their prison, which appeared unable to resist the
inroads of ocean's giant waves.
When we arrived at Dover, after a fatiguing day's
journey, we all required rest and sleep; but the scene
acting around us soon drove away such ideas. We were
drawn, along with the greater part of our companions,
to the edge of the cliff, there to listen to and make
a thousand conjectures. A fog narrowed our horizon to
about a quarter of a mile, and the misty veil, cold
and dense, enveloped sky and sea in equal obscurity.
What added to our inquietude was the circumstance that
two-thirds of our original number were now waiting for
us in Paris, and clinging, as we now did most
painfully, to any addition to our melancholy remnant,
this division, with the tameless impassable ocean
between, struck us with affright. At length, after
loitering for several hours on the cliff, we retired
to Dover Castle, whose roof sheltered all who breathed
the English air, and sought the sleep necessary to
restore strength and courage to our worn frames and
languid spirits.
Early in the morning Adrian brought me the welcome
intelligence that the wind had changed: it had been
south-west; it was now north-east. The sky was stripped
bare of clouds by the increasing gale, while the tide
at its ebb seceded entirely from the town. The change
of wind rather increased the fury of the sea, but it
altered its late dusky hue to a bright green; and in
spite of its unmitigated clamour, its more cheerful
appearance instilled hope and pleasure. All day we
watched the ranging of the mountainous waves, and
towards sunset a desire to decypher the promise for the
morrow at its setting, made us all gather with one
accord on the edge of the cliff. When the mighty
luminary approached within a few degrees of the
tempest-tossed horizon, suddenly, a wonder! three other
suns, alike burning and brilliant, rushed from various
quarters of the heavens towards the great orb; they
whirled round it. The glare of light was intense to
our dazzled eyes; the sun itself seemed to join in the
dance, while the sea burned like a furnace, like all
Vesuvius a-light, with flowing lava beneath. The horses
broke loose from their stalls in terror--a herd of
cattle, panic struck, raced down to the brink of the
cliff, and blinded by light, plunged down with
frightful yells in the waves below. The time occupied
by the apparition of these meteors was comparatively
short; suddenly the three mock suns united in one, and
plunged into the sea. A few seconds afterwards, a
deafening watery sound came up with awful peal from the
spot where they had disappeared.
Meanwhile the sun, disencumbered from his strange
satellites, paced with its accustomed majesty towards
its western home. When--we dared not trust our eyes
late dazzled, but it seemed that--the sea rose to meet
it--it mounted higher and higher, till the fiery globe
was obscured, and the wall of water still ascended the
horizon; it appeared as if suddenly the motion of
earth was revealed to us--as if no longer we were ruled
by ancient laws, but were turned adrift in an unknown
region of space. Many cried aloud, that these were no
meteors, but globes of burning matter, which had set
fire to the earth, and caused the vast cauldron at our
feet to bubble up with its measureless waves; the day
of judgment was come they averred, and a few moments
would transport us before the awful countenance of the
omnipotent judge; while those less given to visionary
terrors, declared that two conflicting gales had
occasioned the last phaenomenon. In support of this
opinion they pointed out the fact that the east wind
died away, while the rushing of the coming west
mingled its wild howl with the roar of the advancing
waters. Would the cliff resist this new battery? Was
not the giant wave far higher than the precipice?
Would not our little island be deluged by its
approach? The crowd of spectators fled. They were
dispersed over the fields, stopping now and then, and
looking back in terror. A sublime sense of awe calmed
the swift pulsations of my heart--I awaited the
approach of the destruction menaced, with that solemn
resignation which an unavoidable necessity instils.
The ocean every moment assumed a more terrific aspect,
while the twilight was dimmed by the rack which the
west wind spread over the sky. By slow degrees however,
as the wave advanced, it took a more mild appearance;
some under current of air, or obstruction in the bed
of the waters, checked its progress, and it sank
gradually; while the surface of the sea became
uniformly higher as it dissolved into it. This change
took from us the fear of an immediate catastrophe,
although we were still anxious as to the final result.
We continued during the whole night to watch the fury
of the sea and the pace of the driving clouds, through
whose openings the rare stars rushed impetuously; the
thunder of conflicting elements deprived us of all
power to sleep.
This endured ceaselessly for three days and nights. The
stoutest hearts quailed before the savage enmity of
nature; provisions began to fail us, though every day
foraging parties were dispersed to the nearer towns. In
vain we schooled ourselves into the belief, that there
was nothing out of the common order of nature in the
strife we witnessed; our disasterous and overwhelming
destiny turned the best of us to cowards. Death had
hunted us through the course of many months, even to
the narrow strip of time on which we now stood; narrow
indeed, and buffeted by storms, was our footway
overhanging the great sea of calamity--
As an unsheltered northern shore
Is shaken by the wintry wave--
And frequent storms for evermore,
(While from the west the loud winds rave,
Or from the east, or mountains hoar)
The struck and tott'ring sand-bank lave.*
It required more than human energy to bear up against
the menaces of destruction that every where surrounded
us.
[* Chorus in Oedipus Coloneus.]
After the lapse of three days, the gale died away, the
sea-gull sailed upon the calm bosom of the windless
atmosphere, and the last yellow leaf on the topmost
branch of the oak hung without motion. The sea no
longer broke with fury; but a swell setting in steadily
for shore, with long sweep and sullen burst replaced
the roar of the breakers. Yet we derived hope from the
change, and we did not doubt that after the interval of
a few days the sea would resume its tranquillity. The
sunset of the fourth day favoured this idea; it was
clear and golden. As we gazed on the purple sea,
radiant beneath, we were attracted by a novel
spectacle; a dark speck--as it neared, visibly a
boat--rode on the top of the waves, every now and then
lost in the steep vallies between. We marked its course
with eager questionings; and, when we saw that it
evidently made for shore, we descended to the only
practicable landing place, and hoisted a signal to
direct them. By the help of glasses we distinguished
her crew; it consisted of nine men, Englishmen,
belonging in truth to the two divisions of our people,
who had preceded us, and had been for several weeks at
Paris. As countryman was wont to meet countryman in
distant lands, did we greet our visitors on their
landing, with outstretched hands and gladsome welcome.
They were slow to reciprocate our gratulations. They
looked angry and resentful; not less than the chafed
sea which they had traversed with imminent peril,
though apparently more displeased with each other than
with us. It was strange to see these human beings, who
appeared to be given forth by the earth like rare and
inestimable plants, full of towering passion, and the
spirit of angry contest. Their first demand was to be
conducted to the Lord Protector of England, so they
called Adrian, though he had long discarded the empty
title, as a bitter mockery of the shadow to which the
Protectorship was now reduced. They were speedily led
to Dover Castle, from whose keep Adrian had watched the
movements of the boat. He received them with the
interest and wonder so strange a visitation created.
In the confusion occasioned by their angry demands for
precedence, it was long before we could discover the
secret meaning of this strange scene. By degrees, from
the furious declamations of one, the fierce
interruptions of another, and the bitter scoffs of a
third, we found that they were deputies from our colony
at Paris, from three parties there formed, who, each
with angry rivalry, tried to attain a superiority over
the other two. These deputies had been dispatched by
them to Adrian, who had been selected arbiter; and they
had journied from Paris to Calais, through the vacant
towns and desolate country, indulging the while violent
hatred against each other; and now they pleaded their
several causes with unmitigated party-spirit.
By examining the deputies apart, and after much
investigation, we learnt the true state of things at
Paris. Since parliament had elected him Ryland's
deputy, all the surviving English had submitted to
Adrian. He was our captain to lead us from our native
soil to unknown lands, our lawgiver and our preserver.
On the first arrangement of our scheme of emigration,
no continued separation of our members was
contemplated, and the command of the whole body in
gradual ascent of power had its apex in the Earl of
Windsor. But unforeseen circumstances changed our plans
for us, and occasioned the greater part of our numbers
to be divided for the space of nearly two months, from
the supreme chief. They had gone over in two distinct
bodies; and on their arrival at Paris dissension arose
between them.
They had found Paris a desert. When first the plague
had appeared, the return of travellers and merchants,
and communications by letter, informed us regularly of
the ravages made by disease on the continent. But with
the encreased mortality this intercourse declined and
ceased. Even in England itself communication from one
part of the island to the other became slow and rare.
No vessel stemmed the flood that divided Calais from
Dover; or if some melancholy voyager, wishing to assure
himself of the life or death of his relatives, put
from the French shore to return among us, often the
greedy ocean swallowed his little craft, or after a day
or two he was infected by the disorder, and died before
he could tell the tale of the desolation of France. We
were therefore to a great degree ignorant of the state
of things on the continent, and were not without some
vague hope of finding numerous companions in its wide
track. But the same causes that had so fearfully
diminished the English nation had had even greater
scope for mischief in the sister land. France was a
blank; during the long line of road from Calais to
Paris not one human being was found. In Paris there
were a few, perhaps a hundred, who, resigned to their
coming fate, flitted about the streets of the capital
and assembled to converse of past times, with that
vivacity and even gaiety that seldom deserts the
individuals of this nation.
The English took uncontested possession of Paris. Its
high houses and narrow streets were lifeless. A few
pale figures were to be distinguished at the accustomed
resort at the Tuileries; they wondered wherefore the
islanders should approach their ill-fated city--for in
the excess of wretchedness, the sufferers always
imagine, that their part of the calamity is the
bitterest, as, when enduring intense pain, we would
exchange the particular torture we writhe under, for
any other which should visit a different part of the
frame. They listened to the account the emigrants gave
of their motives for leaving their native land, with a
shrug almost of disdain--"Return," they said, "return
to your island, whose sea breezes, and division from
the continent gives some promise of health; if
Pestilence among you has slain its hundreds, with us it
has slain its thousands. Are you not even now more
numerous than we are?--A year ago you would have found
only the sick burying the dead; now we are happier; for
the pang of struggle has passed away, and the few you
find here are patiently waiting the final blow. But
you, who are not content to die, breathe no longer the
air of France, or soon you will only be a part of her
soil."
Thus, by menaces of the sword, they would have driven
back those who had escaped from fire. But the peril
left behind was deemed imminent by my countrymen; that
before them doubtful and distant; and soon other
feelings arose to obliterate fear, or to replace it by
passions, that ought to have had no place among a
brotherhood of unhappy survivors of the expiring world.
The more numerous division of emigrants, which arrived
first at Paris, assumed a superiority of rank and
power; the second party asserted their independence. A
third was formed by a sectarian, a self-erected
prophet, who, while he attributed all power and rule to
God, strove to get the real command of his comrades
into his own hands. This third division consisted of
fewest individuals, but their purpose was more one,
their obedience to their leader more entire, their
fortitude and courage more unyielding and active.
During the whole progress of the plague, the teachers
of religion were in possession of great power; a power
of good, if rightly directed, or of incalculable
mischief, if fanaticism or intolerance guided their
efforts. In the present instance, a worse feeling than
either of these actuated the leader. He was an
impostor in the most determined sense of the term. A
man who had in early life lost, through the indulgence
of vicious propensities, all sense of rectitude or
self-esteem; and who, when ambition was awakened in
him, gave himself up to its influence unbridled by any
scruple. His father had been a methodist preacher, an
enthusiastic man with simple intentions; but whose
pernicious doctrines of election and special grace had
contributed to destroy all conscientious feeling in his
son. During the progress of the pestilence he had
entered upon various schemes, by which to acquire
adherents and power. Adrian had discovered and defeated
these attempts; but Adrian was absent; the wolf
assumed the shepherd's garb, and the flock admitted
the deception: he had formed a party during the few
weeks he had been in Paris, who zealously propagated
the creed of his divine mission, and believed that
safety and salvation were to be afforded only to those
who put their trust in him.
When once the spirit of dissension had arisen, the most
frivolous causes gave it activity. The first party, on
arriving at Paris, had taken possession of the
Tuileries; chance and friendly feeling had induced the
second to lodge near to them. A contest arose
concerning the distribution of the pillage; the chiefs
of the first division demanded that the whole should be
placed at their disposal; with this assumption the
opposite party refused to comply. When next the latter
went to forage, the gates of Paris were shut on them.
After overcoming this difficulty, they marched in a
body to the Tuileries. They found that their enemies
had been already expelled thence by the Elect, as the
fanatical party designated themselves, who refused to
admit any into the palace who did not first abjure
obedience to all except God, and his delegate on
earth, their chief. Such was the beginning of the
strife, which at length proceeded so far, that the
three divisions, armed, met in the Place Vendome, each
resolved to subdue by force the resistance of its
adversaries. They assembled, their muskets were loaded,
and even pointed at the breasts of their so called
enemies. One word had been sufficient; and there the
last of mankind would have burthened their souls with
the crime of murder, and dipt their hands in each
other's blood. A sense of shame, a recollection that
not only their cause, but the existence of the whole
human race was at stake, entered the breast of the
leader of the more numerous party. He was aware, that
if the ranks were thinned, no other recruits could fill
them up; that each man was as a priceless gem in a
kingly crown, which if destroyed, the earth's deep
entrails could yield no paragon. He was a young man,
and had been hurried on by presumption, and the notion
of his high rank and superiority to all other
pretenders; now he repented his work, he felt that all
the blood about to be shed would be on his head; with
sudden impulse therefore he spurred his horse between
the bands, and, having fixed a white handkerchief on
the point of his uplifted sword, thus demanded parley;
the opposite leaders obeyed the signal. He spoke with
warmth; he reminded them of the oath all the chiefs had
taken to submit to the Lord Protector; he declared
their present meeting to be an act of treason and
mutiny; he allowed that he had been hurried away by
passion, but that a cooler moment had arrived; and he
proposed that each party should send deputies to the
Earl of Windsor, inviting his interference and offering
submission to his decision. His offer was accepted so
far, that each leader consented to command a retreat,
and moreover agreed, that after the approbation of
their several parties had been consulted, they should
meet that night on some neutral spot to ratify the
truce. At the meeting of the chiefs, this plan was
finally concluded upon. The leader of the fanatics
indeed refused to admit the arbitration of Adrian; he
sent ambassadors, rather than deputies, to assert his
claim, not plead his cause.
The truce was to continue until the first of February,
when the bands were again to assemble on the Place
Vendome; it was of the utmost consequence therefore
that Adrian should arrive in Paris by that day, since
an hair might turn the scale, and peace, scared away by
intestine broils, might only return to watch by the
silent dead. It was now the twenty-eighth of January;
every vessel stationed near Dover had been beaten to
pieces and destroyed by the furious storms I have
commemorated. Our journey however would admit of no
delay. That very night, Adrian, and I, and twelve
others, either friends or attendants, put off from the
English shore, in the boat that had brought over the
deputies. We all took our turn at the oar; and the
immediate occasion of our departure affording us
abundant matter for conjecture and discourse, prevented
the feeling that we left our native country,
depopulate England, for the last time, to enter deeply
into the minds of the greater part of our number. It
was a serene starlight night, and the dark line of the
English coast continued for some time visible at
intervals, as we rose on the broad back of the waves.
I exerted myself with my long oar to give swift impulse
to our skiff; and, while the waters splashed with
melancholy sound against its sides, I looked with sad
affection on this last glimpse of sea-girt England, and
strained my eyes not too soon to lose sight of the
castellated cliff, which rose to protect the land of
heroism and beauty from the inroads of ocean, that,
turbulent as I had lately seen it, required such
cyclopean walls for its repulsion. A solitary sea-gull
winged its flight over our heads, to seek its nest in
a cleft of the precipice. Yes, thou shalt revisit the
land of thy birth, I thought, as I looked invidiously
on the airy voyager; but we shall, never more! Tomb of
Idris, farewell! Grave, in which my heart lies
sepultured, farewell for ever!
We were twelve hours at sea, and the heavy swell
obliged us to exert all our strength. At length, by
mere dint of rowing, we reached the French coast. The
stars faded, and the grey morning cast a dim veil over
the silver horns of the waning moon--the sun rose broad
and red from the sea, as we walked over the sands to
Calais. Our first care was to procure horses, and
although wearied by our night of watching and toil,
some of our party immediately went in quest of these
in the wide fields of the unenclosed and now barren
plain round Calais. We divided ourselves, like seamen,
into watches, and some reposed, while others prepared
the morning's repast. Our foragers returned at noon
with only six horses--on these, Adrian and I, and four
others, proceeded on our journey towards the great
city, which its inhabitants had fondly named the
capital of the civilized world. Our horses had become,
through their long holiday, almost wild, and we crossed
the plain round Calais with impetuous speed. From the
height near Boulogne, I turned again to look on
England; nature had cast a misty pall over her, her
cliff was hidden--there was spread the watery barrier
that divided us, never again to be crossed; she lay on
the ocean plain,
In the great pool a swan's nest.
Ruined the nest, alas! the swans of Albion had passed
away for ever--an uninhabited rock in the wide Pacific,
which had remained since the creation uninhabited,
unnamed, unmarked, would be of as much account in the
world's future history, as desert England.
Our journey was impeded by a thousand obstacles. As our
horses grew tired, we had to seek for others; and hours
were wasted, while we exhausted our artifices to allure
some of these enfranchised slaves of man to resume the
yoke; or as we went from stable to stable through the
towns, hoping to find some who had not forgotten the
shelter of their native stalls. Our ill success in
procuring them, obliged us continually to leave some
one of our companions behind; and on the first of
February, Adrian and I entered Paris, wholly
unaccompanied. The serene morning had dawned when we
arrived at Saint Denis, and the sun was high, when the
clamour of voices, and the clash, as we feared, of
weapons, guided us to where our countrymen had
assembled on the Place Vendome. We passed a knot of
Frenchmen, who were talking earnestly of the madness of
the insular invaders, and then coming by a sudden turn
upon the Place, we saw the sun glitter on drawn swords
and fixed bayonets, while yells and clamours rent the
air. It was a scene of unaccustomed confusion in these
days of depopulation. Roused by fancied wrongs, and
insulting scoffs, the opposite parties had rushed to
attack each other; while the elect, drawn up apart,
seemed to wait an opportunity to fall with better
advantage on their foes, when they should have
mutually weakened each other. A merciful power
interposed, and no blood was shed; for, while the
insane mob were in the very act of attack, the females,
wives, mothers and daughters, rushed between; they
seized the bridles; they embraced the knees of the
horsemen, and hung on the necks, or enweaponed arms of
their enraged relatives; the shrill female scream was
mingled with the manly shout, and formed the wild
clamour that welcomed us on our arrival.
Our voices could not be heard in the tumult; Adrian
however was eminent for the white charger he rode;
spurring him, he dashed into the midst of the throng:
he was recognized, and a loud cry raised for England
and the Protector. The late adversaries, warmed to
affection at the sight of him, joined in heedless
confusion, and surrounded him; the women kissed his
hands, and the edges of his garments; nay, his horse
received tribute of their embraces; some wept their
welcome; he appeared an angel of peace descended among
them; and the only danger was, that his mortal nature
would be demonstrated, by his suffocation from the
kindness of his friends. His voice was at length heard,
and obeyed; the crowd fell back; the chiefs alone
rallied round him. I had seen Lord Raymond ride
through his lines; his look of victory, and majestic
mien obtained the respect and obedience of all: such
was not the appearance or influence of Adrian. His
slight figure, his fervent look, his gesture, more of
deprecation than rule, were proofs that love, unmingled
with fear, gave him dominion over the hearts of a
multitude, who knew that he never flinched from danger,
nor was actuated by other motives than care for the
general welfare. No distinction was now visible
between the two parties, late ready to shed each
other's blood, for, though neither would submit to the
other, they both yielded ready obedience to the Earl
of Windsor.
One party however remained, cut off from the rest,
which did not sympathize in the joy exhibited on
Adrian's arrival, or imbibe the spirit of peace, which
fell like dew upon the softened hearts of their
countrymen. At the head of this assembly was a
ponderous, dark-looking man, whose malign eye surveyed
with gloating delight the stern looks of his followers.
They had hitherto been inactive, but now, perceiving
themselves to be forgotten in the universal jubilee,
they advanced with threatening gestures: our friends
had, as it were in wanton contention, attacked each
other; they wanted but to be told that their cause was
one, for it to become so: their mutual anger had been
a fire of straw, compared to the slow-burning hatred
they both entertained for these seceders, who seized a
portion of the world to come, there to entrench and
incastellate themselves, and to issue with fearful
sally, and appalling denunciations, on the mere common
children of the earth. The first advance of the little
army of the elect reawakened their rage; they grasped
their arms, and waited but their leader's signal to
commence the attack, when the clear tones of Adrian's
voice were heard, commanding them to fall back; with
confused murmur and hurried retreat, as the wave ebbs
clamorously from the sands it lately covered, our
friends obeyed. Adrian rode singly into the space
between the opposing bands; he approached the hostile
leader, as requesting him to imitate his example, but
his look was not obeyed, and the chief advanced,
followed by his whole troop. There were many women
among them, who seemed more eager and resolute than
their male companions. They pressed round their leader,
as if to shield him, while they loudly bestowed on him
every sacred denomination and epithet of worship.
Adrian met them half way; they halted: "What," he
said, "do you seek? Do you require any thing of us that
we refuse to give, and that you are forced to acquire
by arms and warfare?"
His questions were answered by a general cry, in which
the words election, sin, and red right arm of God,
could alone be heard.
Adrian looked expressly at their leader, saying, "Can
you not silence your followers? Mine, you perceive,
obey me."
The fellow answered by a scowl; and then, perhaps
fearful that his people should become auditors of the
debate he expected to ensue, he commanded them to fall
back, and advanced by himself. "What, I again ask,"
said Adrian, "do you require of us?"
"Repentance," replied the man, whose sinister brow
gathered clouds as he spoke. "Obedience to the will of
the Most High, made manifest to these his Elected
People. Do we not all die through your sins, O
generation of unbelief, and have we not a right to
demand of you repentance and obedience?"
"And if we refuse them, what then?" his opponent
inquired mildly.
"Beware," cried the man, "God hears you, and will smite
your stony heart in his wrath; his poisoned arrows
fly, his dogs of death are unleashed! We will not
perish unrevenged--and mighty will our avenger be, when
he descends in visible majesty, and scatters
destruction among you."
"My good fellow," said Adrian, with quiet scorn, "I
wish that you were ignorant only, and I think it would
be no difficult task to prove to you, that you speak of
what you do not understand. On the present occasion
however, it is enough for me to know that you seek
nothing of us; and, heaven is our witness, we seek
nothing of you. I should be sorry to embitter by strife
the few days that we any of us may have here to live;
when there," he pointed downwards, "we shall not be
able to contend, while here we need not. Go home, or
stay; pray to your God in your own mode; your friends
may do the like. My orisons consist in peace and good
will, in resignation and hope. Farewell! "
He bowed slightly to the angry disputant who was about
to reply; and, turning his horse down Rue Saint Honore,
called on his friends to follow him. He rode slowly, to
give time to all to join him at the Barrier, and then
issued his orders that those who yielded obedience to
him, should rendezvous at Versailles. In the meantime
he remained within the walls of Paris, until he had
secured the safe retreat of all. In about a fortnight
the remainder of the emigrants arrived from England,
and they all repaired to Versailles; apartments were
prepared for the family of the Protector in the Grand
Trianon, and there, after the excitement of these
events, we reposed amidst the luxuries of the departed
Bourbons.
[Vol. III]
THE LAST MAN
CHAPTER V.
AFTER the repose of a few days, we held a council, to
decide on our future movements. Our first plan had
been to quit our wintry native latitude, and seek for
our diminished numbers the luxuries and delights of a
southern climate. We had not fixed on any precise spot
as the termination of our wanderings; but a vague
picture of perpetual spring, fragrant groves, and
sparkling streams, floated in our imagination to entice
us on. A variety of causes had detained us in England,
and we had now arrived at the middle of February; if
we pursued our original project, we should find
ourselves in a worse situation than before, having
exchanged our temperate climate for the intolerable
heats of a summer in Egypt or Persia. We were therefore
obliged to modify our plan, as the season continued to
be inclement; and it was determined that we should
await the arrival of spring in our present abode, and
so order our future movements as to pass the hot months
in the icy vallies of Switzerland, deferring our
southern progress until the ensuing autumn, if such a
season was ever again to be beheld by us.
The castle and town of Versailles afforded our numbers
ample accommodation, and foraging parties took it by
turns to supply our wants. There was a strange and
appalling motley in the situation of these the last of
the race. At first I likened it to a colony, which
borne over the far seas, struck root for the first
time in a new country. But where was the bustle and
industry characteristic of such an assemblage; the
rudely constructed dwelling, which was to suffice till
a more commodious mansion could be built; the marking
out of fields; the attempt at cultivation; the eager
curiosity to discover unknown animals and herbs; the
excursions for the sake of exploring the country? Our
habitations were palaces our food was ready stored in
granaries--there was no need of labour, no
inquisitiveness, no restless desire to get on. If we
had been assured that we should secure the lives of our
present numbers, there would have been more vivacity
and hope in our councils. We should have discussed as
to the period when the existing produce for man's
sustenance would no longer suffice for us, and what
mode of life we should then adopt. We should have
considered more carefully our future plans, and
debated concerning the spot where we should in future
dwell. But summer and the plague were near, and we
dared not look forward. Every heart sickened at the
thought of amusement; if the younger part of our
community were ever impelled, by youthful and untamed
hilarity, to enter on any dance or song, to cheer the
melancholy time, they would suddenly break off,
checked by a mournful look or agonizing sigh from any
one among them, who was prevented by sorrows and losses
from mingling in the festivity. If laughter echoed
under our roof, yet the heart was vacant of joy; and,
when ever it chanced that I witnessed such attempts at
pastime, they encreased instead of diminishing my sense
of woe. In the midst of the pleasure-hunting throng, I
would close my eyes, and see before me the obscure
cavern, where was garnered the mortality of Idris, and
the dead lay around, mouldering in hushed repose. When
I again became aware of the present hour, softest
melody of Lydian flute, or harmonious maze of graceful
dance, was but as the demoniac chorus in the Wolf's
Glen, and the caperings of the reptiles that surrounded
the magic circle.
My dearest interval of peace occurred, when, released
from the obligation of associating with the crowd, I
could repose in the dear home where my children lived.
Children I say, for the tenderest emotions of paternity
bound me to Clara. She was now fourteen; sorrow, and
deep insight into the scenes around her, calmed the
restless spirit of girlhood; while the remembrance of
her father whom she idolized, and respect for me and
Adrian, implanted an high sense of duty in her young
heart. Though serious she was not sad; the eager
desire that makes us all, when young, plume our wings,
and stretch our necks, that we may more swiftly alight
tiptoe on the height of maturity, was subdued in her by
early experience. All that she could spare of
overflowing love from her parents' memory, and
attention to her living relatives, was spent upon
religion. This was the hidden law of her heart, which
she concealed with childish reserve, and cherished the
more because it was secret. What faith so entire, what
charity so pure, what hope so fervent, as that of early
youth? and she, all love, all tenderness and trust,
who from infancy had been tossed on the wide sea of
passion and misfortune, saw the finger of apparent
divinity in all, and her best hope was to make herself
acceptable to the power she worshipped. Evelyn was
only five years old; his joyous heart was incapable of
sorrow, and he enlivened our house with the innocent
mirth incident to his years.
The aged Countess of Windsor had fallen from her dream
of power, rank and grandeur; she had been suddenly
seized with the conviction, that love was the only
good of life, virtue the only ennobling distinction and
enriching wealth. Such a lesson had been taught her by
the dead lips of her neglected daughter; and she
devoted herself, with all the fiery violence of her
character, to the obtaining the affection of the
remnants of her family. In early years the heart of
Adrian had been chilled towards her; and, though he
observed a due respect, her coldness, mixed with the
recollection of disappointment and madness, caused him
to feel even pain in her society. She saw this, and
yet determined to win his love; the obstacle served the
rather to excite her ambition. As Henry, Emperor of
Germany, lay in the snow before Pope Leo's gate for
three winter days and nights, so did she in humility
wait before the icy barriers of his closed heart, till
he, the servant of love, and prince of tender courtesy,
opened it wide for her admittance, bestowing, with
fervency and gratitude, the tribute of filial affection
she merited. Her understanding, courage, and presence
of mind, became powerful auxiliaries to him in the
difficult task of ruling the tumultuous crowd, which
were subjected to his control, in truth by a single
hair.
The principal circumstances that disturbed our
tranquillity during this interval, originated in the
vicinity of the impostor-prophet and his followers.
They continued to reside at Paris; but missionaries
from among them often visited Versailles--and such was
the power of assertions, however false, yet vehemently
iterated, over the ready credulity of the ignorant and
fearful, that they seldom failed in drawing over to
their party some from among our numbers. An instance
of this nature coming immediately under our notice, we
were led to consider the miserable state in which we
should leave our countrymen, when we should, at the
approach of summer, move on towards Switzerland, and
leave a deluded crew behind us in the hands of their
miscreant leader. The sense of the smallness of our
numbers, and expectation of decrease, pressed upon us;
and, while it would be a subject of congratulation to
ourselves to add one to our party, it would be doubly
gratifying to rescue from the pernicious influence of
superstition and unrelenting tyranny, the victims that
now, though voluntarily enchained, groaned beneath it.
If we had considered the preacher as sincere in a
belief of his own denunciations, or only moderately
actuated by kind feeling in the exercise of his assumed
powers, we should have immediately addressed ourselves
to him, and endeavoured with our best arguments to
soften and humanize his views. But he was instigated by
ambition, he desired to rule over these last
stragglers from the fold of death; his projects went so
far, as to cause him to calculate that, if, from these
crushed remains, a few survived, so that a new race
should spring up, he, by holding tight the reins of
belief, might be remembered by the post-pestilential
race as a patriarch, a prophet, nay a deity; such as of
old among the post-diluvians were Jupiter the
conqueror, Serapis the lawgiver, and Vishnou the
preserver. These ideas made him inflexible in his
rule, and violent in his hate of any who presumed to
share with him his usurped empire.
It is a strange fact, but incontestible, that the
philanthropist, who ardent in his desire to do good,
who patient, reasonable and gentle, yet disdains to
use other argument than truth, has less influence over
men's minds, than he who, grasping and selfish,
refuses not to adopt any means, nor awaken any
passion, nor diffuse any falsehood, for the advancement
of his cause. If this from time immemorial has been
the case, the contrast was infinitely greater, now that
the one could bring harrowing fears and transcendent
hopes into play; while the other had few hopes to hold
forth, nor could influence the imagination to diminish
the fears which he himself was the first to entertain.
The preacher had persuaded his followers, that their
escape from the plague, the salvation of their
children, and the rise of a new race of men from their
seed, depended on their faith in, and their submission
to him. They greedily imbibed this belief; and their
over-weening credulity even rendered them eager to make
converts to the same faith.
How to seduce any individuals from such an alliance of
fraud, was a frequent subject of Adrian's meditations
and discourse. He formed many plans for the purpose;
but his own troop kept him in full occupation to
ensure their fidelity and safety; beside which the
preacher was as cautious and prudent, as he was cruel.
His victims lived under the strictest rules and laws,
which either entirely imprisoned them within the
Tuileries, or let them out in such numbers, and under
such leaders, as precluded the possibility of
controversy. There was one among them however whom I
resolved to save; she had been known to us in happier
days; Idris had loved her; and her excellent nature
made it peculiarly lamentable that she should be
sacrificed by this merciless cannibal of souls.
This man had between two and three hundred persons
enlisted under his banners. More than half of them were
women; there were about fifty children of all ages; and
not more than eighty men. They were mostly drawn from
that which, when such distinctions existed, was
denominated the lower rank of society. The exceptions
consisted of a few high-born females, who,
panic-struck, and tamed by sorrow, had joined him.
Among these was one, young, lovely, and enthusiastic,
whose very goodness made her a more easy victim. I
have mentioned her before: Juliet, the youngest
daughter, and now sole relic of the ducal house of
L ---. There are some beings, whom fate seems to
select on whom to pour, in unmeasured portion, the
vials of her wrath, and whom she bathes even to the
lips in misery. Such a one was the ill-starred Juliet.
She had lost her indulgent parents, her brothers and
sisters, companions of her youth; in one fell swoop
they had been carried off from her. Yet she had again
dared to call herself happy; united to her admirer, to
him who possessed and filled her whole heart, she
yielded to the lethean powers of love, and knew and
felt only his life and presence. At the very time when
with keen delight she welcomed the tokens of
maternity, this sole prop of her life failed, her
husband died of the plague. For a time she had been
lulled in insanity; the birth of her child restored
her to the cruel reality of things, but gave her at
the same time an object for whom to preserve at once
life and reason. Every friend and relative had died
off, and she was reduced to solitude and penury; deep
melancholy and angry impatience distorted her judgment,
so that she could not persuade herself to disclose her
distress to us. When she heard of the plan of
universal emigration, she resolved to remain behind
with her child, and alone in wide England to live or
die, as fate might decree, beside the grave of her
beloved. She had hidden herself in one of the many
empty habitations of London; it was she who rescued my
Idris on the fatal twentieth of November, though my
immediate danger, and the subsequent illness of Idris,
caused us to forget our hapless friend. This
circumstance had however brought her again in contact
with her fellow-creatures; a slight illness of her
infant, proved to her that she was still bound to
humanity by an indestructible tie; to preserve this
little creature's life became the object of her being,
and she joined the first division of migrants who went
over to Paris.
She became an easy prey to the methodist; her
sensibility and acute fears rendered her accessible to
every impulse; her love for her child made her eager
to cling to the merest straw held out to save him. Her
mind, once unstrung, and now tuned by roughest
inharmonious hands, made her credulous: beautiful as
fabled goddess, with voice of unrivalled sweetness,
burning with new lighted enthusiasm, she became a
stedfast proselyte, and powerful auxiliary to the
leader of the elect. I had remarked her in the crowd,
on the day we met on the Place Vendome; and,
recollecting suddenly her providential rescue of my
lost one, on the night of the twentieth of November, I
reproached myself for my neglect and ingratitude, and
felt impelled to leave no means that I could adopt
untried, to recall her to her better self, and rescue
her from the fangs of the hypocrite destroyer.
I will not, at this period of my story, record the
artifices I used to penetrate the asylum of the
Tuileries, or give what would be a tedious account of
my stratagems, disappointments, and perseverance. I at
last succeeded in entering these walls, and roamed its
halls and corridors in eager hope to find my selected
convert. In the evening I contrived to mingle
unobserved with the congregation, which assembled in
the chapel to listen to the crafty and eloquent
harangue of their prophet. I saw Juliet near him. Her
dark eyes, fearfully impressed with the restless glare
of madness, were fixed on him; she held her infant,
not yet a year old, in her arms; and care of it alone
could distract her attention from the words to which
she eagerly listened. After the sermon was over, the
congregation dispersed; all quitted the chapel except
she whom I sought; her babe had fallen asleep; so she
placed it on a cushion, and sat on the floor beside,
watching its tranquil slumber.
I presented myself to her; for a moment natural feeling
produced a sentiment of gladness, which disappeared
again, when with ardent and affectionate exhortation I
besought her to accompany me in flight from this den
of superstition and misery. In a moment she relapsed
into the delirium of fanaticism, and, but that her
gentle nature forbade, would have loaded me with
execrations. She conjured me, she commanded me to leave
her--"Beware, O beware," she cried, "fly while yet your
escape is practicable. Now you are safe; but strange
sounds and inspirations come on me at times, and if
the Eternal should in awful whisper reveal to me his
will, that to save my child you must be sacrificed, I
would call in the satellites of him you call the
tyrant; they would tear you limb from limb; nor would I
hallow the death of him whom Idris loved, by a single
tear."
She spoke hurriedly, with tuneless voice, and wild
look; her child awoke, and, frightened, began to cry;
each sob went to the ill-fated mother's heart, and she
mingled the epithets of endearment she addressed to her
infant, with angry commands that I should leave her.
Had I had the means, I would have risked all, have
torn her by force from the murderer's den, and trusted
to the healing balm of reason and affection. But I had
no choice, no power even of longer struggle; steps
were heard along the gallery, and the voice of the
preacher drew near. Juliet, straining her child in a
close embrace, fled by another passage. Even then I
would have followed her; but my foe and his satellites
entered; I was surrounded, and taken prisoner.
I remembered the menace of the unhappy Juliet, and
expected the full tempest of the man's vengeance, and
the awakened wrath of his followers, to fall instantly
upon me. I was questioned. My answers were simple and
sincere. "His own mouth condemns him," exclaimed the
impostor; "he confesses that his intention was to
seduce from the way of salvation our well-beloved
sister in God; away with him to the dungeon; to-morrow
he dies the death; we are manifestly called upon to
make an example, tremendous and appalling, to scare the
children of sin from our asylum of the saved."
My heart revolted from his hypocritical jargon: but it
was unworthy of me to combat in words with the
ruffian; and my answer was cool; while, far from being
possessed with fear, methought, even at the worst, a
man true to himself, courageous and determined, could
fight his way, even from the boards of the scaffold,
through the herd of these misguided maniacs.
"Remember," I said, "who I am; and be well assured that
I shall not die unavenged. Your legal magistrate, the
Lord Protector, knew of my design, and is aware that I
am here; the cry of blood will reach him, and you and
your miserable victims will long lament the tragedy you
are about to act."
My antagonist did not deign to reply, even by a
look;--"You know your duty," he said to his
comrades,--"obey."
In a moment I was thrown on the earth, bound,
blindfolded, and hurried away--liberty of limb and
sight was only restored to me, when, surrounded by
dungeon-walls, dark and impervious, I found myself a
prisoner and alone.
Such was the result of my attempt to gain over the
proselyte of this man of crime; I could not conceive
that he would dare put me to death.--Yet I was in his
hands; the path of his ambition had ever been dark and
cruel; his power was founded upon fear; the one word
which might cause me to die, unheard, unseen, in the
obscurity of my dungeon, might be easier to speak than
the deed of mercy to act. He would not risk probably a
public execution; but a private assassination would at
once terrify any of my companions from attempting a
like feat, at the same time that a cautious line of
conduct might enable him to avoid the enquiries and the
vengeance of Adrian.
Two months ago, in a vault more obscure than the one I
now inhabited, I had revolved the design of quietly
laying me down to die; now I shuddered at the approach
of fate. My imagination was busied in shaping forth the
kind of death he would inflict. Would he allow me to
wear out life with famine; or was the food
administered to me to be medicined with death? Would
he steal on me in my sleep; or should I contend to the
last with my murderers, knowing, even while I
struggled, that I must be overcome? I lived upon an
earth whose diminished population a child's arithmetic
might number; I had lived through long months with
death stalking close at my side, while at intervals
the shadow of his skeleton-shape darkened my path. I
had believed that I despised the grim phantom, and
laughed his power to scorn.
Any other fate I should have met with courage, nay,
have gone out gallantly to encounter. But to be
murdered thus at the midnight hour by cold-blooded
assassins, no friendly hand to close my eyes, or
receive my parting blessing--to die in combat, hate
and execration--ah, why, my angel love, didst thou
restore me to life, when already I had stepped within
the portals of the tomb, now that so soon again I was
to be flung back a mangled corpse!
Hours passed--centuries. Could I give words to the many
thoughts which occupied me in endless succession
during this interval, I should fill volumes. The air
was dank, the dungeon-floor mildewed and icy cold;
hunger came upon me too, and no sound reached me from
without. To-morrow the ruffian had declared that I
should die. When would to-morrow come? Was it not
already here?
My door was about to be opened. I heard the key turn,
and the bars and bolts slowly removed. The opening of
intervening passages permitted sounds from the interior
of the palace to reach me; and I heard the clock
strike one. They come to murder me, I thought; this
hour does not befit a public execution. I drew myself
up against the wall opposite the entrance; I collected
my forces, I rallied my courage, I would not fall a
tame prey. Slowly the door receded on its hinges--I
was ready to spring forward to seize and grapple with
the intruder, till the sight of who it was changed at
once the temper of my mind. It was Juliet herself; pale
and trembling she stood, a lamp in her hand, on the
threshold of the dungeon, looking at me with wistful
countenance. But in a moment she re-assumed her
self-possession; and her languid eyes recovered their
brilliancy. She said, "I am come to save you, Verney."
"And yourself also," I cried: "dearest friend, can we
indeed be saved?"
"Not a word," she replied, "follow me!"
I obeyed instantly. We threaded with light steps many
corridors, ascended several flights of stairs, and
passed through long galleries; at the end of one she
unlocked a low portal; a rush of wind extinguished our
lamp; but, in lieu of it, we had the blessed
moon-beams and the open face of heaven. Then first
Juliet spoke:--"You are safe," she said, "God bless
you!--farewell!"
I seized her reluctant hand--"Dear friend," I cried,
"misguided victim, do you not intend to escape with
me? Have you not risked all in facilitating my flight?
and do you think, that I will permit you to return, and
suffer alone the effects of that miscreant's rage?
Never!"
"Do not fear for me," replied the lovely girl
mournfully, "and do not imagine that without the
consent of our chief you could be without these walls.
It is he that has saved you; he assigned to me the part
of leading you hither, because I am best acquainted
with your motives for coming here, and can best
appreciate his mercy in permitting you to depart."
"And are you," I cried, "the dupe of this man? He
dreads me alive as an enemy, and dead he fears my
avengers. By favouring this clandestine escape he
preserves a shew of consistency to his followers; but
mercy is far from his heart. Do you forget his
artifices, his cruelty, and fraud? As I am free, so
are you. Come, Juliet, the mother of our lost Idris
will welcome you, the noble Adrian will rejoice to
receive you; you will find peace and love, and better
hopes than fanaticism can afford. Come, and fear not;
long before day we shall be at Versailles; close the
door on this abode of crime--come, sweet Juliet, from
hypocrisy and guilt to the society of the affectionate
and good."
I spoke hurriedly, but with fervour: and while with
gentle violence I drew her from the portal, some
thought, some recollection of past scenes of youth and
happiness, made her listen and yield to me; suddenly
she broke away with a piercing shriek:--"My child, my
child! he has my child; my darling girl is my hostage."
She darted from me into the passage; the gate closed
between us--she was left in the fangs of this man of
crime, a prisoner, still to inhale the pestilential
atmosphere which adhered to his demoniac nature; the
unimpeded breeze played on my cheek, the moon shone
graciously upon me, my path was free. Glad to have
escaped, yet melancholy in my very joy, I retrod my
steps to Versailles.
[Vol. III]
THE LAST MAN
CHAPTER VI.
EVENTFUL winter passed; winter, the respite of our
ills. By degrees the sun, which with slant beams had
before yielded the more extended reign to night,
lengthened his diurnal journey, and mounted his highest
throne, at once the fosterer of earth's new beauty, and
her lover. We who, like flies that congregate upon a
dry rock at the ebbing of the tide, had played
wantonly with time, allowing our passions, our hopes,
and our mad desires to rule us, now heard the
approaching roar of the ocean of destruction, and
would have fled to some sheltered crevice, before the
first wave broke over us. We resolved without delay,
to commence our journey to Switzerland; we became eager
to leave France. Under the icy vaults of the glaciers,
beneath the shadow of the pines, the swinging of whose
mighty branches was arrested by a load of snow; beside
the streams whose intense cold proclaimed their origin
to be from the slow-melting piles of congelated waters,
amidst frequent storms which might purify the air, we
should find health, if in truth health were not herself
diseased.
We began our preparations at first with alacrity. We
did not now bid adieu to our native country, to the
graves of those we loved, to the flowers, and streams,
and trees, which had lived beside us from infancy.
Small sorrow would be ours on leaving Paris. A scene
of shame, when we remembered our late contentions, and
thought that we left behind a flock of miserable,
deluded victims, bending under the tyranny of a selfish
impostor. Small pangs should we feel in leaving the
gardens, woods, and halls of the palaces of the
Bourbons at Versailles, which we feared would soon be
tainted by the dead, when we looked forward to vallies
lovelier than any garden, to mighty forests and halls,
built not for mortal majesty, but palaces of nature's
own, with the Alp of marmoreal whiteness for their
walls, the sky for their roof.
Yet our spirits flagged, as the day drew near which we
had fixed for our departure. Dire visions and evil
auguries, if such things were, thickened around us, so
that in vain might men say--
These are their reasons, they are natural,*
we felt them to be ominous, and dreaded the future
event enchained to them. That the night owl should
screech before the noon-day sun, that the hard-winged
bat should wheel around the bed of beauty, that
muttering thunder should in early spring startle the
cloudless air, that sudden and exterminating blight
should fall on the tree and shrub, were unaccustomed,
but physical events, less horrible than the mental
creations of almighty fear. Some had sight of funeral
processions, and faces all begrimed with tears, which
flitted through the long avenues of the gardens, and
drew aside the curtains of the sleepers at dead of
night. Some heard wailing and cries in the air; a
mournful chaunt would stream through the dark
atmosphere, as if spirits above sang the requiem of the
human race. What was there in all this, but that fear
created other senses within our frames, making us see,
hear, and feel what was not? What was this, but the
action of diseased imaginations and childish credulity?
So might it be; but what was most real, was the
existence of these very fears; the staring looks of
horror, the faces pale even to ghastliness, the voices
struck dumb with harrowing dread, of those among us
who saw and heard these things. Of this number was
Adrian, who knew the delusion, yet could not cast off
the clinging terror. Even ignorant infancy appeared
with timorous shrieks and convulsions to acknowledge
the presence of unseen powers. We must go: in change
of scene, in occupation, and such security as we still
hoped to find, we should discover a cure for these
gathering horrors.
[* Shakespeare--Julius Caesar.]
On mustering our company, we found them to consist of
fourteen hundred souls, men, women, and children. Until
now therefore, we were undiminished in numbers, except
by the desertion of those who had attached themselves
to the impostor-prophet, and remained behind in Paris.
About fifty French joined us. Our order of march was
easily arranged; the ill success which had attended our
division, determined Adrian to keep all in one body. I,
with an hundred men, went forward first as purveyor,
taking the road of the Cote d'Or, through Auxerre,
Dijon, Dole, over the Jura to Geneva. I was to make
arrangements, at every ten miles, for the accommodation
of such numbers as I found the town or village would
receive, leaving behind a messenger with a written
order, signifying how many were to be quartered there.
The remainder of our tribe was then divided into bands
of fifty each, every division containing eighteen men,
and the remainder, consisting of women and children.
Each of these was headed by an officer, who carried
the roll of names, by which they were each day to be
mustered. If the numbers were divided at night, in the
morning those in the van waited for those in the rear.
At each of the large towns before mentioned, we were
all to assemble; and a conclave of the principal
officers would hold council for the general weal. I
went first, as I said; Adrian last. His mother, with
Clara and Evelyn under her protection, remained also
with him. Thus our order being determined, I departed.
My plan was to go at first no further than
Fontainebleau, where in a few days I should be joined
by Adrian, before I took flight again further
eastward.
My friend accompanied me a few miles from Versailles.
He was sad; and, in a tone of unaccustomed despondency,
uttered a prayer for our speedy arrival among the Alps,
accompanied with an expression of vain regret that we
were not already there. "In that case," I observed, "we
can quicken our march; why adhere to a plan whose
dilatory proceeding you already disapprove?"
"Nay," replied he, "it is too late now. A month ago,
and we were masters of ourselves; now,--" he turned
his face from me; though gathering twilight had
already veiled its expression, he turned it yet more
away, as he added--"a man died of the plague last
night!"
He spoke in a smothered voice, then suddenly clasping
his hands, he exclaimed, "Swiftly, most swiftly
advances the last hour for us all; as the stars vanish
before the sun, so will his near approach destroy us. I
have done my best; with grasping hands and impotent
strength, I have hung on the wheel of the chariot of
plague; but she drags me along with it, while, like
Juggernaut, she proceeds crushing out the being of all
who strew the high road of life. Would that it were
over--would that her procession achieved, we had all
entered the tomb together!"
Tears streamed from his eyes. "Again and again," he
continued, "will the tragedy be acted; again I must
hear the groans of the dying, the wailing of the
survivors; again witness the pangs, which, consummating
all, envelope an eternity in their evanescent
existence. Why am I reserved for this? Why the tainted
wether of the flock, am I not struck to earth among
the first? It is hard, very hard, for one of woman born
to endure all that I endure!"
Hitherto, with an undaunted spirit, and an high feeling
of duty and worth, Adrian had fulfilled his
self-imposed task. I had contemplated him with
reverence, and a fruitless desire of imitation. I now
offered a few words of encouragement and sympathy. He
hid his face in his hands, and while he strove to calm
himself, he ejaculated, "For a few months, yet for a
few months more, let not, O God, my heart fail, or my
courage be bowed down; let not sights of intolerable
misery madden this half-crazed brain, or cause this
frail heart to beat against its prison-bound, so that
it burst. I have believed it to be my destiny to guide
and rule the last of the race of man, till death
extinguish my government; and to this destiny I submit.
"Pardon me, Verney, I pain you, but I will no longer
complain. Now I am myself again, or rather I am better
than myself. You have known how from my childhood
aspiring thoughts and high desires have warred with
inherent disease and overstrained sensitiveness, till
the latter became victors. You know how I placed this
wasted feeble hand on the abandoned helm of human
government. I have been visited at times by intervals
of fluctuation; yet, until now, I have felt as if a
superior and indefatigable spirit had taken up its
abode within me or rather incorporated itself with my
weaker being. The holy visitant has for a time slept,
perhaps to show me how powerless I am without its
inspiration. Yet, stay for a while, O Power of goodness
and strength; disdain not yet this rent shrine of
fleshly mortality, O immortal Capability! While one
fellow creature remains to whom aid can be afforded,
stay by and prop your shattered, falling engine!"
His vehemence, and voice broken by irrepressible sighs,
sunk to my heart; his eyes gleamed in the gloom of
night like two earthly stars; and, his form dilating,
his countenance beaming, truly it almost seemed as if
at his eloquent appeal a more than mortal spirit
entered his frame, exalting him above humanity.
He turned quickly towards me, and held out his hand.
"Farewell, Verney," he cried, "brother of my love,
farewell; no other weak expression must cross these
lips, I am alive again: to our tasks, to our combats
with our unvanquishable foe, for to the last I will
struggle against her."
He grasped my hand, and bent a look on me, more fervent
and animated than any smile; then turning his horse's
head, he touched the animal with the spur, and was out
of sight in a moment.
A man last night had died of the plague. The quiver was
not emptied, nor the bow unstrung. We stood as marks,
while Parthian Pestilence aimed and shot, insatiated by
conquest, unobstructed by the heaps of slain. A
sickness of the soul, contagious even to my physical
mechanism, came over me. My knees knocked together, my
teeth chattered, the current of my blood, clotted by
sudden cold, painfully forced its way from my heavy
heart. I did not fear for myself, but it was misery to
think that we could not even save this remnant. That
those I loved might in a few days be as clay-cold as
Idris in her antique tomb; nor could strength of body
or energy of mind ward off the blow. A sense of
degradation came over me. Did God create man, merely
in the end to become dead earth in the midst of
healthful vegetating nature? Was he of no more account
to his Maker, than a field of corn blighted in the ear?
Were our proud dreams thus to fade? Our name was
written "a little lower than the angels;" and, behold,
we were no better than ephemera. We had called
ourselves the "paragon of animals," and, lo! we were a
"quint-essence of dust." We repined that the pyramids
had outlasted the embalmed body of their builder. Alas!
the mere shepherd's hut of straw we passed on the road,
contained in its structure the principle of greater
longevity than the whole race of man. How reconcile
this sad change to our past aspirations, to our
apparent powers!
Sudden an internal voice, articulate and clear, seemed
to say:--Thus from eternity, it was decreed: the
steeds that bear Time onwards had this hour and this
fulfilment enchained to them, since the void brought
forth its burthen. Would you read backwards the
unchangeable laws of Necessity?
Mother of the world! Servant of the Omnipotent!
eternal, changeless Necessity! who with busy fingers
sittest ever weaving the indissoluble chain of
events!--I will not murmur at thy acts. If my human
mind cannot acknowledge that all that is, is right;
yet since what is, must be, I will sit amidst the ruins
and smile. Truly we were not born to enjoy, but to
submit, and to hope.
Will not the reader tire, if I should minutely describe
our long-drawn journey from Paris to Geneva? If, day
by day, I should record, in the form of a journal, the
thronging miseries of our lot, could my hand write, or
language afford words to express, the variety of our
woe; the hustling and crowding of one deplorable event
upon another? Patience, oh reader! whoever thou art,
wherever thou dwellest, whether of race spiritual, or,
sprung from some surviving pair, thy nature will be
human, thy habitation the earth; thou wilt here read
of the acts of the extinct race, and wilt ask
wonderingly, if they, who suffered what thou findest
recorded, were of frail flesh and soft organization
like thyself. Most true, they were--weep therefore; for
surely, solitary being, thou wilt be of gentle
disposition; shed compassionate tears; but the while
lend thy attention to the tale, and learn the deeds
and sufferings of thy predecessors.
Yet the last events that marked our progress through
France were so full of strange horror and gloomy
misery, that I dare not pause too long in the
narration. If I were to dissect each incident, every
small fragment of a second would contain an harrowing
tale, whose minutest word would curdle the blood in thy
young veins. It is right that I should erect for thy
instruction this monument of the foregone race; but not
that I should drag thee through the wards of an
hospital, nor the secret chambers of the
charnel-house. This tale, therefore, shall be rapidly
unfolded. Images of destruction, pictures of despair,
the procession of the last triumph of death, shall be
drawn before thee, swift as the rack driven by the
north wind along the blotted splendour of the sky.
Weed-grown fields, desolate towns, the wild approach of
riderless horses had now become habitual to my eyes;
nay, sights far worse, of the unburied dead, and human
forms which were strewed on the road side, and on the
steps of once frequented habitations, where,
Through the flesh that wastes away
Beneath the parching sun, the whitening bones
Start forth, and moulder in the sable dust.*
Sights like these had become--ah, woe the while! so
familiar, that we had ceased to shudder, or spur our
stung horses to sudden speed, as we passed them.
France in its best days, at least that part of France
through which we travelled, had been a cultivated
desert, and the absence of enclosures, of cottages, and
even of peasantry, was saddening to a traveller from
sunny Italy, or busy England. Yet the towns were
frequent and lively, and the cordial politeness and
ready smile of the wooden-shoed peasant restored good
humour to the splenetic. Now, the old woman sat no more
at the door with her distaff--the lank beggar no longer
asked charity in courtier-like phrase; nor on holidays
did the peasantry thread with slow grace the mazes of
the dance. Silence, melancholy bride of death, went in
procession with him from town to town through the
spacious region.
[* Elton's Translation of Hesiod's "Shield of
Hercules."]
We arrived at Fontainebleau, and speedily prepared for
the reception of our friends. On mustering our numbers
for the night, three were found missing. When I
enquired for them, the man to whom I spoke, uttered the
word "plague," and fell at my feet in convulsions; he
also was infected. There were hard faces around me;
for among my troop were sailors who had crossed the
line times unnumbered, soldiers who, in Russia and far
America, had suffered famine, cold and danger, and men
still sterner-featured, once nightly depredators in our
over-grown metropolis; men bred from their cradle to
see the whole machine of society at work for their
destruction. I looked round, and saw upon the faces of
all horror and despair written in glaring characters.
We passed four days at Fontainebleau. Several sickened
and died, and in the mean time neither Adrian nor any
of our friends appeared. My own troop was in commotion;
to reach Switzerland, to plunge into rivers of snow,
and to dwell in caves of ice, became the mad desire of
all. Yet we had promised to wait for the Earl; and he
came not. My people demanded to be led
forward--rebellion, if so we might call what was the
mere casting away of straw-formed shackles, appeared
manifestly among them. They would away on the word
without a leader. The only chance of safety, the only
hope of preservation from every form of indescribable
suffering, was our keeping together. I told them this;
while the most determined among them answered with
sullenness, that they could take care of themselves,
and replied to my entreaties with scoffs and menaces.
At length, on the fifth day, a messenger arrived from
Adrian, bearing letters, which directed us to proceed
to Auxerre, and there await his arrival, which would
only be deferred for a few days. Such was the tenor of
his public letters. Those privately delivered to me,
detailed at length the difficulties of his situation,
and left the arrangement of my future plans to my own
discretion. His account of the state of affairs at
Versailles was brief, but the oral communications of
his messenger filled up his omissions, and shewed me
that perils of the most frightful nature were gathering
around him. At first the re-awakening of the plague
had been concealed; but the number of deaths
encreasing, the secret was divulged, and the
destruction already achieved, was exaggerated by the
fears of the survivors. Some emissaries of the enemy
of mankind, the accursed Impostors. were among them
instilling their doctrine, that safety and life could
only be ensured by submission to their chief; and they
succeeded so well, that soon, instead of desiring to
proceed to Switzerland, the major part of the
multitude, weak-minded women, and dastardly men,
desired to return to Paris, and, by ranging themselves
under the banners of the so called prophet, and by a
cowardly worship of the principle of evil, to purchase
respite, as they hoped, from impending death. The
discord and tumult induced by these conflicting fears
and passions, detained Adrian. It required all his
ardour in pursuit of an object, and his patience under
difficulties, to calm and animate such a number of his
followers, as might counterbalance the panic of the
rest, and lead them back to the means from which alone
safety could be derived. He had hoped immediately to
follow me; but, being defeated in this intention, he
sent his messenger urging me to secure my own troop at
such a distance from Versailles, as to prevent the
contagion of rebellion from reaching them; promising,
at the same time, to join me the moment a favourable
occasion should occur, by means of which he could
withdraw the main body of the emigrants from the evil
influence at present exercised over them.
I was thrown into a most painful state of uncertainty
by these communications. My first impulse was that we
should all return to Versailles, there to assist in
extricating our chief from his perils. I accordingly
assembled my troop, and proposed to them this
retrograde movement, instead of the continuation of
our journey to Auxerre. With one voice they refused to
comply. The notion circulated among them was, that the
ravages of the plague alone detained the Protector;
they opposed his order to my request; they came to a
resolve to proceed without me, should I refuse to
accompany them. Argument and adjuration were lost on
these dastards. The continual diminution of their own
numbers, effected by pestilence, added a sting to
their dislike of delay; and my opposition only served
to bring their resolution to a crisis. That same
evening they departed towards Auxerre. Oaths, as from
soldiers to their general, had been taken by them:
these they broke. I also had engaged myself not to
desert them; it appeared to me inhuman to ground any
infraction of my word on theirs. The same spirit that
caused them to rebel against me, would impel them to
desert each other; and the most dreadful sufferings
would be the consequence of their journey in their
present unordered and chiefless array. These feelings
for a time were paramount; and, in obedience to them, I
accompanied the rest towards Auxerre.
We arrived the same night at Villeneuve-la-Guiard, a
town at the distance of four posts from Fontainebleau.
When my companions had retired to rest, and I was left
alone to revolve and ruminate upon the intelligence I
received of Adrian's situation, another view of the
subject presented itself to me. What was I doing, and
what was the object of my present movements?
Apparently I was to lead this troop of selfish and
lawless men towards Switzerland, leaving behind my
family and my selected friend, which, subject as they
were hourly to the death that threatened to all, I
might never see again. Was it not my first duty to
assist the Protector, setting an example of attachment
and duty? At a crisis, such as the one I had reached,
it is very difficult to balance nicely opposing
interests, and that towards which our inclinations
lead us, obstinately assumes the appearance of
selfishness, even when we meditate a sacrifice. We are
easily led at such times to make a compromise of the
question; and this was my present resource. I resolved
that very night to ride to Versailles; if I found
affairs less desperate than I now deemed them, I would
return without delay to my troop; I had a vague idea
that my arrival at that town, would occasion some
sensation more or less strong, of which we might
profit, for the purpose of leading forward the
vacillating multitude--at least no time was to be
lost--I visited the stables, I saddled my favourite
horse, and vaulting on his back, without giving myself
time for further reflection or hesitation, quitted
Villeneuve-la-Guiard on my return to Versailles.
I was glad to escape from my rebellious troop, and to
lose sight for a time, of the strife of evil with
good, where the former for ever remained triumphant. I
was stung almost to madness by my uncertainty
concerning the fate of Adrian, and grew reckless of
any event, except what might lose or preserve my
unequalled friend. With an heavy heart, that sought
relief in the rapidity of my course, I rode through
the night to Versailles. I spurred my horse, who
addressed his free limbs to speed, and tossed his
gallant head in pride. The constellations reeled
swiftly by, swiftly each tree and stone and landmark
fled past my onward career. I bared my head to the
rushing wind, which bathed my brow in delightful
coolness. As I lost sight of Villeneuve-la-Guiard, I
forgot the sad drama of human misery; methought it was
happiness enough to live, sensitive the while of the
beauty of the verdure-clad earth, the star-bespangled
sky, and the tameless wind that lent animation to the
whole. My horse grew tired--and I, forgetful of his
fatigue, still as he lagged, cheered him with my voice,
and urged him with the spur. He was a gallant animal,
and I did not wish to exchange him for any chance
beast I might light on, leaving him never to be
refound. All night we went forward; in the morning he
became sensible that we approached Versailles, to
reach which as his home, he mustered his flagging
strength. The distance we had come was not less than
fifty miles, yet he shot down the long Boulevards
swift as an arrow; poor fellow, as I dismounted at the
gate of the castle, he sunk on his knees, his eyes were
covered with a film, he fell on his side, a few gasps
inflated his noble chest, and he died. I saw him
expire with an anguish, unaccountable even to myself,
the spasm was as the wrenching of some limb in
agonizing torture, but it was brief as it was
intolerable. I forgot him, as I swiftly darted through
the open portal, and up the majestic stairs of this
castle of victories--heard Adrian's voice--O fool! O
woman nurtured, effeminate and contemptible being--I
heard his voice, and answered it with convulsive
shrieks; I rushed into the Hall of Hercules, where he
stood surrounded by a crowd, whose eyes, turned in
wonder on me, reminded me that on the stage of the
world, a man must repress such girlish extacies. I
would have given worlds to have embraced him; I dared
not--Half in exhaustion, half voluntarily, I threw
myself at my length on the ground--dare I disclose the
truth to the gentle offspring of solitude? I did so,
that I might kiss the dear and sacred earth he trod.
I found everything in a state of tumult. An emissary of
the leader of the elect, had been so worked up by his
chief, and by his own fanatical creed, as to make an
attempt on the life of the Protector and preserver of
lost mankind. His hand was arrested while in the act
of poignarding the Earl; this circumstance had caused
the clamour I heard on my arrival at the castle, and
the confused assembly of persons that I found assembled
in the Salle d'Hercule. Although superstition and
demoniac fury had crept among the emigrants, yet
several adhered with fidelity to their noble chieftain;
and many, whose faith and love had been unhinged by
fear, felt all their latent affection rekindled by
this detestable attempt. A phalanx of faithful breasts
closed round him; the wretch, who, although a prisoner
and in bonds, vaunted his design, and madly claimed
the crown of martyrdom, would have been torn to
pieces, had not his intended victim interposed.
Adrian, springing forward, shielded him with his own
person, and commanded with energy the submission of his
infuriate friends--at this moment I had entered.
Discipline and peace were at length restored in the
castle; and then Adrian went from house to house, from
troop to troop, to soothe the disturbed minds of his
followers, and recall them to their ancient obedience.
But the fear of immediate death was still rife amongst
these survivors of a world's destruction; the horror
occasioned by the attempted assassination, past away;
each eye turned towards Paris. Men love a prop so well,
that they will lean on a pointed poisoned spear; and
such was he, the impostor, who, with fear of hell for
his scourge, most ravenous wolf, played the driver to
a credulous flock.
It was a moment of suspense, that shook even the
resolution of the unyielding friend of man. Adrian for
one moment was about to give in, to cease the
struggle, and quit, with a few adherents, the deluded
crowd, leaving them a miserable prey to their passions,
and to the worse tyrant who excited them. But again,
after a brief fluctuation of purpose, he resumed his
courage and resolves, sustained by the singleness of
his purpose, and the untried spirit of benevolence
which animated him. At this moment, as an omen of
excellent import, his wretched enemy pulled destruction
on his head, destroying with his own hands the dominion
he had erected.
His grand hold upon the minds of men, took its rise
from the doctrine inculcated by him, that those who
believed in, and followed him, were the remnant to be
saved, while all the rest of mankind were marked out
for death. Now, at the time of the Flood, the
omnipotent repented him that he had created man, and as
then with water, now with the arrows of pestilence,
was about to annihilate all, except those who obeyed
his decrees, promulgated by the ipse dixit
prophet. It is impossible to say on what foundations
this man built his hopes of being able to carry on such
an imposture. It is likely that he was fully aware of
the lie which murderous nature might give to his
assertions, and believed it to be the cast of a die,
whether he should in future ages be reverenced as an
inspired delegate from heaven, or be recognized as an
impostor by the present dying generation. At any rate
he resolved to keep up the drama to the last act. When,
on the first approach of summer, the fatal disease
again made its ravages among the followers of Adrian,
the impostor exultingly proclaimed the exemption of
his own congregation from the universal calamity. He
was believed; his followers, hitherto shut up in
Paris, now came to Versailles. Mingling with the
coward band there assembled, they reviled their
admirable leader, and asserted their own superiority
and exemption.
At length the plague, slow-footed, but sure in her
noiseless advance, destroyed the illusion, invading the
congregation of the elect, and showering promiscuous
death among them. Their leader endeavoured to conceal
this event; he had a few followers, who, admitted into
the arcana of his wickedness, could help him in the
execution of his nefarious designs. Those who sickened
were immediately and quietly withdrawn, the cord and a
midnight-grave disposed of them for ever; while some
plausible excuse was given for their absence. At last
a female, whose maternal vigilance subdued even the
effects of the narcotics administered to her, became a
witness of their murderous designs on her only child.
Mad with horror, she would have burst among her
deluded fellow-victims, and, wildly shrieking, have
awaked the dull ear of night with the history of the
fiend-like crime; when the Impostor, in his last act
of rage and desperation, plunged a poignard in her
bosom. Thus wounded to death, her garments dripping
with her own life-blood, bearing her strangled infant
in her arms, beautiful and young as she was, Juliet,
(for it was she) denounced to the host of deceived
believers, the wickedness of their leader. He saw the
aghast looks of her auditors, changing from horror to
fury--the names of those already sacrificed were
echoed by their relatives, now assured of their loss.
The wretch with that energy of purpose, which had
borne him thus far in his guilty career, saw his
danger, and resolved to evade the worst forms of it--he
rushed on one of the foremost, seized a pistol from his
girdle, and his loud laugh of derision mingled with
the report of the weapon with which he destroyed
himself.
They left his miserable remains even where they lay;
they placed the corpse of poor Juliet and her babe
upon a bier, and all, with hearts subdued to saddest
regret, in long procession walked towards Versailles.
They met troops of those who had quitted the kindly
protection of Adrian, and were journeying to join the
fanatics. The tale of horror was recounted--all turned
back; and thus at last, accompanied by the undiminished
numbers of surviving humanity, and preceded by the
mournful emblem of their recovered reason, they
appeared before Adrian, and again and for ever vowed
obedience to his commands, and fidelity to his cause.
[Vol. III]
THE LAST MAN
CHAPTER VII.
THESE events occupied so much time, that June had
numbered more than half its days, before we again
commenced our long-protracted journey. The day after my
return to Versailles, six men, from among those I had
left at Villeneuve-la-Guiard, arrived, with
intelligence, that the rest of the troop had already
proceeded towards Switzerland. We went forward in the
same track.
It is strange, after an interval of time, to look back
on a period, which, though short in itself, appeared,
when in actual progress, to be drawn out interminably.
By the end of July we entered Dijon; by the end of July
those hours, days, and weeks had mingled with the ocean
of forgotten time, which in their passage teemed with
fatal events and agonizing sorrow. By the end of July,
little more than a month had gone by, if man's life
were measured by the rising and setting of the sun:
but, alas! in that interval ardent youth had become
grey-haired; furrows deep and uneraseable were
trenched in the blooming cheek of the young mother; the
elastic limbs of early manhood, paralyzed as by the
burthen of years, assumed the decrepitude of age.
Nights passed, during whose fatal darkness the sun grew
old before it rose; and burning days, to cool whose
baleful heat the balmy eve, lingering far in eastern
climes, came lagging and ineffectual; days, in which
the dial, radiant in its noon-day station, moved not
its shadow the space of a little hour, until a whole
life of sorrow had brought the sufferer to an untimely
grave.
We departed from Versailles fifteen hundred souls. We
set out on the eighteenth of June. We made a long
procession, in which was contained every dear
relationship, or tie of love, that existed in human
society. Fathers and husbands, with guardian care,
gathered their dear relatives around them; wives and
mothers looked for support to the manly form beside
them, and then with tender anxiety bent their eyes on
the infant troop around. They were sad, but not
hopeless. Each thought that someone would be saved;
each, with that pertinacious optimism, which to the
last characterized our human nature, trusted that
their beloved family would be the one preserved.
We passed through France, and found it empty of
inhabitants. Some one or two natives survived in the
larger towns, which they roamed through like ghosts; we
received therefore small encrease to our numbers, and
such decrease through death, that at last it became
easier to count the scanty list of survivors. As we
never deserted any of the sick, until their death
permitted us to commit their remains to the shelter of
a grave, our journey was long, while every day a
frightful gap was made in our troop--they died by
tens, by fifties, by hundreds. No mercy was shewn by
death; we ceased to expect it, and every day welcomed
the sun with the feeling that we might never see it
rise again.
The nervous terrors and fearful visions which had
scared us during the spring, continued to visit our
coward troop during this sad journey. Every evening
brought its fresh creation of spectres; a ghost was
depicted by every blighted tree; and appalling shapes
were manufactured from each shaggy bush. By degrees
these common marvels palled on us, and then other
wonders were called into being. Once it was confidently
asserted, that the sun rose an hour later than its
seasonable time; again it was discovered that he grew
paler and paler; that shadows took an uncommon
appearance. It was impossible to have imagined, during
the usual calm routine of life men had before
experienced, the terrible effects produced by these
extravagant delusions: in truth, of such little worth
are our senses, when unsupported by concurring
testimony, that it was with the utmost difficulty I
kept myself free from the belief in supernatural
events, to which the major part of our people readily
gave credit. Being one sane amidst a crowd of the mad,
I hardly dared assert to my own mind, that the vast
luminary had undergone no change--that the shadows of
night were unthickened by innumerable shapes of awe
and terror; or that the wind, as it sung in the trees,
or whistled round an empty building, was not pregnant
with sounds of wailing and despair. Sometimes
realities took ghostly shapes; and it was impossible
for one's blood not to curdle at the perception of an
evident mixture of what we knew to be true, with the
visionary semblance of all that we feared.
Once, at the dusk of the evening, we saw a figure all
in white, apparently of more than human stature,
flourishing about the road, now throwing up its arms,
now leaping to an astonishing height in the air, then
turning round several times successively, then raising
itself to its full height and gesticulating violently.
Our troop, on the alert to discover and believe in the
supernatural, made a halt at some distance from this
shape; and, as it became darker, there was something
appalling even to the incredulous, in the lonely
spectre, whose gambols, if they hardly accorded with
spiritual dignity, were beyond human powers. Now it
leapt right up in the air, now sheer over a high hedge,
and was again the moment after in the road before us.
By the time I came up, the fright experienced by the
spectators of this ghostly exhibition, began to
manifest itself in the flight of some, and the close
huddling together of the rest. Our goblin now perceived
us; he approached, and, as we drew reverentially back,
made a low bow. The sight was irresistibly ludicrous
even to our hapless band, and his politeness was
hailed by a shout of laughter;--then, again springing
up, as a last effort, it sunk to the ground, and
became almost invisible through the dusky night. This
circumstance again spread silence and fear through the
troop; the more courageous at length advanced, and,
raising the dying wretch, discovered the tragic
explanation of this wild scene. It was an opera-dancer,
and had been one of the troop which deserted from
Villeneuve-la-Guiard: falling sick, he had been
deserted by his companions; in an access of delirium he
had fancied himself on the stage, and, poor fellow, his
dying sense eagerly accepted the last human applause
that could ever be bestowed on his grace and agility.
At another time we were haunted for several days by an
apparition, to which our people gave the appellation of
the Black Spectre. We never saw it except at evening,
when his coal black steed, his mourning dress, and
plume of black feathers, had a majestic and
awe-striking appearance; his face, one said, who had
seen it for a moment, was ashy pale; he had lingered
far behind the rest of his troop, and suddenly at a
turn in the road, saw the Black Spectre coming towards
him; he hid himself in fear, and the horse and his
rider slowly past, while the moonbeams fell on the face
of the latter, displaying its unearthly hue. Sometimes
at dead of night, as we watched the sick, we heard one
galloping through the town; it was the Black Spectre
come in token of inevitable death. He grew giant tall
to vulgar eyes; an icy atmosphere, they said,
surrounded him; when he was heard, all animals
shuddered, and the dying knew that their last hour was
come. It was Death himself, they declared, come
visibly to seize on subject earth, and quell at once
our decreasing numbers, sole rebels to his law. One day
at noon, we saw a dark mass on the road before us,
and, coming up, beheld the Black Spectre fallen from
his horse, lying in the agonies of disease upon the
ground. He did not survive many hours; and his last
words disclosed the secret of his mysterious conduct.
He was a French noble of distinction, who, from the
effects of plague, had been left alone in his district;
during many months, he had wandered from town to town,
from province to province, seeking some survivor for a
companion, and abhorring the loneliness to which he
was condemned. When he discovered our troop, fear of
contagion conquered his love of society. He dared not
join us, yet he could not resolve to lose sight of us,
sole human beings who besides himself existed in wide
and fertile France; so he accompanied us in the
spectral guise I have described, till pestilence
gathered him to a larger congregation, even that of
Dead Mankind.
It had been well, if such vain terrors could have
distracted our thoughts from more tangible evils. But
these were too dreadful and too many not to force
themselves into every thought, every moment, of our
lives. We were obliged to halt at different periods
for days together, till another and yet another was
consigned as a clod to the vast clod which had been
once our living mother. Thus we continued travelling
during the hottest season; and it was not till the
first of August, that we, the emigrants,--reader, there
were just eighty of us in number,--entered the gates of
Dijon.
We had expected this moment with eagerness, for now we
had accomplished the worst part of our drear journey,
and Switzerland was near at hand. Yet how could we
congratulate ourselves on any event thus imperfectly
fulfilled? Were these miserable beings, who, worn and
wretched, passed in sorrowful procession, the sole
remnants of the race of man, which, like a flood, had
once spread over and possessed the whole earth? It had
come down clear and unimpeded from its primal mountain
source in Ararat, and grew from a puny streamlet to a
vast perennial river, generation after generation
flowing on ceaselessly. The same, but diversified, it
grew, and swept onwards towards the absorbing ocean,
whose dim shores we now reached. It had been the mere
plaything of nature, when first it crept out of
uncreative void into light; but thought brought forth
power and knowledge; and, clad with these, the race of
man assumed dignity and authority. It was then no
longer the mere gardener of earth, or the shepherd of
her flocks; "it carried with it an imposing and
majestic aspect; it had a pedigree and illustrious
ancestors; it had its gallery of portraits, its
monumental inscriptions, its records and titles."*
[* Burke's Rreflections on the French Revolution.]
This was all over, now that the ocean of death had
sucked in the slackening tide, and its source was
dried up. We first had bidden adieu to the state of
things which having existed many thousand years, seemed
eternal; such a state of government, obedience,
traffic, and domestic intercourse, as had moulded our
hearts and capacities, as far back as memory could
reach. Then to patriotic zeal, to the arts, to
reputation, to enduring fame, to the name of country,
we had bidden farewell. We saw depart all hope of
retrieving our ancient state--all expectation, except
the feeble one of saving our individual lives from the
wreck of the past. To preserve these we had quitted
England--England, no more; for without her children,
what name could that barren island claim? With
tenacious grasp we clung to such rule and order as
could best save us; trusting that, if a little colony
could be preserved, that would suffice at some remoter
period to restore the lost community of mankind.
But the game is up! We must all die; nor leave survivor
nor heir to the wide inheritance of earth. We must all
die! The species of man must perish; his frame of
exquisite workmanship; the wondrous mechanism of his
senses; the noble proportion of his godlike limbs; his
mind, the throned king of these; must perish. Will the
earth still keep her place among the planets; will she
still journey with unmarked regularity round the sun;
will the seasons change, the trees adorn themselves
with leaves, and flowers shed their fragrance, in
solitude? Will the mountains remain unmoved, and
streams still keep a downward course towards the vast
abyss; will the tides rise and fall, and the winds fan
universal nature; will beasts pasture, birds fly, and
fishes swim, when man, the lord, possessor, perceiver,
and recorder of all these things, has passed away, as
though he had never been? O, what mockery is this!
Surely death is not death, and humanity is not
extinct; but merely passed into other shapes,
unsubjected to our perceptions. Death is a vast
portal, an high road to life: let us hasten to pass;
let us exist no more in this living death, but die
that we may live!
We had longed with inexpressible earnestness to reach
Dijon, since we had fixed on it, as a kind of station
in our progress. But now we entered it with a torpor
more painful than acute suffering. We had come slowly
but irrevocably to the opinion, that our utmost
efforts would not preserve one human being alive. We
took our hands therefore away from the long grasped
rudder; and the frail vessel on which we floated,
seemed, the government over her suspended, to rush,
prow foremost, into the dark abyss of the billows. A
gush of grief, a wanton profusion of tears, and vain
laments, and overflowing tenderness, and passionate but
fruitless clinging to the priceless few that remained,
was followed by languor and recklessness.
During this disastrous journey we lost all those, not
of our own family, to whom we had particularly
attached ourselves among the survivors. It were not
well to fill these pages with a mere catalogue of
losses; yet I cannot refrain from this last mention of
those principally dear to us. The little girl whom
Adrian had rescued from utter desertion, during our
ride through London on the twentieth of November, died
at Auxerre. The poor child had attached herself
greatly to us; and the suddenness of her death added to
our sorrow. In the morning we had seen her apparently
in health--in the evening, Lucy, before we retired to
rest, visited our quarters to say that she was dead.
Poor Lucy herself only survived, till we arrived at
Dijon. She had devoted herself throughout to the
nursing the sick, and attending the friendless. Her
excessive exertions brought on a slow fever, which
ended in the dread disease whose approach soon released
her from her sufferings. She had throughout been
endeared to us by her good qualities, by her ready and
cheerful execution of every duty, and mild acquiescence
in every turn of adversity. When we consigned her to
the tomb, we seemed at the same time to bid a final
adieu to those peculiarly feminine virtues conspicuous
in her; uneducated and unpretending as she was, she
was distinguished for patience, forbearance, and
sweetness. These, with all their train of qualities
peculiarly English, would never again be revived for
us. This type of all that was most worthy of
admiration in her class among my countrywomen, was
placed under the sod of desert France; and it was as a
second separation from our country to have lost sight
of her for ever.
The Countess of Windsor died during our abode at Dijon.
One morning I was informed that she wished to see me.
Her message made me remember, that several days had
elapsed since I had last seen her. Such a circumstance
had often occurred during our journey, when I remained
behind to watch to their close the last moments of some
one of our hapless comrades, and the rest of the troop
past on before me. But there was something in the
manner of her messenger, that made me suspect that all
was not right. A caprice of the imagination caused me
to conjecture that some ill had occurred to Clara or
Evelyn, rather than to this aged lady. Our fears, for
ever on the stretch, demanded a nourishment of horror;
and it seemed too natural an occurrence, too like past
times, for the old to die before the young.
I found the venerable mother of my Idris lying on a
couch, her tall emaciated figure stretched out; her
face fallen away, from which the nose stood out in
sharp profile, and her large dark eyes, hollow and
deep, gleamed with such light as may edge a thunder
cloud at sun-set. All was shrivelled and dried up,
except these lights; her voice too was fearfully
changed, as she spoke to me at intervals. "I am
afraid," said she, "that it is selfish in me to have
asked you to visit the old woman again, before she
dies: yet perhaps it would have been a greater shock to
hear suddenly that I was dead, than to see me first
thus."
I clasped her shrivelled hand: "Are you indeed so ill?"
I asked.
"Do you not perceive death in my face," replied she,
"it is strange; I ought to have expected this, and yet
I confess it has taken me unaware. I never clung to
life, or enjoyed it, till these last months, while
among those I senselessly deserted: and it is hard to
be snatched immediately away. I am glad, however, that
I am not a victim of the plague; probably I should
have died at this hour, though the world had continued
as it was in my youth."
She spoke with difficulty, and I perceived that she
regretted the necessity of death, even more than she
cared to confess. Yet she had not to complain of an
undue shortening of existence; her faded person shewed
that life had naturally spent itself. We had been
alone at first; now Clara entered; the Countess turned
to her with a smile, and took the hand of this lovely
child; her roseate palm and snowy fingers, contrasted
with relaxed fibres and yellow hue of those of her
aged friend; she bent to kiss her, touching her
withered mouth with the warm, full lips of youth.
"Verney," said the Countess, "I need not recommend
this dear girl to you, for your own sake you will
preserve her. Were the world as it was, I should have a
thousand sage precautions to impress, that one so
sensitive, good, and beauteous, might escape the
dangers that used to lurk for the destruction of the
fair and excellent. This is all nothing now.
"I commit you, my kind nurse, to your uncle's care; to
yours I entrust the dearest relic of my better self. Be
to Adrian, sweet one, what you have been to
me--enliven his sadness with your sprightly sallies;
sooth his anguish by your sober and inspired converse,
when he is dying; nurse him as you have done me."
Clara burst into tears; "Kind girl," said the Countess,
"do not weep for me. Many dear friends are left to
you."
"And yet," cried Clara, "you talk of their dying also.
This is indeed cruel--how could I live, if they were
gone? If it were possible for my beloved protector to
die before me, I could not nurse him; I could only die
too."
The venerable lady survived this scene only twenty-four
hours. She was the last tie binding us to the ancient
state of things. It was impossible to look on her, and
not call to mind in their wonted guise, events and
persons, as alien to our present situation as the
disputes of Themistocles and Aristides, or the wars of
the two roses in our native land. The crown of England
had pressed her brow; the memory of my father and his
misfortunes, the vain struggles of the late king, the
images of Raymond, Evadne, and Perdita, who had lived
in the world's prime, were brought vividly before us.
We consigned her to the oblivious tomb with reluctance;
and when I turned from her grave, Janus veiled his
retrospective face; that which gazed on future
generations had long lost its faculty.
After remaining a week at Dijon, until thirty of our
number deserted the vacant ranks of life, we continued
our way towards Geneva. At noon on the second day we
arrived at the foot of Jura. We halted here during the
heat of the day. Here fifty human beings--fifty, the
only human beings that survived of the food-teeming
earth, assembled to read in the looks of each other
ghastly plague, or wasting sorrow, desperation, or
worse, carelessness of future or present evil. Here we
assembled at the foot of this mighty wall of mountain,
under a spreading walnut tree; a brawling stream
refreshed the green sward by its sprinkling; and the
busy grasshopper chirped among the thyme. We clustered
together a group of wretched sufferers. A mother
cradled in her enfeebled arms the child, last of many,
whose glazed eye was about to close for ever. Here
beauty, late glowing in youthful lustre and
consciousness, now wan and neglected, knelt fanning
with uncertain motion the beloved, who lay striving to
paint his features, distorted by illness, with a
thankful smile. There an hard-featured, weather-worn
veteran, having prepared his meal, sat, his head
dropped on his breast, the useless knife falling from
his grasp, his limbs utterly relaxed, as thought of
wife and child, and dearest relative, all lost, passed
across his recollection. There sat a man who for forty
years had basked in fortune's tranquil sunshine; he
held the hand of his last hope, his beloved daughter,
who had just attained womanhood; and he gazed on her
with anxious eyes, while she tried to rally her
fainting spirit to comfort him. Here a servant,
faithful to the last, though dying, waited on one, who,
though still erect with health, gazed with gasping
fear on the variety of woe around.
Adrian stood leaning against a tree; he held a book in
his hand, but his eye wandered from the pages, and
sought mine; they mingled a sympathetic glance; his
looks confessed that his thoughts had quitted the
inanimate print, for pages more pregnant with meaning,
more absorbing, spread out before him. By the margin
of the stream, apart from all, in a tranquil nook,
where the purling brook kissed the green sward gently,
Clara and Evelyn were at play, sometimes beating the
water with large boughs, sometimes watching the
summer-flies that sported upon it. Evelyn now chased a
butterfly--now gathered a flower for his cousin; and
his laughing cherub-face and clear brow told of the
light heart that beat in his bosom. Clara, though she
endeavoured to give herself up to his amusement, often
forgot him, as she turned to observe Adrian and me.
She was now fourteen, and retained her childish
appearance, though in height a woman; she acted the
part of the tenderest mother to my little orphan boy;
to see her playing with him, or attending silently and
submissively on our wants, you thought only of her
admirable docility and patience; but, in her soft eyes,
and the veined curtains that veiled them, in the
clearness of her marmoreal brow, and the tender
expression of her lips, there was an intelligence and
beauty that at once excited admiration and love.
When the sun had sunk towards the precipitate west, and
the evening shadows grew long, we prepared to ascend
the mountain. The attention that we were obliged to
pay to the sick, made our progress slow. The winding
road, though steep, presented a confined view of rocky
fields and hills, each hiding the other, till our
farther ascent disclosed them in succession. We were
seldom shaded from the declining sun, whose slant
beams were instinct with exhausting heat. There are
times when minor difficulties grow gigantic--times,
when as the Hebrew poet expressively terms it, "the
grasshopper is a burthen;" so was it with our ill fated
party this evening. Adrian, usually the first to rally
his spirits, and dash foremost into fatigue and
hardship, with relaxed limbs and declined head, the
reins hanging loosely in his grasp, left the choice of
the path to the instinct of his horse, now and then
painfully rousing himself, when the steepness of the
ascent required that he should keep his seat with
better care. Fear and horror encompassed me. Did his
languid air attest that he also was struck with
contagion? How long, when I look on this matchless
specimen of mortality, may I perceive that his thought
answers mine? how long will those limbs obey the
kindly spirit within? how long will light and life
dwell in the eyes of this my sole remaining friend?
Thus pacing slowly, each hill surmounted, only
presented another to be ascended; each jutting corner
only discovered another, sister to the last, endlessly.
Sometimes the pressure of sickness in one among us,
caused the whole cavalcade to halt; the call for water,
the eagerly expressed wish to repose; the cry of pain,
and suppressed sob of the mourner--such were the
sorrowful attendants of our passage of the Jura.
Adrian had gone first. I saw him, while I was detained
by the loosening of a girth, struggling with the
upward path, seemingly more difficult than any we had
yet passed. He reached the top, and the dark outline of
his figure stood in relief against the sky. He seemed
to behold something unexpected and wonderful; for,
pausing, his head stretched out, his arms for a moment
extended, he seemed to give an All Hail! to some new
vision. Urged by curiosity, I hurried to join him.
After battling for many tedious minutes with the
precipice, the same scene presented itself to me, which
had wrapt him in extatic wonder.
Nature, or nature's favourite, this lovely earth,
presented her most unrivalled beauties in resplendent
and sudden exhibition. Below, far, far below, even as
it were in the yawning abyss of the ponderous globe,
lay the placid and azure expanse of lake Leman;
vine-covered hills hedged it in, and behind dark
mountains in cone-like shape, or irregular cyclopean
wall, served for further defence. But beyond, and high
above all, as if the spirits of the air had suddenly
unveiled their bright abodes, placed in scaleless
altitude in the stainless sky, heaven-kissing,
companions of the unattainable ether, were the
glorious Alps, clothed in dazzling robes of light by
the setting sun. And, as if the world's wonders were
never to be exhausted, their vast immensities, their
jagged crags, and roseate painting, appeared again in
the lake below, dipping their proud heights beneath the
unruffled waves--palaces for the Naiads of the placid
waters. Towns and villages lay scattered at the foot
of Jura, which, with dark ravine, and black
promontories, stretched its roots into the watery
expanse beneath. Carried away by wonder, I forgot the
death of man, and the living and beloved friend near
me. When I turned, I saw tears streaming from his eyes;
his thin hands pressed one against the other, his
animated countenance beaming with admiration; "Why,"
cried he, at last, "Why, oh heart, whisperest thou of
grief to me? Drink in the beauty of that scene, and
possess delight beyond what a fabled paradise could
afford."
By degrees, our whole party surmounting the steep,
joined us, not one among them, but gave visible tokens
of admiration, surpassing any before experienced. One
cried, "God reveals his heaven to us; we may die
blessed." Another and another, with broken
exclamations, and extravagant phrases, endeavoured to
express the intoxicating effect of this wonder of
nature. So we remained awhile, lightened of the
pressing burthen of fate, forgetful of death, into
whose night we were about to plunge; no longer
reflecting that our eyes now and for ever were and
would be the only ones which might perceive the divine
magnificence of this terrestrial exhibition. An
enthusiastic transport, akin to happiness, burst, like
a sudden ray from the sun, on our darkened life.
Precious attribute of woe-worn humanity! that can
snatch extatic emotion, even from under the very share
and harrow, that ruthlessly ploughs up and lays waste
every hope.
This evening was marked by another event. Passing
through Ferney in our way to Geneva, unaccustomed
sounds of music arose from the rural church which stood
embosomed in trees, surrounded by smokeless, vacant
cottages. The peal of an organ with rich swell awoke
the mute air, lingering along, and mingling with the
intense beauty that clothed the rocks and woods, and
waves around.
Music--the language of the immortals, disclosed to us
as testimony of their existence--music, "silver key of
the fountain of tears," child of love, soother of
grief, inspirer of heroism and radiant thoughts, O
music, in this our desolation, we had forgotten thee!
Nor pipe at eve cheered us, nor harmony of voice, nor
linked thrill of string; thou camest upon us now, like
the revealing of other forms of being; and transported
as we had been by the loveliness of nature, fancying
that we beheld the abode of spirits, now we might well
imagine that we heard their melodious communings. We
paused in such awe as would seize on a pale votarist,
visiting some holy shrine at midnight; if she beheld
animated and smiling, the image which she worshipped.
We all stood mute; many knelt. In a few minutes
however, we were recalled to human wonder and sympathy
by a familiar strain. The air was Haydn's "New-Created
World," and, old and drooping as humanity had become,
the world yet fresh as at creation's day, might still
be worthily celebrated by such an hymn of praise.
Adrian and I entered the church; the nave was empty,
though the smoke of incense rose from the altar,
bringing with it the recollection of vast
congregations, in once thronged cathedrals; we went
into the loft. A blind old man sat at the bellows; his
whole soul was ear; and as he sat in the attitude of
attentive listening, a bright glow of pleasure was
diffused over his countenance; for, though his
lack-lustre eye could not reflect the beam, yet his
parted lips, and every line of his face and venerable
brow spoke delight. A young woman sat at the keys,
perhaps twenty years of age. Her auburn hair hung on
her neck, and her fair brow shone in its own beauty;
but her drooping eyes let fall fast-flowing tears,
while the constraint she exercised to suppress her
sobs, and still her trembling, flushed her else pale
cheek; she was thin; languor, and alas! sickness, bent
her form.
We stood looking at the pair, forgetting what we heard
in the absorbing sight; till, the last chord struck,
the peal died away in lessening reverberations. The
mighty voice, inorganic we might call it, for we could
in no way associate it with mechanism of pipe or key,
stilled its sonorous tone, and the girl, turning to
lend her assistance to her aged companion, at length
perceived us.
It was her father; and she, since childhood, had been
the guide of his darkened steps. They were Germans from
Saxony, and, emigrating thither but a few years before,
had formed new ties with the surrounding villagers.
About the time that the pestilence had broken out, a
young German student had joined them. Their simple
history was easily divined. He, a noble, loved the
fair daughter of the poor musician, and followed them
in their flight from the persecutions of his friends;
but soon the mighty leveller came with unblunted
scythe to mow, together with the grass, the tall
flowers of the field. The youth was an early victim.
She preserved herself for her father's sake. His
blindness permitted her to continue a delusion, at
first the child of accident--and now solitary beings,
sole survivors in the land, he remained unacquainted
with the change, nor was aware that when he listened
to his child's music, the mute mountains, senseless
lake, and unconscious trees, were, himself excepted,
her sole auditors.
The very day that we arrived she had been attacked by
symptomatic illness. She was paralyzed with horror at
the idea of leaving her aged, sightless father alone
on the empty earth; but she had not courage to
disclose the truth, and the very excess of her
desperation animated her to surpassing exertions. At
the accustomed vesper hour, she led him to the chapel;
and, though trembling and weeping on his account, she
played, without fault in time, or error in note, the
hymn written to celebrate the creation of the adorned
earth, soon to be her tomb.
We came to her like visitors from heaven itself; her
high-wrought courage; her hardly sustained firmness,
fled with the appearance of relief. With a shriek she
rushed towards us, embraced the knees of Adrian, and
uttering but the words, "O save my father!" with sobs
and hysterical cries, opened the long-shut floodgates
of her woe.
Poor girl!--she and her father now lie side by side,
beneath the high walnut-tree where her lover reposes,
and which in her dying moments she had pointed out to
us. Her father, at length aware of his daughter's
danger, unable to see the changes of her dear
countenance, obstinately held her hand, till it was
chilled and stiffened by death. Nor did he then move or
speak, till, twelve hours after, kindly death took him
to his breakless repose. They rest beneath the sod,
the tree their monument;--the hallowed spot is
distinct in my memory, paled in by craggy Jura, and the
far, immeasurable Alps; the spire of the church they
frequented still points from out the embosoming trees;
and though her hand be cold, still methinks the sounds
of divine music which they loved wander about, solacing
their gentle ghosts.
[Vol. III]
THE LAST MAN
CHAPTER VIII.
WE had now reached Switzerland, so long the final mark
and aim of our exertions. We had looked, I know not
wherefore, with hope and pleasing expectation on her
congregation of hills and snowy crags, and opened our
bosoms with renewed spirits to the icy Biz, which even
at Midsummer used to come from the northern glacier
laden with cold. Yet how could we nourish expectation
of relief? Like our native England, and the vast extent
of fertile France, this mountain-embowered land was
desolate of its inhabitants. Nor bleak mountain-top,
nor snow-nourished rivulet; not the ice-laden Biz, nor
thunder, the tamer of contagion, had preserved
them--why therefore should we claim exemption?
Who was there indeed to save? What troop had we brought
fit to stand at bay, and combat with the conqueror? We
were a failing remnant, tamed to mere submission to
the coming blow. A train half dead, through fear of
death--a hopeless, unresisting, almost reckless crew,
which, in the tossed bark of life, had given up all
pilotage, and resigned themselves to the destructive
force of ungoverned winds. Like a few furrows of
unreaped corn, which, left standing on a wide field
after the rest is gathered to the garner, are swiftly
borne down by the winter storm. Like a few straggling
swallows, which, remaining after their fellows had, on
the first unkind breath of passing autumn, migrated to
genial climes, were struck to earth by the first frost
of November. Like a stray sheep that wanders over the
sleet-beaten hill-side, while the flock is in the pen,
and dies before morning-dawn. Like a cloud, like one
of many that were spread in impenetrable woof over the
sky, which, when the shepherd north has driven its
companions "to drink Antipodean noon," fades and
dissolves in the clear ether--Such were we!
We left the fair margin of the beauteous lake of
Geneva, and entered the Alpine ravines; tracing to its
source the brawling Arve, through the rock-bound valley
of Servox, beside the mighty waterfalls, and under the
shadow of the inaccessible mountains, we travelled on;
while the luxuriant walnut-tree gave place to the dark
pine, whose musical branches swung in the wind, and
whose upright forms had braved a thousand storms--till
the verdant sod, the flowery dell, and shrubbery hill
were exchanged for the sky-piercing, untrodden,
seedless rock, "the bones of the world, waiting to be
clothed with every thing necessary to give life and
beauty."* Strange that we should seek shelter here!
Surely, if, in those countries where earth was wont,
like a tender mother, to nourish her children, we had
found her a destroyer, we need not seek it here, where
stricken by keen penury she seems to shudder through
her stony veins. Nor were we mistaken in our
conjecture. We vainly sought the vast and ever moving
glaciers of Chamounix, rifts of pendant ice, seas of
congelated waters, the leafless groves of
tempest-battered pines, dells, mere paths for the loud
avalanche, and hill-tops, the resort of
thunder-storms. Pestilence reigned paramount even here.
By the time that day and night, like twin sisters of
equal growth, shared equally their dominion over the
hours, one by one, beneath the ice-caves, beside the
waters springing from the thawed snows of a thousand
winters, another and yet another of the remnant of the
race of Man, closed their eyes for ever to the light.
[* Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters from Norway.]
Yet we were not quite wrong in seeking a scene like
this, whereon to close the drama. Nature, true to the
last, consoled us in the very heart of misery. Sublime
grandeur of outward objects soothed our hapless hearts,
and were in harmony with our desolation. Many sorrows
have befallen man during his chequered course; and
many a woe-stricken mourner has found himself sole
survivor among many. Our misery took its majestic
shape and colouring from the vast ruin, that
accompanied and made one with it. Thus on lovely
earth, many a dark ravine contains a brawling stream,
shadowed by romantic rocks, threaded by mossy
paths--but all, except this, wanted the mighty
back-ground, the towering Alps, whose snowy capes, or
bared ridges, lifted us from our dull mortal abode, to
the palaces of Nature's own.
This solemn harmony of event and situation regulated
our feelings, and gave as it were fitting costume to
our last act. Majestic gloom and tragic pomp attended
the decease of wretched humanity. The funeral
procession of monarchs of old, was transcended by our
splendid shews. Near the sources of the Arveiron we
performed the rites for, four only excepted, the last
of the species. Adrian and I, leaving Clara and Evelyn
wrapt in peaceful unobserving slumber, carried the
body to this desolate spot, and placed it in those
caves of ice beneath the glacier, which rive and split
with the slightest sound, and bring destruction on
those within the clefts--no bird or beast of prey
could here profane the frozen form. So, with hushed
steps and in silence, we placed the dead on a bier of
ice, and then, departing, stood on the rocky platform
beside the river springs. All hushed as we had been,
the very striking of the air with our persons had
sufficed to disturb the repose of this thawless
region; and we had hardly left the cavern, before vast
blocks of ice, detaching themselves from the roof,
fell, and covered the human image we had deposited
within. We had chosen a fair moonlight night, but our
journey thither had been long, and the crescent sank
behind the western heights by the time we had
accomplished our purpose. The snowy mountains and blue
glaciers shone in their own light. The rugged and
abrupt ravine, which formed one side of Mont Anvert,
was opposite to us, the glacier at our side; at our
feet Arveiron, white and foaming, dashed over the
pointed rocks that jutted into it, and, with whirring
spray and ceaseless roar, disturbed the stilly night.
Yellow lightnings played around the vast dome of Mont
Blanc, silent as the snow-clad rock they illuminated;
all was bare, wild, and sublime, while the singing of
the pines in melodious murmurings added a gentle
interest to the rough magnificence. Now the riving and
fall of icy rocks clave the air; now the thunder of the
avalanche burst on our ears. In countries whose
features are of less magnitude, nature betrays her
living powers in the foliage of the trees, in the
growth of herbage, in the soft purling of meandering
streams; here, endowed with giant attributes, the
torrent, the thunder-storm, and the flow of massive
waters, display her activity. Such the church-yard,
such the requiem, such the eternal congregation, that
waited on our companion's funeral!
Nor was it the human form alone which we had placed in
this eternal sepulchre, whose obsequies we now
celebrated. With this last victim Plague vanished from
the earth. Death had never wanted weapons wherewith to
destroy life, and we, few and weak as we had become,
were still exposed to every other shaft with which his
full quiver teemed. But pestilence was absent from
among them. For seven years it had had full sway upon
earth; she had trod every nook of our spacious globe;
she had mingled with the atmosphere, which as a cloak
enwraps all our fellow-creatures--the inhabitants of
native Europe--the luxurious Asiatic--the swarthy
African and free American had been vanquished and
destroyed by her. Her barbarous tyranny came to its
close here in the rocky vale of Chamounix.
Still recurring scenes of misery and pain, the fruits
of this distemper, made no more a part of our
lives--the word plague no longer rung in our ears--the
aspect of plague incarnate in the human countenance no
longer appeared before our eyes. From this moment I
saw plague no more. She abdicated her throne, and
despoiled herself of her imperial sceptre among the
ice rocks that surrounded us. She left solitude and
silence co-heirs of her kingdom.
My present feelings are so mingled with the past, that
I cannot say whether the knowledge of this change
visited us, as we stood on this sterile spot. It seems
to me that it did; that a cloud seemed to pass from
over us, that a weight was taken from the air; that
henceforth we breathed more freely, and raised our
heads with some portion of former liberty. Yet we did
not hope. We were impressed by the sentiment, that our
race was run, but that plague would not be our
destroyer. The coming time was as a mighty river, down
which a charmed boat is driven, whose mortal steersman
knows, that the obvious peril is not the one he needs
fear, yet that danger is nigh; and who floats
awe-struck under beetling precipices, through the dark
and turbid waters--seeing in the distance yet stranger
and ruder shapes, towards which he is irresistibly
impelled. What would become of us? O for some Delphic
oracle, or Pythian maid, to utter the secrets of
futurity! O for some Oedipus to solve the riddle of the
cruel Sphynx! Such Oedipus was I to be--not divining a
word's juggle, but whose agonizing pangs, and
sorrow-tainted life were to be the engines, wherewith
to lay bare the secrets of destiny, and reveal the
meaning of the enigma, whose explanation closed the
history of the human race.
Dim fancies, akin to these, haunted our minds, and
instilled feelings not unallied to pleasure, as we
stood beside this silent tomb of nature, reared by
these lifeless mountains, above her living veins,
choking her vital principle. "Thus are we left," said
Adrian, "two melancholy blasted trees, where once a
forest waved. We are left to mourn, and pine, and die.
Yet even now we have our duties, which we must string
ourselves to fulfil: the duty of bestowing pleasure
where we can, and by force of love, irradiating with
rainbow hues the tempest of grief. Nor will I repine if
in this extremity we preserve what we now possess.
Something tells me, Verney, that we need no longer
dread our cruel enemy, and I cling with delight to the
oracular voice. Though strange, it will be sweet to
mark the growth of your little boy, and the
development of Clara's young heart. In the midst of a
desert world, we are everything to them; and, if we
live, it must be our task to make this new mode of
life happy to them. At present this is easy, for their
childish ideas do not wander into futurity, and the
stinging craving for sympathy, and all of love of
which our nature is susceptible, is not yet awake
within them: we cannot guess what will happen then,
when nature asserts her indefeasible and sacred
powers; but, long before that time, we may all be
cold, as he who lies in yonder tomb of ice. We need
only provide for the present, and endeavour to fill
with pleasant images the inexperienced fancy of your
lovely niece. The scenes which now surround us, vast
and sublime as they are, are not such as can best
contribute to this work. Nature is here like our
fortunes, grand, but too destructive, bare, and rude,
to be able to afford delight to her young imagination.
Let us descend to the sunny plains of Italy. Winter
will soon be here, to clothe this wilderness in double
desolation; but we will cross the bleak hill-tops, and
lead her to scenes of fertility and beauty, where her
path will be adorned with flowers, and the cheery
atmosphere inspire pleasure and hope."
In pursuance of this plan we quitted Chamounix on the
following day. We had no cause to hasten our steps; no
event was transacted beyond our actual sphere to
enchain our resolves, so we yielded to every idle whim,
and deemed our time well spent, when we could behold
the passage of the hours without dismay. We loitered
along the lovely Vale of Servox; passed long hours on
the bridge, which, crossing the ravine of Arve,
commands a prospect of its pine-clothed depths, and the
snowy mountains that wall it in. We rambled through
romantic Switzerland; till, fear of coming winter
leading us forward, the first days of October found us
in the valley of La Maurienne, which leads to Cenis. I
cannot explain the reluctance we felt at leaving this
land of mountains; perhaps it was, that we regarded the
Alps as boundaries between our former and our future
state of existence, and so clung fondly to what of old
we had loved. Perhaps, because we had now so few
impulses urging to a choice between two modes of
action, we were pleased to preserve the existence of
one, and preferred the prospect of what we were to do,
to the recollection of what had been done. We felt
that for this year danger was past; and we believed
that, for some months, we were secured to each other.
There was a thrilling, agonizing delight in the
thought--it filled the eyes with misty tears, it tore
the heart with tumultuous heavings; frailer than the
"snow fall in the river," were we each and all--but we
strove to give life and individuality to the meteoric
course of our several existences, and to feel that no
moment escaped us unenjoyed. Thus tottering on the
dizzy brink, we were happy. Yes! as we sat beneath the
toppling rocks, beside the waterfalls, near
-- Forests, ancient as the hills,
And folding sunny spots of greenery,
where the chamois grazed, and the timid squirrel laid
up its hoard--descanting on the charms of nature,
drinking in the while her unalienable beauties--we
were, in an empty world, happy.
Yet, O days of joy--days, when eye spoke to eye, and
voices, sweeter than the music of the swinging branches
of the pines, or rivulet's gentle murmur, answered
mine--yet, O days replete with beatitude, days of loved
society--days unutterably dear to me forlorn--pass, O
pass before me, making me in your memory forget what I
am. Behold, how my streaming eyes blot this senseless
paper--behold, how my features are convulsed by
agonizing throes, at your mere recollection, now that,
alone, my tears flow, my lips quiver, my cries fill
the air, unseen, unmarked, unheard! Yet, O yet, days of
delight! let me dwell on your long-drawn hours!
As the cold increased upon us, we passed the Alps, and
descended into Italy. At the uprising of morn, we sat
at our repast, and cheated our regrets by gay sallies
or learned disquisitions. The live-long day we
sauntered on, still keeping in view the end of our
journey, but careless of the hour of its completion.
As the evening star shone out, and the orange sunset,
far in the west, marked the position of the dear land
we had for ever left, talk, thought enchaining, made
the hours fly--O that we had lived thus for ever and
for ever! Of what consequence was it to our four
hearts, that they alone were the fountains of life in
the wide world? As far as mere individual sentiment
was concerned, we had rather be left thus united
together, than if, each alone in a populous desert of
unknown men, we had wandered truly companionless till
life's last term. In this manner, we endeavoured to
console each other; in this manner, true philosophy
taught us to reason.
It was the delight of Adrian and myself to wait on
Clara, naming her the little queen of the world,
ourselves her humblest servitors. When we arrived at a
town, our first care was to select for her its most
choice abode; to make sure that no harrowing relic
remained of its former inhabitants; to seek food for
her, and minister to her wants with assiduous
tenderness. Clara entered into our scheme with
childish gaiety. Her chief business was to attend on
Evelyn; but it was her sport to array herself in
splendid robes, adorn herself with sunny gems, and ape
a princely state. Her religion, deep and pure, did not
teach her to refuse to blunt thus the keen sting of
regret; her youthful vivacity made her enter, heart
and soul, into these strange masquerades.
We had resolved to pass the ensuing winter at Milan,
which, as being a large and luxurious city, would
afford us choice of homes. We had descended the Alps,
and left far behind their vast forests and mighty
crags. We entered smiling Italy. Mingled grass and
corn grew in her plains, the unpruned vines threw
their luxuriant branches around the elms. The grapes,
overripe, had fallen on the ground, or hung purple, or
burnished green, among the red and yellow leaves. The
ears of standing corn winnowed to emptiness by the
spendthrift winds; the fallen foliage of the trees, the
weed-grown brooks, the dusky olive, now spotted with
its blackened fruit; the chestnuts, to which the
squirrel only was harvest-man; all plenty, and yet,
alas! all poverty, painted in wondrous hues and
fantastic groupings this land of beauty. In the towns,
in the voiceless towns, we visited the churches,
adorned by pictures, master-pieces of art, or galleries
of statues--while in this genial clime the animals, in
new found liberty, rambled through the gorgeous
palaces, and hardly feared our forgotten aspect. The
dove-coloured oxen turned their full eyes on us, and
paced slowly by; a startling throng of silly sheep,
with pattering feet, would start up in some chamber,
formerly dedicated to the repose of beauty, and rush,
huddling past us, down the marble staircase into the
street, and again in at the first open door, taking
unrebuked possession of hallowed sanctuary, or kingly
council-chamber. We no longer started at these
occurrences, nor at worse exhibition of change--when
the palace had become a mere tomb, pregnant with fetid
stench, strewn with the dead; and we could perceive how
pestilence and fear had played strange antics, chasing
the luxurious dame to the dank fields and bare
cottage; gathering, among carpets of Indian woof, and
beds of silk, the rough peasant, or the deformed
half-human shape of the wretched beggar.
We arrived at Milan, and stationed ourselves in the
Vice-Roy's palace. Here we made laws for ourselves,
dividing our day, and fixing distinct occupations for
each hour. In the morning we rode in the adjoining
country, or wandered through the palaces, in search of
pictures or antiquities. In the evening we assembled
to read or to converse. There were few books that we
dared read; few, that did not cruelly deface the
painting we bestowed on our solitude, by recalling
combinations and emotions never more to be experienced
by us. Metaphysical disquisition; fiction, which
wandering from all reality, lost itself in self-created
errors; poets of times so far gone by, that to read of
them was as to read of Atlantis and Utopia; or such as
referred to nature only, and the workings of one
particular mind; but most of all, talk, varied and
ever new, beguiled our hours.
While we paused thus in our onward career towards
death, time held on its accustomed course. Still and
for ever did the earth roll on, enthroned in her
atmospheric car, speeded by the force of the invisible
coursers of never-erring necessity. And now, this
dew-drop in the sky, this ball, ponderous with
mountains, lucent with waves, passing from the short
tyranny of watery Pisces and the frigid Ram, entered
the radiant demesne of Taurus and the Twins. There,
fanned by vernal airs, the Spirit of Beauty sprung
from her cold repose; and, with winnowing wings and
soft pacing feet, set a girdle of verdure around the
earth, sporting among the violets, hiding within the
springing foliage of the trees, tripping lightly down
the radiant streams into the sunny deep. "For lo!
winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers
appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds
is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our
land; the fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and
the vines, with the tender grape, give a good smell."*
Thus was it in the time of the ancient regal poet; thus
was it now.
[* Solomon's Song.]
Yet how could we miserable hail the approach of this
delightful season? We hoped indeed that death did not
now as heretofore walk in its shadow; yet, left as we
were alone to each other, we looked in each other's
faces with enquiring eyes, not daring altogether to
trust to our presentiments, and endeavouring to divine
which would be the hapless survivor to the other
three. We were to pass the summer at the lake of Como,
and thither we removed as soon as spring grew to her
maturity, and the snow disappeared from the hill tops.
Ten miles from Como, under the steep heights of the
eastern mountains, by the margin of the lake, was a
villa called the Pliniana, from its being built on the
site of a fountain, whose periodical ebb and flow is
described by the younger Pliny in his letters. The
house had nearly fallen into ruin, till in the year
2090, an English nobleman had bought it, and fitted it
up with every luxury. Two large halls, hung with
splendid tapestry, and paved with marble, opened on
each side of a court, of whose two other sides one
overlooked the deep dark lake, and the other was
bounded by a mountain, from whose stony side gushed,
with roar and splash, the celebrated fountain. Above,
underwood of myrtle and tufts of odorous plants
crowned the rock, while the star-pointing giant
cypresses reared themselves in the blue air, and the
recesses of the hills were adorned with the luxuriant
growth of chestnut-trees. Here we fixed our summer
residence. We had a lovely skiff, in which we sailed,
now stemming the midmost waves, now coasting the
over-hanging and craggy banks, thick sown with
evergreens, which dipped their shining leaves in the
waters, and were mirrored in many a little bay and
creek of waters of translucent darkness. Here orange
plants bloomed, here birds poured forth melodious
hymns; and here, during spring, the cold snake emerged
from the clefts, and basked on the sunny terraces of
rock.
Were we not happy in this paradisiacal retreat? If some
kind spirit had whispered forgetfulness to us, methinks
we should have been happy here, where the precipitous
mountains, nearly pathless, shut from our view the far
fields of desolate earth, and with small exertion of
the imagination, we might fancy that the cities were
still resonant with popular hum, and the peasant still
guided his plough through the furrow, and that we, the
world's free denizens, enjoyed a voluntary exile, and
not a remediless cutting off from our extinct species.
Not one among us enjoyed the beauty of this scenery so
much as Clara. Before we quitted Milan, a change had
taken place in her habits and manners. She lost her
gaiety, she laid aside her sports, and assumed an
almost vestal plainness of attire. She shunned us,
retiring with Evelyn to some distant chamber or silent
nook; nor did she enter into his pastimes with the
same zest as she was wont, but would sit and watch him
with sadly tender smiles, and eyes bright with tears,
yet without a word of complaint. She approached us
timidly, avoided our caresses, nor shook off her
embarrassment till some serious discussion or lofty
theme called her for awhile out of herself. Her beauty
grew as a rose, which, opening to the summer wind,
discloses leaf after leaf till the sense aches with its
excess of loveliness. A slight and variable colour
tinged her cheeks, and her motions seemed attuned by
some hidden harmony of surpassing sweetness. We
redoubled our tenderness and earnest attentions. She
received them with grateful smiles, that fled swift as
sunny beam from a glittering wave on an April day.
Our only acknowledged point of sympathy with her,
appeared to be Evelyn. This dear little fellow was a
comforter and delight to us beyond all words. His
buoyant spirit, and his innocent ignorance of our vast
calamity, were balm to us, whose thoughts and feelings
were over-wrought and spun out in the immensity of
speculative sorrow. To cherish, to caress, to amuse
him was the common task of all. Clara, who felt towards
him in some degree like a young mother, gratefully
acknowledged our kindness towards him. To me, O! to
me, who saw the clear brows and soft eyes of the
beloved of my heart, my lost and ever dear Idris,
re-born in his gentle face, to me he was dear even to
pain; if I pressed him to my heart, methought I clasped
a real and living part of her, who had lain there
through long years of youthful happiness.
It was the custom of Adrian and myself to go out each
day in our skiff to forage in the adjacent country. In
these expeditions we were seldom accompanied by Clara
or her little charge, but our return was an hour of
hilarity. Evelyn ransacked our stores with childish
eagerness, and we always brought some new found gift
for our fair companion. Then too we made discoveries
of lovely scenes or gay palaces, whither in the evening
we all proceeded. Our sailing expeditions were most
divine, and with a fair wind or transverse course we
cut the liquid waves; and, if talk failed under the
pressure of thought, I had my clarionet with me, which
awoke the echoes, and gave the change to our careful
minds. Clara at such times often returned to her
former habits of free converse and gay sally; and
though our four hearts alone beat in the world, those
four hearts were happy.
One day, on our return from the town of Como, with a
laden boat, we expected as usual to be met at the port
by Clara and Evelyn, and we were somewhat surprised to
see the beach vacant. I, as my nature prompted, would
not prognosticate evil, but explained it away as a mere
casual incident. Not so Adrian. He was seized with
sudden trembling and apprehension, and he called to me
with vehemence to steer quickly for land, and, when
near, leapt from the boat, half falling into the water;
and, scrambling up the steep bank, hastened along the
narrow strip of garden, the only level space between
the lake and the mountain. I followed without delay;
the garden and inner court were empty, so was the
house, whose every room we visited. Adrian called
loudly upon Clara's name, and was about to rush up the
near mountain-path, when the door of a summer-house at
the end of the garden slowly opened, and Clara
appeared, not advancing towards us, but leaning
against a column of the building with blanched cheeks,
in a posture of utter despondency. Adrian sprang
towards her with a cry of joy, and folded her
delightedly in his arms. She withdrew from his embrace,
and, without a word, again entered the summer-house.
Her quivering lips, her despairing heart refused to
afford her voice to express our misfortune. Poor
little Evelyn had, while playing with her, been seized
with sudden fever, and now lay torpid and speechless on
a little couch in the summer-house.
For a whole fortnight we unceasingly watched beside the
poor child, as his life declined under the ravages of
a virulent typhus. His little form and tiny lineaments
encaged the embryo of the world-spanning mind of man.
Man's nature, brimful of passions and affections, would
have had an home in that little heart, whose swift
pulsations hurried towards their close. His small
hand's fine mechanism, now flaccid and unbent, would in
the growth of sinew and muscle, have achieved works of
beauty or of strength. His tender rosy feet would have
trod in firm manhood the bowers and glades of
earth--these reflections were now of little use: he
lay, thought and strength suspended, waiting
unresisting the final blow.
We watched at his bedside, and when the access of fever
was on him, we neither spoke nor looked at each other,
marking only his obstructed breath and the mortal glow
that tinged his sunken cheek, the heavy death that
weighed on his eyelids. It is a trite evasion to say,
that words could not express our long drawn agony; yet
how can words image sensations, whose tormenting
keenness throw us back, as it were, on the deep roots
and hidden foundations of our nature, which shake our
being with earthquake-throe, so that we leave to
confide in accustomed feelings which like mother-earth
support us, and cling to some vain imagination or
deceitful hope, which will soon be buried in the ruins
occasioned by the final shock. I have called that
period a fortnight, which we passed watching the
changes of the sweet child's malady--and such it might
have been--at night, we wondered to find another day
gone, while each particular hour seemed endless. Day
and night were exchanged for one another uncounted; we
slept hardly at all, nor did we even quit his room,
except when a pang of grief seized us, and we retired
from each other for a short period to conceal our sobs
and tears. We endeavoured in vain to abstract Clara
from this deplorable scene. She sat, hour after hour,
looking at him, now softly arranging his pillow, and,
while he had power to swallow, administered his drink.
At length the moment of his death came: the blood
paused in its flow--his eyes opened, and then closed
again: without convulsion or sigh, the frail tenement
was left vacant of its spiritual inhabitant.
I have heard that the sight of the dead has confirmed
materialists in their belief. I ever felt otherwise.
Was that my child--that moveless decaying inanimation?
My child was enraptured by my caresses; his dear voice
cloathed with meaning articulations his thoughts,
otherwise inaccessible; his smile was a ray of the
soul, and the same soul sat upon its throne in his
eyes. I turn from this mockery of what he was. Take, O
earth, thy debt! freely and for ever I consign to thee
the garb thou didst afford. But thou, sweet child,
amiable and beloved boy, either thy spirit has sought a
fitter dwelling, or, shrined in my heart, thou livest
while it lives.
We placed his remains under a cypress, the upright
mountain being scooped out to receive them. And then
Clara said, "If you wish me to live, take me from
hence. There is something in this scene of
transcendent beauty, in these trees, and hills and
waves, that for ever whisper to me, leave thy cumbrous
flesh, and make a part of us. I earnestly entreat you
to take me away."
So on the fifteenth of August we bade adieu to our
villa, and the embowering shades of this abode of
beauty; to calm bay and noisy waterfall; to Evelyn's
little grave we bade farewell! and then, with heavy
hearts, we departed on our pilgrimage towards Rome.
[Vol. III]
THE LAST MAN
CHAPTER IX.
NOW--soft awhile--have I arrived so near the end? Yes!
it is all over now--a step or two over those new made
graves, and the wearisome way is done. Can I
accomplish my task? Can I streak my paper with words
capacious of the grand conclusion? Arise, black
Melancholy! quit thy Cimmerian solitude! Bring with
thee murky fogs from hell, which may drink up the day;
bring blight and pestiferous exhalations, which,
entering the hollow caverns and breathing places of
earth, may fill her stony veins with corruption, so
that not only herbage may no longer flourish, the trees
may rot, and the rivers run with gall--but the
everlasting mountains be decomposed, and the mighty
deep putrify, and the genial atmosphere which clips the
globe, lose all powers of generation and sustenance.
Do this, sad visaged power, while I write, while eyes
read these pages.
And who will read them? Beware, tender offspring of the
re-born world--beware, fair being, with human heart,
yet untamed by care, and human brow, yet unploughed by
time--beware, lest the cheerful current of thy blood
be checked, thy golden locks turn grey, thy sweet
dimpling smiles be changed to fixed, harsh wrinkles!
Let not day look on these lines, lest garish day
waste, turn pale, and die. Seek a cypress grove, whose
moaning boughs will be harmony befitting; seek some
cave, deep embowered in earth's dark entrails, where
no light will penetrate, save that which struggles,
red and flickering, through a single fissure, staining
thy page with grimmest livery of death.
There is a painful confusion in my brain, which refuses
to delineate distinctly succeeding events. Sometimes
the irradiation of my friend's gentle smile comes
before me; and methinks its light spans and fills
eternity--then, again, I feel the gasping throes--
We quitted Como, and in compliance with Adrian's
earnest desire, we took Venice in our way to Rome.
There was something to the English peculiarly
attractive in the idea of this wave-encircled,
island-enthroned city. Adrian had never seen it. We
went down the Po and the Brenta in a boat; and, the
days proving intolerably hot, we rested in the
bordering palaces during the day, travelling through
the night, when darkness made the bordering banks
indistinct, and our solitude less remarkable; when the
wandering moon lit the waves that divided before our
prow, and the night-wind filled our sails, and the
murmuring stream, waving trees, and swelling canvass,
accorded in harmonious strain. Clara, long overcome by
excessive grief, had to a great degree cast aside her
timid, cold reserve, and received our attentions with
grateful tenderness. While Adrian with poetic fervour
discoursed of the glorious nations of the dead, of the
beauteous earth and the fate of man, she crept near
him, drinking in his speech with silent pleasure. We
banished from our talk, and as much as possible from
our thoughts, the knowledge of our desolation. And it
would be incredible to an inhabitant of cities, to one
among a busy throng, to what extent we succeeded. It
was as a man confined in a dungeon, whose small and
grated rift at first renders the doubtful light more
sensibly obscure, till, the visual orb having drunk in
the beam, and adapted itself to its scantiness, he
finds that clear noon inhabits his cell. So we, a
simple triad on empty earth, were multiplied to each
other, till we became all in all. We stood like trees,
whose roots are loosened by the wind, which support one
another, leaning and clinging with encreased fervour
while the wintry storms howl.
Thus we floated down the widening stream of the Po,
sleeping when the cicale sang, awake with the stars.
We entered the narrower banks of the Brenta, and
arrived at the shore of the Laguna at sunrise on the
sixth of September. The bright orb slowly rose from
behind its cupolas and towers, and shed its
penetrating light upon the glassy waters. Wrecks of
gondolas, and some few uninjured ones, were strewed on
the beach at Fusina. We embarked in one of these for
the widowed daughter of ocean, who, abandoned and
fallen, sat forlorn on her propping isles, looking
towards the far mountains of Greece. We rowed lightly
over the Laguna, and entered Canale Grande. The tide
ebbed sullenly from out the broken portals and
violated halls of Venice: sea weed and sea monsters
were left on the blackened marble, while the salt ooze
defaced the matchless works of art that adorned their
walls, and the sea gull flew out from the shattered
window. In the midst of this appalling ruin of the
monuments of man's power, nature asserted her
ascendancy, and shone more beauteous from the
contrast. The radiant waters hardly trembled, while the
rippling waves made many sided mirrors to the sun; the
blue immensity, seen beyond Lido, stretched far,
unspecked by boat, so tranquil, so lovely, that it
seemed to invite us to quit the land strewn with ruins,
and to seek refuge from sorrow and fear on its placid
extent.
We saw the ruins of this hapless city from the height
of the tower of San Marco, immediately under us, and
turned with sickening hearts to the sea, which, though
it be a grave, rears no monument, discloses no ruin.
Evening had come apace. The sun set in calm majesty
behind the misty summits of the Apennines, and its
golden and roseate hues painted the mountains of the
opposite shore. "That land," said Adrian, "tinged with
the last glories of the day, is Greece." Greece! The
sound had a responsive chord in the bosom of Clara.
She vehemently reminded us that we had promised to
take her once again to Greece, to the tomb of her
parents. Why go to Rome? what should we do at Rome? We
might take one of the many vessels to be found here,
embark in it, and steer right for Albania.
I objected the dangers of ocean, and the distance of
the mountains we saw, from Athens; a distance which,
from the savage uncultivation of the country, was
almost impassable. Adrian, who was delighted with
Clara's proposal, obviated these objections. The
season was favourable; the north-west that blew would
take us transversely across the gulph; and then we
might find, in some abandoned port, a light Greek
caique, adapted for such navigation, and run down the
coast of the Morea, and, passing over the Isthmus of
Corinth, without much land-travelling or fatigue, find
ourselves at Athens. This appeared to me wild talk;
but the sea, glowing with a thousand purple hues,
looked so brilliant and safe; my beloved companions
were so earnest, so determined, that, when Adrian said,
"Well, though it is not exactly what you wish, yet
consent, to please me"--I could no longer refuse. That
evening we selected a vessel, whose size just seemed
fitted for our enterprize; we bent the sails and put
the rigging in order, and reposing that night in one
of the city's thousand palaces, agreed to embark at
sunrise the following morning.
When winds that move not its calm surface, sweep
The azure sea, I love the land no more;
The smiles of the serene and tranquil deep
Tempt my unquiet mind--
Thus said Adrian, quoting a translation of Moschus's
poem, as in the clear morning light, we rowed over the
Laguna, past Lido, into the open sea--I would have
added in continuation,
But when the roar
Of ocean's gray abyss resounds, and foam
Gathers upon the sea, and vast waves burst--
But my friends declared that such verses were evil
augury; so in cheerful mood we left the shallow waters,
and, when out at sea, unfurled our sails to catch the
favourable breeze. The laughing morning air filled
them, while sun-light bathed earth, sky and ocean--the
placid waves divided to receive our keel, and playfully
kissed the dark sides of our little skiff, murmuring a
welcome; as land receded, still the blue expanse, most
waveless, twin sister to the azure empyrean, afforded
smooth conduct to our bark. As the air and waters were
tranquil and balmy, so were our minds steeped in quiet.
In comparison with the unstained deep, funereal earth
appeared a grave, its high rocks and stately mountains
were but monuments, its trees the plumes of a herse,
the brooks and rivers brackish with tears for departed
man. Farewell to desolate towns--to fields with their
savage intermixture of corn and weeds--to ever
multiplying relics of our lost species. Ocean, we
commit ourselves to thee--even as the patriarch of old
floated above the drowned world, let us be saved, as
thus we betake ourselves to thy perennial flood.
Adrian sat at the helm; I attended to the rigging, the
breeze right aft filled our swelling canvas, and we ran
before it over the untroubled deep. The wind died away
at noon; its idle breath just permitted us to hold our
course. As lazy, fair-weather sailors, careless of the
coming hour, we talked gaily of our coasting voyage,
of our arrival at Athens. We would make our home of
one of the Cyclades, and there in myrtle-groves, amidst
perpetual spring, fanned by the wholesome
sea-breezes--we would live long years in beatific
union--Was there such a thing as death in the world?--
The sun passed its zenith, and lingered down the
stainless floor of heaven. Lying in the boat, my face
turned up to the sky, I thought I saw on its blue
white, marbled streaks, so slight, so immaterial, that
now I said--They are there--and now, It is a mere
imagination. A sudden fear stung me while I gazed;
and, starting up, and running to the prow,--as I stood,
my hair was gently lifted on my brow--a dark line of
ripples appeared to the east, gaining rapidly on
us--my breathless remark to Adrian, was followed by
the flapping of the canvas, as the adverse wind struck
it, and our boat lurched--swift as speech, the web of
the storm thickened over head, the sun went down red,
the dark sea was strewed with foam, and our skiff rose
and fell in its encreasing furrows.
Behold us now in our frail tenement, hemmed in by
hungry, roaring waves, buffeted by winds. In the inky
east two vast clouds, sailing contrary ways, met; the
lightning leapt forth, and the hoarse thunder muttered.
Again in the south, the clouds replied, and the forked
stream of fire running along the black sky, shewed us
the appalling piles of clouds, now met and obliterated
by the heaving waves. Great God! And we alone--we
three--alone--alone--sole dwellers on the sea and on
the earth, we three must perish! The vast universe, its
myriad worlds, and the plains of boundless earth which
we had left--the extent of shoreless sea
around--contracted to my view--they and all that they
contained, shrunk up to one point, even to our tossing
bark, freighted with glorious humanity.
A convulsion of despair crossed the love-beaming face
of Adrian, while with set teeth he murmured, "Yet they
shall be saved!" Clara, visited by an human pang, pale
and trembling, crept near him--he looked on her with an
encouraging smile--"Do you fear, sweet girl? O, do not
fear, we shall soon be on shore!"
The darkness prevented me from seeing the changes of
her countenance; but her voice was clear and sweet, as
she replied, "Why should I fear? neither sea nor storm
can harm us, if mighty destiny or the ruler of destiny
does not permit. And then the stinging fear of
surviving either of you, is not here--one death will
clasp us undivided."
Meanwhile we took in all our sails, save a gib; and, as
soon as we might without danger, changed our course,
running with the wind for the Italian shore. Dark
night mixed everything; we hardly discerned the white
crests of the murderous surges, except when lightning
made brief noon, and drank the darkness, shewing us our
danger, and restoring us to double night. We were all
silent, except when Adrian, as steersman, made an
encouraging observation. Our little shell obeyed the
rudder miraculously well, and ran along on the top of
the waves, as if she had been an offspring of the sea,
and the angry mother sheltered her endangered child.
I sat at the prow, watching our course; when suddenly I
heard the waters break with redoubled fury. We were
certainly near the shore--at the same time I cried,
"About there!" and a broad lightning filling the
concave, shewed us for one moment the level beach
a-head, disclosing even the sands, and stunted,
ooze-sprinkled beds of reeds, that grew at high water
mark. Again it was dark, and we drew in our breath
with such content as one may, who, while fragments of
volcano-hurled rock darken the air, sees a vast mass
ploughing the ground immediately at his feet. What to
do we knew not--the breakers here, there, everywhere,
encompassed us--they roared, and dashed, and flung
their hated spray in our faces. With considerable
difficulty and danger we succeeded at length in
altering our course, and stretched out from shore. I
urged my companions to prepare for the wreck of our
little skiff, and to bind themselves to some oar or
spar which might suffice to float them. I was myself
an excellent swimmer--the very sight of the sea was
wont to raise in me such sensations, as a huntsman
experiences, when he hears a pack of hounds in full
cry; I loved to feel the waves wrap me and strive to
overpower me; while I, lord of myself, moved this way
or that, in spite of their angry buffetings. Adrian
also could swim--but the weakness of his frame
prevented him from feeling pleasure in the exercise,
or acquiring any great expertness. But what power could
the strongest swimmer oppose to the overpowering
violence of ocean in its fury? My efforts to prepare
my companions were rendered nearly futile--for the
roaring breakers prevented our hearing one another
speak, and the waves, that broke continually over our
boat, obliged me to exert all my strength in lading
the water out, as fast as it came in. The while
darkness, palpable and rayless, hemmed us round,
dissipated only by the lightning; sometimes we beheld
thunderbolts, fiery red, fall into the sea, and at
intervals vast spouts stooped from the clouds,
churning the wild ocean, which rose to meet them;
while the fierce gale bore the rack onwards, and they
were lost in the chaotic mingling of sky and sea. Our
gunwales had been torn away, our single sail had been
rent to ribbands, and borne down the stream of the
wind. We had cut away our mast, and lightened the boat
of all she contained--Clara attempted to assist me in
heaving the water from the hold, and, as she turned
her eyes to look on the lightning, I could discern by
that momentary gleam, that resignation had conquered
every fear. We have a power given us in any worst
extremity, which props the else feeble mind of man,
and enables us to endure the most savage tortures with
a stillness of soul which in hours of happiness we
could not have imagined. A calm, more dreadful in
truth than the tempest, allayed the wild beatings of my
heart--a calm like that of the gamester, the suicide,
and the murderer, when the last die is on the point of
being cast--while the poisoned cup is at the lips,--as
the death-blow is about to be given.
Hours passed thus--hours which might write old age on
the face of beardless youth, and grizzle the silky hair
of infancy---hours, while the chaotic uproar continued,
while each dread gust transcended in fury the one
before, and our skiff hung on the breaking wave, and
then rushed into the valley below, and trembled and
spun between the watery precipices that seemed most to
meet above her. For a moment the gale paused, and
ocean sank to comparative silence--it was a breathless
interval; the wind which, as a practised leaper, had
gathered itself up before it sprung, now with terrific
roar rushed over the sea, and the waves struck our
stern. Adrian exclaimed that the rudder was gone;--"We
are lost," cried Clara, "Save yourselves--O save
yourselves!" The lightning shewed me the poor girl half
buried in the water at the bottom of the boat; as she
was sinking in it Adrian caught her up, and sustained
her in his arms. We were without a rudder--we rushed
prow foremost into the vast billows piled up
a-head--they broke over and filled the tiny skiff; one
scream I heard--one cry that we were gone, I uttered; I
found myself in the waters; darkness was around. When
the light of the tempest flashed, I saw the keel of our
upset boat close to me--I clung to this, grasping it
with clenched hand and nails, while I endeavoured
during each flash to discover any appearance of my
companions. I thought I saw Adrian at no great distance
from me, clinging to an oar; I sprung from my hold,
and with energy beyond my human strength, I dashed
aside the waters as I strove to lay hold of him. As
that hope failed, instinctive love of life animated me,
and feelings of contention, as if a hostile will
combated with mine. I breasted the surges, and flung
them from me, as I would the opposing front and
sharpened claws of a lion about to enfang my bosom.
When I had been beaten down by one wave, I rose on
another, while I felt bitter pride curl my lip.
Ever since the storm had carried us near the shore, we
had never attained any great distance from it. With
every flash I saw the bordering coast; yet the
progress I made was small, while each wave, as it
receded, carried me back into ocean's far abysses. At
one moment I felt my foot touch the sand, and then
again I was in deep water; my arms began to lose their
power of motion; my breath failed me under the
influence of the strangling waters--a thousand wild and
delirious thoughts crossed me: as well as I can now
recall them, my chief feeling was, how sweet it would
be to lay my head on the quiet earth, where the surges
would no longer strike my weakened frame, nor the
sound of waters ring in my ears--to attain this repose,
not to save my life, I made a last effort--the
shelving shore suddenly presented a footing for me. I
rose, and was again thrown down by the breakers--a
point of rock to which I was enabled to cling, gave me
a moment's respite; and then, taking advantage of the
ebbing of the waves, I ran forwards--gained the dry
sands, and fell senseless on the oozy reeds that
sprinkled them.
I must have lain long deprived of life; for when first,
with a sickening feeling, I unclosed my eyes, the light
of morning met them. Great change had taken place
meanwhile: grey dawn dappled the flying clouds, which
sped onwards, leaving visible at intervals vast lakes
of pure ether. A fountain of light arose in an
encreasing stream from the east, behind the waves of
the Adriatic, changing the grey to a roseate hue, and
then flooding sky and sea with aerial gold.
A kind of stupor followed my fainting; my senses were
alive, but memory was extinct. The blessed respite was
short--a snake lurked near me to sting me into life--on
the first retrospective emotion I would have started
up, but my limbs refused to obey me; my knees trembled,
the muscles had lost all power. I still believed that I
might find one of my beloved companions cast like me,
half alive, on the beach; and I strove in every way to
restore my frame to the use of its animal functions. I
wrung the brine from my hair; and the rays of the risen
sun soon visited me with genial warmth. With the
restoration of my bodily powers, my mind became in some
degree aware of the universe of misery, henceforth to
be its dwelling. I ran to the water's edge, calling
on the beloved names. Ocean drank in, and absorbed my
feeble voice, replying with pitiless roar. I climbed a
near tree: the level sands bounded by a pine forest,
and the sea clipped round by the horizon, was all that
I could discern. In vain I extended my researches along
the beach; the mast we had thrown overboard, with
tangled cordage, and remnants of a sail, was the sole
relic land received of our wreck. Sometimes I stood
still, and wrung my hands. I accused earth and sky--the
universal machine and the Almighty power that
misdirected it. Again I threw myself on the sands, and
then the sighing wind, mimicking a human cry, roused me
to bitter, fallacious hope. Assuredly if any little
bark or smallest canoe had been near, I should have
sought the savage plains of ocean, found the dear
remains of my lost ones, and clinging round them, have
shared their grave.
The day passed thus; each moment contained eternity;
although when hour after hour had gone by, I wondered
at the quick flight of time. Yet even now I had not
drunk the bitter potion to the dregs; I was not yet
persuaded of my loss; I did not yet feel in every
pulsation, in every nerve, in every thought, that I
remained alone of my race,--that I was the LAST MAN.
The day had clouded over, and a drizzling rain set in
at sunset. Even the eternal skies weep, I thought; is
there any shame then, that mortal man should spend
himself in tears? I remembered the ancient fables, in
which human beings are described as dissolving away
through weeping into ever-gushing fountains. Ah! that
so it were; and then my destiny would be in some sort
akin to the watery death of Adrian and Clara. Oh! grief
is fantastic; it weaves a web on which to trace the
history of its woe from every form and change around;
it incorporates itself with all living nature; it
finds sustenance in every object; as light, it fills
all things, and, like light, it gives its own colours
to all.
I had wandered in my search to some distance from the
spot on which I had been cast, and came to one of
those watch-towers, which at stated distances line the
Italian shore. I was glad of shelter, glad to find a
work of human hands, after I had gazed so long on
nature's drear barrenness; so I entered, and ascended
the rough winding staircase into the guard-room. So
far was fate kind, that no harrowing vestige remained
of its former inhabitants; a few planks laid across
two iron tressels, and strewed with the dried leaves
of Indian corn, was the bed presented to me; and an
open chest, containing some half mouldered biscuit,
awakened an appetite, which perhaps existed before,
but of which, until now, I was not aware. Thirst also,
violent and parching, the result of the sea-water I had
drank, and of the exhaustion of my frame, tormented me.
Kind nature had gifted the supply of these wants with
pleasurable sensations, so that I--even I!--was
refreshed and calmed, as I ate of this sorry fare, and
drank a little of the sour wine which half filled a
flask left in this abandoned dwelling. Then I
stretched myself on the bed, not to be disdained by the
victim of shipwreck. The earthy smell of the dried
leaves was balm to my sense after the hateful odour of
sea-weed. I forgot my state of loneliness. I neither
looked backward nor forward; my senses were hushed to
repose; I fell asleep and dreamed of all dear inland
scenes, of hay-makers, of the shepherd's whistle to his
dog, when he demanded his help to drive the flock to
fold; of sights and sounds peculiar to my boyhood's
mountain life, which I had long forgotten.
I awoke in a painful agony--for I fancied that ocean,
breaking its bounds, carried away the fixed continent
and deep rooted mountains, together with the streams I
loved, the woods, and the flocks--it raged around, with
that continued and dreadful roar which had accompanied
the last wreck of surviving humanity. As my waking
sense returned, the bare walls of the guard room
closed round me, and the rain pattered against the
single window. How dreadful it is, to emerge from the
oblivion of slumber, and to receive as a good morrow
the mute wailing of one's own hapless heart--to return
from the land of deceptive dreams, to the heavy
knowledge of unchanged disaster!--Thus was it with me,
now, and for ever! The sting of other griefs might be
blunted by time; and even mine yielded sometimes
during the day, to the pleasure inspired by the
imagination or the senses; but I never look first upon
the morning-light but with my fingers pressed tight on
my bursting heart, and my soul deluged with the
interminable flood of hopeless misery. Now I awoke for
the first time in the dead world--I awoke alone--and
the dull dirge of the sea, heard even amidst the rain,
recalled me to the reflection of the wretch I had
become. The sound came like a reproach, a scoff--like
the sting of remorse in the soul--I gasped--the veins
and muscles of my throat swelled, suffocating me. I put
my fingers to my ears, I buried my head in the leaves
of my couch, I would have dived to the centre to lose
hearing of that hideous moan.
But another task must be mine--again I visited the
detested beach--again I vainly looked far and
wide--again I raised my unanswered cry, lifting up the
only voice that could ever again force the mute air to
syllable the human thought.
What a pitiable, forlorn, disconsolate being I was! My
very aspect and garb told the tale of my despair. My
hair was matted and wild--my limbs soiled with salt
ooze; while at sea, I had thrown off those of my
garments that encumbered me, and the rain drenched the
thin summer-clothing I had retained--my feet were
bare, and the stunted reeds and broken shells made
them bleed--the while, I hurried to and fro, now
looking earnestly on some distant rock which, islanded
in the sands, bore for a moment a deceptive
appearance--now with flashing eyes reproaching the
murderous ocean for its unutterable cruelty.
For a moment I compared myself to that monarch of the
waste--Robinson Crusoe. We had been both thrown
companionless--he on the shore of a desolate island: I
on that of a desolate world. I was rich in the so
called goods of life. If I turned my steps from the
near barren scene, and entered any of the earth's
million cities, I should find their wealth stored up
for my accommodation--clothes, food, books, and a
choice of dwelling beyond the command of the princes of
former times--every climate was subject to my
selection, while he was obliged to toil in the
acquirement of every necessary, and was the inhabitant
of a tropical island, against whose heats and storms
he could obtain small shelter.--Viewing the question
thus, who would not have preferred the Sybarite
enjoyments I could command, the philosophic leisure,
and ample intellectual resources, to his life of labour
and peril? Yet he was far happier than I: for he could
hope, nor hope in vain--the destined vessel at last
arrived, to bear him to countrymen and kindred, where
the events of his solitude became a fire-side tale. To
none could I ever relate the story of my adversity; no
hope had I. He knew that, beyond the ocean which begirt
his lonely island, thousands lived whom the sun
enlightened when it shone also on him: beneath the
meridian sun and visiting moon, I alone bore human
features; I alone could give articulation to thought;
and, when I slept, both day and night were unbeheld of
any. He had fled from his fellows, and was transported
with terror at the print of a human foot. I would have
knelt down and worshipped the same. The wild and cruel
Caribbee, the merciless Cannibal--or worse than these,
the uncouth, brute, and remorseless veteran in the
vices of civilization, would have been to me a beloved
companion, a treasure dearly prized--his nature would
be kin to mine; his form cast in the same mould; human
blood would flow in his veins; a human sympathy must
link us for ever. It cannot be that I shall never
behold a fellow being more!--never!--never!--not in the
course of years!--Shall I wake, and speak to none,
pass the interminable hours, my soul, islanded in the
world, a solitary point, surrounded by vacuum? Will
day follow day endlessly thus?--No! no! a God rules the
world--providence has not exchanged its golden sceptre
for an aspic's sting. Away! let me fly from the
ocean-grave, let me depart from this barren nook, paled
in, as it is, from access by its own desolateness; let
me tread once again the paved towns; step over the
threshold of man's dwellings, and most certainly I
shall find this thought a horrible vision--a maddening,
but evanescent dream.
I entered Ravenna, (the town nearest to the spot
whereon I had been cast), before the second sun had set
on the empty world; I saw many living creatures; oxen,
and horses, and dogs, but there was no man among them;
I entered a cottage, it was vacant; I ascended the
marble stairs of a palace, the bats and the owls were
nestled in the tapestry; I stepped softly, not to
awaken the sleeping town: I rebuked a dog, that by
yelping disturbed the sacred stillness; I would not
believe that all was as it seemed--The world was not
dead, but I was mad; I was deprived of sight, hearing,
and sense of touch; I was labouring under the force of
a spell, which permitted me to behold all sights of
earth, except its human inhabitants; they were pursuing
their ordinary labours. Every house had its inmate; but
I could not perceive them. If I could have deluded
myself into a belief of this kind, I should have been
far more satisfied. But my brain, tenacious of its
reason, refused to lend itself to such
imaginations--and though I endeavoured to play the
antic to myself, I knew that I, the offspring of man,
during long years one among many--now remained sole
survivor of my species.
The sun sank behind the western hills; I had fasted
since the preceding evening, but, though faint and
weary, I loathed food, nor ceased, while yet a ray of
light remained, to pace the lonely streets. Night came
on, and sent every living creature but me to the bosom
of its mate. It was my solace, to blunt my mental
agony by personal hardship--of the thousand beds
around, I would not seek the luxury of one; I lay down
on the pavement,--a cold marble step served me for a
pillow--midnight came; and then, though not before,
did my wearied lids shut out the sight of the twinkling
stars, and their reflex on the pavement near. Thus I
passed the second night of my desolation.
[Vol. III]
THE LAST MAN
CHAPTER X.
I AWOKE in the morning, just as the higher windows of
the lofty houses received the first beams of the rising
sun. The birds were chirping, perched on the windows
sills and deserted thresholds of the doors. I awoke,
and my first thought was, Adrian and Clara are dead. I
no longer shall be hailed by their good-morrow--or pass
the long day in their society. I shall never see them
more. The ocean has robbed me of them--stolen their
hearts of love from their breasts, and given over to
corruption what was dearer to me than light, or life,
or hope.
I was an untaught shepherd-boy, when Adrian deigned to
confer on me his friendship. The best years of my life
had been passed with him. All I had possessed of this
world's goods, of happiness, knowledge, or virtue--I
owed to him. He had, in his person, his intellect, and
rare qualities, given a glory to my life, which without
him it had never known. Beyond all other beings he had
taught me, that goodness, pure and single, can be an
attribute of man. It was a sight for angels to
congregate to behold, to view him lead, govern, and
solace, the last days of the human race.
My lovely Clara also was lost to me--she who last of
the daughters of man, exhibited all those feminine and
maiden virtues, which poets, painters, and sculptors,
have in their various languages strove to express. Yet,
as far as she was concerned, could I lament that she
was removed in early youth from the certain advent of
misery? Pure she was of soul, and all her intents were
holy. But her heart was the throne of love, and the
sensibility her lovely countenance expressed, was the
prophet of many woes, not the less deep and drear,
because she would have for ever concealed them.
These two wondrously endowed beings had been spared
from the universal wreck, to be my companions during
the last year of solitude. I had felt, while they were
with me, all their worth. I was conscious that every
other sentiment, regret, or passion had by degrees
merged into a yearning, clinging affection for them. I
had not forgotten the sweet partner of my youth, mother
of my children, my adored Idris; but I saw at least a
part of her spirit alive again in her brother; and
after, that by Evelyn's death I had lost what most
dearly recalled her to me; I enshrined her memory in
Adrian's form, and endeavoured to confound the two dear
ideas. I sound the depths of my heart, and try in vain
to draw thence the expressions that can typify my love
for these remnants of my race. If regret and sorrow
came athwart me, as well it might in our solitary and
uncertain state, the clear tones of Adrian's voice, and
his fervent look, dissipated the gloom; or I was
cheered unaware by the mild content and sweet
resignation Clara's cloudless brow and deep blue eyes
expressed. They were all to me--the suns of my
benighted soul--repose in my weariness--slumber in my
sleepless woe. Ill, most ill, with disjointed words,
bare and weak, have I expressed the feeling with which
I clung to them. I would have wound myself like ivy
inextricably round them, so that the same blow might
destroy us. I would have entered and been a part of
them--so that
If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
even now I had accompanied them to their new and
incommunicable abode.
Never shall I see them more. I am bereft of their dear
converse--bereft of sight of them. I am a tree rent by
lightning; never will the bark close over the bared
fibres--never will their quivering life, torn by the
winds, receive the opiate of a moment's balm. I am
alone in the world--but that expression as yet was less
pregnant with misery, than that Adrian and Clara are
dead.
The tide of thought and feeling rolls on for ever the
same, though the banks and shapes around, which govern
its course, and the reflection in the wave, vary. Thus
the sentiment of immediate loss in some sort decayed,
while that of utter, irremediable loneliness grew on me
with time. Three days I wandered through Ravenna--now
thinking only of the beloved beings who slept in the
oozy caves of ocean--now looking forward on the dread
blank before me; shuddering to make an onward
step--writhing at each change that marked the progress
of the hours.
For three days I wandered to and fro in this melancholy
town. I passed whole hours in going from house to
house, listening whether I could detect some lurking
sign of human existence. Sometimes I rang at a bell; it
tinkled through the vaulted rooms, and silence
succeeded to the sound. I called myself hopeless, yet
still I hoped; and still disappointment ushered in the
hours, intruding the cold, sharp steel which first
pierced me, into the aching festering wound. I fed like
a wild beast, which seizes its food only when stung by
intolerable hunger. I did not change my garb, or seek
the shelter of a roof, during all those days. Burning
heats, nervous irritation, a ceaseless, but confused
flow of thought, sleepless nights, and days instinct
with a frenzy of agitation, possessed me during that
time.
As the fever of my blood encreased, a desire of
wandering came upon me. I remember, that the sun had
set on the fifth day after my wreck, when, without
purpose or aim, I quitted the town of Ravenna. I must
have been very ill. Had I been possessed by more or
less of delirium, that night had surely been my last;
for, as I continued to walk on the banks of the
Mantone, whose upward course I followed, I looked
wistfully on the stream, acknowledging to myself that
its pellucid waves could medicine my woes for ever, and
was unable to account to myself for my tardiness in
seeking their shelter from the poisoned arrows of
thought, that were piercing me through and through. I
walked a considerable part of the night, and excessive
weariness at length conquered my repugnance to the
availing myself of the deserted habitations of my
species. The waning moon, which had just risen, shewed
me a cottage, whose neat entrance and trim garden
reminded me of my own England. I lifted up the latch of
the door and entered. A kitchen first presented itself,
where, guided by the moon beams, I found materials for
striking a light. Within this was a bed room; the couch
was furnished with sheets of snowy whiteness; the wood
piled on the hearth, and an array as for a meal, might
almost have deceived me into the dear belief that I had
here found what I had so long sought--one survivor, a
companion for my loneliness, a solace to my despair. I
steeled myself against the delusion; the room itself
was vacant: it was only prudent, I repeated to myself,
to examine the rest of the house. I fancied that I was
proof against the expectation; yet my heart beat
audibly, as I laid my hand on the lock of each door,
and it sunk again, when I perceived in each the same
vacancy. Dark and silent they were as vaults; so I
returned to the first chamber, wondering what sightless
host had spread the materials for my repast, and my
repose. I drew a chair to the table, and examined what
the viands were of which I was to partake. In truth it
was a death feast! The bread was blue and mouldy; the
cheese lay a heap of dust. I did not dare examine the
other dishes; a troop of ants passed in a double line
across the table cloth; every utensil was covered with
dust, with cobwebs, and myriads of dead flies: these
were objects each and all betokening the fallaciousness
of my expectations. Tears rushed into my eyes; surely
this was a wanton display of the power of the
destroyer. What had I done, that each sensitive nerve
was thus to be anatomized? Yet why complain more now
than ever? This vacant cottage revealed no new
sorrow--the world was empty; mankind was dead--I knew
it well--why quarrel therefore with an acknowledged and
stale truth? Yet, as I said, I had hoped in the very
heart of despair, so that every new impression of the
hard-cut reality on my soul brought with it a fresh
pang, telling me the yet unstudied lesson, that neither
change of place nor time could bring alleviation to my
misery, but that, as I now was, I must continue, day
after day, month after month, year after year, while I
lived. I hardly dared conjecture what space of time
that expression implied. It is true, I was no longer in
the first blush of manhood; neither had I declined far
in the vale of years--men have accounted mine the prime
of life: I had just entered my thirty-seventh year;
every limb was as well knit, every articulation as
true, as when I had acted the shepherd on the hills of
Cumberland; and with these advantages I was to commence
the train of solitary life. Such were the reflections
that ushered in my slumber on that night.
The shelter, however, and less disturbed repose which I
enjoyed, restored me the following morning to a greater
portion of health and strength, than I had experienced
since my fatal shipwreck. Among the stores I had
discovered on searching the cottage the preceding
night, was a quantity of dried grapes; these refreshed
me in the morning, as I left my lodging and proceeded
towards a town which I discerned at no great distance.
As far as I could divine, it must have been Forli. I
entered with pleasure its wide and grassy streets. All,
it is true, pictured the excess of desolation; yet I
loved to find myself in those spots which had been the
abode of my fellow creatures. I delighted to traverse
street after street, to look up at the tall houses, and
repeat to myself, once they contained beings similar to
myself--I was not always the wretch I am now. The wide
square of Forli, the arcade around it, its light and
pleasant aspect cheered me. I was pleased with the
idea, that, if the earth should be again peopled, we,
the lost race, would, in the relics left behind,
present no contemptible exhibition of our powers to the
new comers.
I entered one of the palaces, and opened the door of a
magnificent saloon. I started--I looked again with
renewed wonder. What wild-looking, unkempt, half-naked
savage was that before me? The surprise was momentary.
I perceived that it was I myself whom I beheld in a
large mirror at the end of the hall. No wonder that the
lover of the princely Idris should fail to recognize
himself in the miserable object there pourtrayed. My
tattered dress was that in which I had crawled half
alive from the tempestuous sea. My long and tangled
hair hung in elf locks on my brow--my dark eyes, now
hollow and wild, gleamed from under them--my cheeks
were discoloured by the jaundice, which (the effect of
misery and neglect) suffused my skin, and were half hid
by a beard of many days' growth.
Yet why should I not remain thus, I thought; the world
is dead, and this squalid attire is a fitter mourning
garb than the foppery of a black suit. And thus,
methinks, I should have remained, had not hope, without
which I do not believe man could exist, whispered to
me, that, in such a plight, I should be an object of
fear and aversion to the being, preserved I knew not
where, but I fondly trusted, at length, to be found by
me. Will my readers scorn the vanity, that made me
attire myself with some care, for the sake of this
visionary being? Or will they forgive the freaks of a
half crazed imagination? I can easily forgive
myself--for hope, however vague, was so dear to me, and
a sentiment of pleasure of so rare occurrence, that I
yielded readily to any idea, that cherished the one, or
promised any recurrence of the former to my sorrowing
heart.
After such occupation, I visited every street, alley,
and nook of Forli. These Italian towns presented an
appearance of still greater desolation, than those of
England or France. Plague had appeared here earlier--it
had finished its course, and achieved its work much
sooner than with us. Probably the last summer had found
no human being alive, in all the track included between
the shores of Calabria and the northern Alps. My search
was utterly vain, yet I did not despond. Reason
methought was on my side; and the chances were by no
means contemptible, that there should exist in some
part of Italy a survivor like myself--of a wasted,
depopulate land. As therefore I rambled through the
empty town, I formed my plan for future operations. I
would continue to journey on towards Rome. After I
should have satisfied myself, by a narrow search, that
I left behind no human being in the towns through which
I passed, I would write up in a conspicuous part of
each, with white paint, in three languages, that
"Verney, the last of the race of Englishmen, had taken
up his abode in Rome."
In pursuance of this scheme, I entered a painter's
shop, and procured myself the paint. It is strange that
so trivial an occupation should have consoled, and even
enlivened me. But grief renders one childish, despair
fantastic. To this simple inscription, I merely added
the adjuration, "Friend, come! I wait for
thee!--Deh, vieni! ti aspetto!"
On the following morning, with something like hope for
my companion, I quitted Forli on my way to Rome. Until
now, agonizing retrospect, and dreary prospects for the
future, had stung me when awake, and cradled me to my
repose. Many times I had delivered myself up to the
tyranny of anguish--many times I resolved a speedy end
to my woes; and death by my own hands was a remedy,
whose practicability was even cheering to me. What
could I fear in the other world? If there were an hell,
and I were doomed to it, I should come an adept to the
sufferance of its tortures--the act were easy, the
speedy and certain end of my deplorable tragedy. But
now these thoughts faded before the new born
expectation. I went on my way, not as before, feeling
each hour, each minute, to be an age instinct with
incalculable pain.
As I wandered along the plain, at the foot of the
Appennines--through their vallies, and over their bleak
summits, my path led me through a country which had
been trodden by heroes, visited and admired by
thousands. They had, as a tide, receded, leaving me
blank and bare in the midst. But why complain? Did I
not hope?--so I schooled myself, even after the
enlivening spirit had really deserted me, and thus I
was obliged to call up all the fortitude I could
command, and that was not much, to prevent a recurrence
of that chaotic and intolerable despair, that had
succeeded to the miserable shipwreck, that had
consummated every fear, and dashed to annihilation
every joy.
I rose each day with the morning sun, and left my
desolate inn. As my feet strayed through the unpeopled
country, my thoughts rambled through the universe, and
I was least miserable when I could, absorbed in
reverie, forget the passage of the hours. Each evening,
in spite of weariness, I detested to enter any
dwelling, there to take up my nightly abode--I have
sat, hour after hour, at the door of the cottage I had
selected, unable to lift the latch, and meet face to
face blank desertion within. Many nights, though
autumnal mists were spread around, I passed under an
ilex--many times I have supped on arbutus berries and
chestnuts, making a fire, gypsy-like, on the
ground--because wild natural scenery reminded me less
acutely of my hopeless state of loneliness. I counted
the days, and bore with me a peeled willow-wand, on
which, as well as I could remember, I had notched the
days that had elapsed since my wreck, and each night I
added another unit to the melancholy sum.
I had toiled up a hill which led to Spoleto. Around was
spread a plain, encircled by the chestnut-covered
Appennines. A dark ravine was on one side, spanned by
an aqueduct, whose tall arches were rooted in the dell
below, and attested that man had once deigned to bestow
labour and thought here, to adorn and civilize nature.
Savage, ungrateful nature, which in wild sport defaced
his remains, protruding her easily renewed, and fragile
growth of wild flowers and parasite plants around his
eternal edifices. I sat on a fragment of rock, and
looked round. The sun had bathed in gold the western
atmosphere, and in the east the clouds caught the
radiance, and budded into transient loveliness. It set
on a world that contained me alone for its inhabitant.
I took out my wand--I counted the marks. Twenty-five
were already traced--twenty-five days had already
elapsed, since human voice had gladdened my ears, or
human countenance met my gaze. Twenty-five long, weary
days, succeeded by dark and lonesome nights, had
mingled with foregone years, and had become a part of
the past--the never to be recalled--a real, undeniable
portion of my life--twenty-five long, long days.
Why this was not a month!--Why talk of days--or
weeks--or months--I must grasp years in my imagination,
if I would truly picture the future to myself--three,
five, ten, twenty, fifty anniversaries of that fatal
epoch might elapse--every year containing twelve
months, each of more numerous calculation in a diary,
than the twenty-five days gone by--Can it be? Will it
be?--We had been used to look forward to death
tremulously--wherefore, but because its place was
obscure? But more terrible, and far more obscure, was
the unveiled course of my lone futurity. I broke my
wand; I threw it from me. I needed no recorder of the
inch and barley-corn growth of my life, while my
unquiet thoughts created other divisions, than those
ruled over by the planets--and, in looking back on the
age that had elapsed since I had been alone, I
disdained to give the name of days and hours to the
throes of agony which had in truth portioned it out.
I hid my face in my hands. The twitter of the young
birds going to rest, and their rustling among the
trees, disturbed the still evening-air--the crickets
chirped--the aziolo cooed at intervals. My thoughts had
been of death--these sounds spoke to me of life. I
lifted up my eyes--a bat wheeled round--the sun had
sunk behind the jagged line of mountains, and the paly,
crescent moon was visible, silver white, amidst the
orange sunset, and accompanied by one bright star,
prolonged thus the twilight. A herd of cattle passed
along in the dell below, untended, towards their
watering place--the grass was rustled by a gentle
breeze, and the olive-woods, mellowed into soft masses
by the moonlight, contrasted their sea-green with the
dark chestnut foliage. Yes, this is the earth; there is
no change--no ruin--no rent made in her verdurous
expanse; she continues to wheel round and round, with
alternate night and day, through the sky, though man is
not her adorner or inhabitant. Why could I not forget
myself like one of those animals, and no longer suffer
the wild tumult of misery that I endure? Yet, ah! what
a deadly breach yawns between their state and mine!
Have not they companions? Have not they each their
mate--their cherished young, their home, which, though
unexpressed to us, is, I doubt not, endeared and
enriched, even in their eyes, by the society which kind
nature has created for them? It is I only that am
alone--I, on this little hill top, gazing on plain and
mountain recess--on sky, and its starry population,
listening to every sound of earth, and air, and
murmuring wave,--I only cannot express to any companion
my many thoughts, nor lay my throbbing head on any
loved bosom, nor drink from meeting eyes an
intoxicating dew, that transcends the fabulous nectar
of the gods. Shall I not then complain? Shall I not
curse the murderous engine which has mowed down the
children of men, my brethren? Shall I not bestow a
malediction on every other of nature's offspring, which
dares live and enjoy, while I live and suffer?
Ah, no! I will discipline my sorrowing heart to
sympathy in your joys; I will be happy, because ye are
so. Live on, ye innocents, nature's selected darlings;
I am not much unlike to you. Nerves, pulse, brain,
joint, and flesh, of such am I composed, and ye are
organized by the same laws. I have something beyond
this, but I will call it a defect, not an endowment, if
it leads me to misery, while ye are happy. Just then,
there emerged from a near copse two goats and a little
kid, by the mother's side; they began to browze the
herbage of the hill. I approached near to them, without
their perceiving me; I gathered a handful of fresh
grass, and held it out; the little one nestled close to
its mother, while she timidly withdrew. The male
stepped forward, fixing his eyes on me: I drew near,
still holding out my lure, while he, depressing his
head, rushed at me with his horns. I was a very fool; I
knew it, yet I yielded to my rage. I snatched up a huge
fragment of rock; it would have crushed my rash foe. I
poized it--aimed it--then my heart failed me. I hurled
it wide of the mark; it rolled clattering among the
bushes into dell. My little visitants, all aghast,
galloped back into the covert of the wood; while I, my
very heart bleeding and torn, rushed down the hill, and
by the violence of bodily exertion, sought to escape
from my miserable self.
No, no, I will not live among the wild scenes of
nature, the enemy of all that lives. I will seek the
towns--Rome, the capital of the world, the crown of
man's achievements. Among its storied streets, hallowed
ruins, and stupendous remains of human exertion, I
shall not, as here, find every thing forgetful of man;
trampling on his memory, defacing his works,
proclaiming from hill to hill, and vale to vale,--by
the torrents freed from the boundaries which he
imposed--by the vegetation liberated from the laws
which he enforced--by his habitation abandoned to
mildew and weeds, that his power is lost, his race
annihilated for ever.
I hailed the Tiber, for that was as it were an
unalienable possession of humanity. I hailed the wild
Campagna, for every rood had been trod by man; and its
savage uncultivation, of no recent date, only
proclaimed more distinctly his power, since he had
given an honourable name and sacred title to what else
would have been a worthless, barren track. I entered
Eternal Rome by the Porta del Popolo, and saluted with
awe its time-honoured space. The wide square, the
churches near, the long extent of the Corso, the near
eminence of Trinita de' Monti appeared like fairy work,
they were so silent, so peaceful, and so very fair. It
was evening; and the population of animals which still
existed in this mighty city, had gone to rest; there
was no sound, save the murmur of its many fountains,
whose soft monotony was harmony to my soul. The
knowledge that I was in Rome, soothed me; that wondrous
city, hardly more illustrious for its heroes and sages,
than for the power it exercised over the imaginations
of men. I went to rest that night; the eternal burning
of my heart quenched,--my senses tranquil.
The next morning I eagerly began my rambles in search
of oblivion. I ascended the many terraces of the garden
of the Colonna Palace, under whose roof I had been
sleeping; and passing out from it at its summit, I
found myself on Monte Cavallo. The fountain sparkled in
the sun; the obelisk above pierced the clear dark-blue
air. The statues on each side, the works, as they are
inscribed, of Phidias and Praxiteles, stood in
undiminished grandeur, representing Castor and Pollux,
who with majestic power tamed the rearing animal at
their side. If those illustrious artists had in truth
chiselled these forms, how many passing generations had
their giant proportions outlived! and now they were
viewed by the last of the species they were sculptured
to represent and deify. I had shrunk into
insignificance in my own eyes, as I considered the
multitudinous beings these stone demigods had outlived,
but this after-thought restored me to dignity in my own
conception. The sight of the poetry eternized in these
statues, took the sting from the thought, arraying it
only in poetic ideality.
I repeated to myself,--I am in Rome! I behold, and as
it were, familiarly converse with the wonder of the
world, sovereign mistress of the imagination, majestic
and eternal survivor of millions of generations of
extinct men. I endeavoured to quiet the sorrows of my
aching heart, by even now taking an interest in what in
my youth I had ardently longed to see. Every part of
Rome is replete with relics of ancient times. The
meanest streets are strewed with truncated columns,
broken capitals--Corinthian and Ionic, and sparkling
fragments of granite or porphyry. The walls of the most
penurious dwellings enclose a fluted pillar or
ponderous stone, which once made part of the palace of
the Caesars; and the voice of dead time, in still
vibrations, is breathed from these dumb things,
animated and glorified as they were by man.
I embraced the vast columns of the temple of Jupiter
Stator, which survives in the open space that was the
Forum, and leaning my burning cheek against its cold
durability, I tried to lose the sense of present misery
and present desertion, by recalling to the haunted cell
of my brain vivid memories of times gone by. I rejoiced
at my success, as I figured Camillus, the Gracchi,
Cato, and last the heroes of Tacitus, which shine
meteors of surpassing brightness during the murky night
of the empire;--as the verses of Horace and Virgil, or
the glowing periods of Cicero thronged into the opened
gates of my mind, I felt myself exalted by long
forgotten enthusiasm. I was delighted to know that I
beheld the scene which they beheld--the scene which
their wives and mothers, and crowds of the unnamed
witnessed, while at the same time they honoured,
applauded, or wept for these matchless specimens of
humanity. At length, then, I had found a consolation. I
had not vainly sought the storied precincts of Rome--I
had discovered a medicine for my many and vital wounds.
I sat at the foot of these vast columns. The Coliseum,
whose naked ruin is robed by nature in a verdurous and
glowing veil, lay in the sunlight on my right. Not far
off, to the left, was the Tower of the Capitol.
Triumphal arches, the falling walls of many temples,
strewed the ground at my feet. I strove, I resolved, to
force myself to see the Plebeian multitude and lofty
Patrician forms congregated around; and, as the Diorama
of ages passed across my subdued fancy, they were
replaced by the modern Roman; the Pope, in his white
stole, distributing benedictions to the kneeling
worshippers; the friar in his cowl; the dark-eyed girl,
veiled by her mezzera; the noisy, sun-burnt rustic,
leading his heard of buffaloes and oxen to the Campo
Vaccino. The romance with which, dipping our pencils in
the rainbow hues of sky and transcendent nature, we to
a degree gratuitously endow the Italians, replaced the
solemn grandeur of antiquity. I remembered the dark
monk, and floating figures of "The Italian,"and how my
boyish blood had thrilled at the description. I called
to mind Corinna ascending the Capitol to be crowned,
and, passing from the heroine to the author, reflected
how the Enchantress Spirit of Rome held sovereign sway
over the minds of the imaginative, until it rested on
me--sole remaining spectator of its wonders.
I was long wrapt by such ideas; but the soul wearies of
a pauseless flight; and, stooping from its wheeling
circuits round and round this spot, suddenly it fell
ten thousand fathom deep, into the abyss of the
present--into self-knowledge--into tenfold sadness. I
roused myself--I cast off my waking dreams; and I, who
just now could almost hear the shouts of the Roman
throng, and was hustled by countless multitudes, now
beheld the desart ruins of Rome sleeping under its own
blue sky; the shadows lay tranquilly on the ground;
sheep were grazing untended on the Palatine, and a
buffalo stalked down the Sacred Way that led to the
Capitol. I was alone in the Forum; alone in Rome; alone
in the world. Would not one living man--one companion
in my weary solitude, be worth all the glory and
remembered power of this time-honoured city ? Double
sorrow--sadness, bred in Cimmerian caves, robed my soul
in a mourning garb. The generations I had conjured up
to my fancy, contrasted more strongly with the end of
all--the single point in which, as a pyramid, the
mighty fabric of society had ended, while I, on the
giddy height, saw vacant space around me.
From such vague laments I turned to the contemplation
of the minutiae of my situation. So far, I had not
succeeded in the sole object of my desires, the finding
a companion for my desolation. Yet I did not despair.
It is true that my inscriptions were set up for the
most part, in insignificant towns and villages; yet,
even without these memorials, it was possible that the
person, who like me should find himself alone in a
depopulate land, should, like me, come to Rome. The
more slender my expectation was, the more I chose to
build on it, and to accommodate my actions to this
vague possibility.
It became necessary therefore, that for a time I should
domesticate myself at Rome. It became necessary, that I
should look my disaster in the face--not playing the
school-boy's part of obedience without submission;
enduring life, and yet rebelling against the laws by
which I lived.
Yet how could I resign myself? Without love, without
sympathy, without communion with any, how could I meet
the morning sun, and with it trace its oft repeated
journey to the evening shades? Why did I continue to
live--why not throw off the weary weight of time, and
with my own hand, let out the fluttering prisoner from
my agonized breast?--It was not cowardice that withheld
me; for the true fortitude was to endure; and death had
a soothing sound accompanying it, that would easily
entice me to enter its demesne. But this I would not
do. I had, from the moment I had reasoned on the
subject, instituted myself the subject to fate, and the
servant of necessity, the visible laws of the invisible
God--I believed that my obedience was the result of
sound reasoning, pure feeling, and an exalted sense of
the true excellence and nobility of my nature. Could I
have seen in this empty earth, in the seasons and their
change, the hand of a blind power only, most willingly
would I have placed my head on the sod, and closed my
eyes on its loveliness for ever. But fate had
administered life to me, when the plague had already
seized on its prey--she had dragged me by the hair from
out the strangling waves--By such miracles she had
bought me for her own; I admitted her authority, and
bowed to her decrees. If, after mature consideration,
such was my resolve, it was doubly necessary that I
should not lose the end of life, the improvement of my
faculties, and poison its flow by repinings without
end. Yet how cease to repine, since there was no hand
near to extract the barbed spear that had entered my
heart of hearts? I stretched out my hand, and it
touched none whose sensations were responsive to mine.
I was girded, walled in, vaulted over, by seven-fold
barriers of loneliness. Occupation alone, if I could
deliver myself up to it, would be capable of affording
an opiate to my sleepless sense of woe. Having
determined to make Rome my abode, at least for some
months, I made arrangements for my accommodation--I
selected my home. The Colonna Palace was well adapted
for my purpose. Its grandeur--its treasure of
paintings, its magnificent halls were objects soothing
and even exhilarating.
I found the granaries of Rome well stored with grain,
and particularly with Indian corn; this product
requiring less art in its preparation for food, I
selected as my principal support. I now found the
hardships and lawlessness of my youth turn to account.
A man cannot throw off the habits of sixteen years.
Since that age, it is true, I had lived luxuriously, or
at least surrounded by all the conveniences
civilization afforded. But before that time, I had been
"as uncouth a savage, as the wolf-bred founder of old
Rome"--and now, in Rome itself, robber and shepherd
propensities, similar to those of its founder, were of
advantage to its sole inhabitant. I spent the morning
riding and shooting in the Campagna--I passed long
hours in the various galleries--I gazed at each statue,
and lost myself in a reverie before many a fair Madonna
or beauteous nymph. I haunted the Vatican, and stood
surrounded by marble forms of divine beauty. Each stone
deity was possessed by sacred gladness, and the eternal
fruition of love. They looked on me with unsympathizing
complacency, and often in wild accents I reproached
them for their supreme indifference--for they were
human shapes, the human form divine was manifest in
each fairest limb and lineament. The perfect moulding
brought with it the idea of colour and motion; often,
half in bitter mockery, half in self-delusion, I
clasped their icy proportions, and, coming between
Cupid and his Psyche's lips, pressed the unconceiving
marble.
I endeavoured to read. I visited the libraries of Rome.
I selected a volume, and, choosing some sequestered,
shady nook, on the banks of the Tiber, or opposite the
fair temple in the Borghese Gardens, or under the old
pyramid of Cestius, I endeavoured to conceal me from
myself, and immerse myself in the subject traced on the
pages before me. As if in the same soil you plant
nightshade and a myrtle tree, they will each
appropriate the mould, moisture, and air administered,
for the fostering their several properties--so did my
grief find sustenance, and power of existence, and
growth, in what else had been divine manna, to feed
radiant meditation. Ah! while I streak this paper with
the tale of what my so named occupations were--while I
shape the skeleton of my days--my hand trembles--my
heart pants, and my brain refuses to lend expression,
or phrase, or idea, by which to image forth the veil of
unutterable woe that clothed these bare realities. O,
worn and beating heart, may I dissect thy fibres, and
tell how in each unmitigable misery, sadness dire,
repinings, and despair, existed? May I record my many
ravings--the wild curses I hurled at torturing
nature--and how I have passed days shut out from light
and food--from all except the burning hell alive in my
own bosom?
I was presented, meantime, with one other occupation,
the one best fitted to discipline my melancholy
thoughts, which strayed backwards, over many a ruin,
and through many a flowery glade, even to the mountain
recess, from which in early youth I had first emerged.
During one of my rambles through the habitations of
Rome, I found writing materials on a table in an
author's study. Parts of a manuscript lay scattered
about. It contained a learned disquisition on the
Italian language; one page an unfinished dedication to
posterity, for whose profit the writer had sifted and
selected the niceties of this harmonious language--to
whose everlasting benefit he bequeathed his labours.
I also will write a book, I cried--for whom to
read?--to whom dedicated? And then with silly flourish
(what so capricious and childish as despair?) I wrote,
DEDICATION
TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEAD.
SHADOWS, ARISE, AND READ YOUR FALL!
BEHOLD THE HISTORY OF THE
LAST MAN.
Yet, will not this world be re-peopled, and the
children of a saved pair of lovers, in some to me
unknown and unattainable seclusion, wandering to these
prodigious relics of the ante-pestilential race, seek
to learn how beings so wondrous in their achievements,
with imaginations infinite, and powers godlike, had
departed from their home to an unknown country?
I will write and leave in this most ancient city, this
"world's sole monument," a record of these things. I
will leave a monument of the existence of Verney, the
Last Man. At first I thought only to speak of plague,
of death, and last, of desertion; but I lingered fondly
on my early years, and recorded with sacred zeal the
virtues of my companions. They have been with me during
the fulfilment of my task. I have brought it to an
end--I lift my eyes from my paper--again they are lost
to me. Again I feel that I am alone.
A year has passed since I have been thus occupied. The
seasons have made their wonted round, and decked this
eternal city in a changeful robe of surpassing beauty.
A year has passed; and I no longer guess at my state or
my prospects--loneliness is my familiar, sorrow my
inseparable companion. I have endeavoured to brave the
storm--I have endeavoured to school myself to
fortitude--I have sought to imbue myself with the
lessons of wisdom. It will not do. My hair has become
nearly grey--my voice, unused now to utter sound, comes
strangely on my ears. My person, with its human powers
and features, seem to me a monstrous excrescence of
nature. How express in human language a woe human being
until this hour never knew! How give intelligible
expression to a pang none but I could ever
understand!--No one has entered Rome. None will ever
come. I smile bitterly at the delusion I have so long
nourished, and still more, when I reflect that I have
exchanged it for another as delusive, as false, but to
which I now cling with the same fond trust.
Winter has come again; and the gardens of Rome have
lost their leaves--the sharp air comes over the
Campagna, and has driven its brute inhabitants to take
up their abode in the many dwellings of the deserted
city--frost has suspended the gushing fountains--and
Trevi has stilled her eternal music. I had made a rough
calculation, aided by the stars, by which I endeavoured
to ascertain the first day of the new year. In the old
out-worn age, the Sovereign Pontiff was used to go in
solemn pomp, and mark the renewal of the year by
driving a nail in the gate of the temple of Janus. On
that day I ascended St. Peter's, and carved on its
topmost stone the aera 2100, last year of the world!
My only companion was a dog, a shaggy fellow, half
water and half shepherd's dog, whom I found tending
sheep in the Campagna. His master was dead, but
nevertheless he continued fulfilling his duties in
expectation of his return. If a sheep strayed from the
rest, he forced it to return to the flock, and
sedulously kept off every intruder. Riding in the
Campagna I had come upon his sheep-walk, and for some
time observed his repetition of lessons learned from
man, now useless, though unforgotten. His delight was
excessive when he saw me. He sprung up to my knees; he
capered round and round, wagging his tail, with the
short, quick bark of pleasure: he left his fold to
follow me, and from that day has never neglected to
watch by and attend on me, shewing boisterous gratitude
whenever I caressed or talked to him. His pattering
steps and mine alone were heard, when we entered the
magnificent extent of nave and aisle of St. Peter's. We
ascended the myriad steps together, when on the summit
I achieved my design, and in rough figures noted the
date of the last year. I then turned to gaze on the
country, and to take leave of Rome. I had long
determined to quit it, and I now formed the plan I
would adopt for my future career, after I had left this
magnificent abode.
A solitary being is by instinct a wanderer, and that I
would become. A hope of amelioration always attends on
change of place, which would even lighten the burthen
of my life. I had been a fool to remain in Rome all
this time: Rome noted for Malaria, the famous caterer
for death. But it was still possible, that, could I
visit the whole extent of earth, I should find in some
part of the wide extent a survivor. Methought the
sea-side was the most probable retreat to be chosen by
such a one. If left alone in an inland district, still
they could not continue in the spot where their last
hopes had been extinguished; they would journey on,
like me, in search of a partner for their solitude,
till the watery barrier stopped their further progress.
To that water--cause of my woes, perhaps now to be
their cure, I would betake myself. Farewell,
Italy!--farewell, thou ornament of the world, matchless
Rome, the retreat of the solitary one during long
months!--to civilized life--to the settled home and
succession of monotonous days, farewell! Peril will now
be mine; and I hail her as a friend--death will
perpetually cross my path, and I will meet him as a
benefactor; hardship, inclement weather, and dangerous
tempests will be my sworn mates. Ye spirits of storm,
receive me! ye powers of destruction, open wide your
arms, and clasp me for ever! if a kinder power have not
decreed another end, so that after long endurance I may
reap my reward, and again feel my heart beat near the
heart of another like to me.
Tiber, the road which is spread by nature's own hand,
threading her continent, was at my feet, and many a
boat was tethered to the banks. I would with a few
books, provisions, and my dog, embark in one of these
and float down the current of the stream into the sea;
and then, keeping near land, I would coast the
beauteous shores and sunny promontories of the blue
Mediterranean, pass Naples, along Calabria, and would
dare the twin perils of Scylla and Charybdis; then,
with fearless aim, (for what had I to lose?) skim
ocean's surface towards Malta and the further Cyclades.
I would avoid Constantinople, the sight of whose
well-known towers and inlets belonged to another state
of existence from my present one; I would coast Asia
Minor, and Syria, and, passing the seven-mouthed Nile,
steer northward again, till losing sight of forgotten
Carthage and deserted Lybia, I should reach the pillars
of Hercules. And then--no matter where--the oozy caves,
and soundless depths of ocean may be my dwelling,
before I accomplish this long-drawn voyage, or the
arrow of disease find my heart as I float singly on the
weltering Mediterranean; or, in some place I touch at,
I may find what I seek--a companion; or if this may not
be--to endless time, decrepid and grey headed--youth
already in the grave with those I love--the lone
wanderer will still unfurl his sail, and clasp the
tiller--and, still obeying the breezes of heaven, for
ever round another and another promontory, anchoring in
another and another bay, still ploughing seedless
ocean, leaving behind the verdant land of native
Europe, adown the tawny shore of Africa, having
weathered the fierce seas of the Cape, I may moor my
worn skiff in a creek, shaded by spicy groves of the
odorous islands of the far Indian ocean.
These are wild dreams. Yet since, now a week ago, they
came on me, as I stood on the height of St. Peter's,
they have ruled my imagination. I have chosen my boat,
and laid in my scant stores. I have selected a few
books; the principal are Homer and Shakespeare--But the
libraries of the world are thrown open to me--and in
any port I can renew my stock. I form no expectation of
alteration for the better; but the monotonous present
is intolerable to me. Neither hope nor joy are my
pilots--restless despair and fierce desire of change
lead me on. I long to grapple with danger, to be
excited by fear, to have some task, however slight or
voluntary, for each day's fulfilment. I shall witness
all the variety of appearance, that the elements can
assume--I shall read fair augury in the rainbow--menace
in the cloud--some lesson or record dear to my heart in
everything. Thus around the shores of deserted earth,
while the sun is high, and the moon waxes or wanes,
angels, the spirits of the dead, and the ever-open eye
of the Supreme, will behold the tiny bark, freighted
with Verney--the LAST MAN.
THE END.