by Robert Reed
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 om-
nipotent 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 gen-
eration . 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
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1206
proclaimed the exemption of his own congregation from the uni-
versal 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sickened were immediately and quietly withdrawn, the cord and a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 ex-
cuse 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 al-
ready 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 pro-
tection of Adrian, and were journeying to join the fanatics . The tale
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1207
of horror was recounted—all turned back; and thus at last, accom-
panied 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.
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
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1208
their dear relatives around them; wives and mothers looked for sup-
port 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 com-
mon marvels pall
ed 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 ut-
most 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
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1209
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 im-
possible 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 some-
thing 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 per-
ceived 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 trag-
ic 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 appari-
tion, to which our people gave the appellation of the Black Spectre .
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1210
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 lat-
ter, 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 Spec-
tre 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 dis-
tinction, 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
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1211
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 rem-
nants of the race of man, which, like a flood, had once spread over
and possessed the whole earth? It had come down clear and unim-
peded 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 dig-
nity 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 .”24
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, traf-
fic, and domestic intercourse, as had moulded our hearts and capaci-
ties, 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
24
Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution.
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1212
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 un-
marked 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, unsub-
jected 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!