The Plague, Pestilence & Apocalypse MEGAPACK™

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

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  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  sickened were immediately and quietly withdrawn, the cord and a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

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  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

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  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

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  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 .

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  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

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  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.

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  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!