The Last Man

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  CHAPTER VII.

  THESE events occupied so much time, that June had numbered more than halfits days, before we again commenced our long-protracted journey. The dayafter my return to Versailles, six men, from among those I had left atVilleneuve-la-Guiard, arrived, with intelligence, that the rest of thetroop had already proceeded towards Switzerland. We went forward in thesame 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 outinterminably. By the end of July we entered Dijon; by the end of July thosehours, days, and weeks had mingled with the ocean of forgotten time, whichin their passage teemed with fatal events and agonizing sorrow. By the endof July, little more than a month had gone by, if man's life were measuredby the rising and setting of the sun: but, alas! in that interval ardentyouth had become grey-haired; furrows deep and uneraseable were trenched inthe 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 farin 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 littlehour, until a whole life of sorrow had brought the sufferer to an untimelygrave.

  We departed from Versailles fifteen hundred souls. We set out on theeighteenth of June. We made a long procession, in which was contained everydear relationship, or tie of love, that existed in human society. Fathersand husbands, with guardian care, gathered their dear relatives aroundthem; 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 ourhuman nature, trusted that their beloved family would be the onepreserved.

  We passed through France, and found it empty of inhabitants. Some one ortwo natives survived in the larger towns, which they roamed through likeghosts; we received therefore small encrease to our numbers, and suchdecrease through death, that at last it became easier to count the scantylist of survivors. As we never deserted any of the sick, until their deathpermitted us to commit their remains to the shelter of a grave, our journeywas long, while every day a frightful gap was made in our troop--theydied by tens, by fifties, by hundreds. No mercy was shewn by death; weceased to expect it, and every day welcomed the sun with the feeling thatwe might never see it rise again.

  The nervous terrors and fearful visions which had scared us during thespring, continued to visit our coward troop during this sad journey. Everyevening brought its fresh creation of spectres; a ghost was depicted byevery blighted tree; and appalling shapes were manufactured from eachshaggy bush. By degrees these common marvels palled on us, and then otherwonders were called into being. Once it was confidently asserted, that thesun rose an hour later than its seasonable time; again it was discoveredthat he grew paler and paler; that shadows took an uncommon appearance. Itwas impossible to have imagined, during the usual calm routine of life menhad before experienced, the terrible effects produced by these extravagantdelusions: in truth, of such little worth are our senses, when unsupportedby concurring testimony, that it was with the utmost difficulty I keptmyself free from the belief in supernatural events, to which the major partof our people readily gave credit. Being one sane amidst a crowd of themad, I hardly dared assert to my own mind, that the vast luminary hadundergone no change--that the shadows of night were unthickened byinnumerable shapes of awe and terror; or that the wind, as it sung in thetrees, or whistled round an empty building, was not pregnant with sounds ofwailing and despair. Sometimes realities took ghostly shapes; and it wasimpossible for one's blood not to curdle at the perception of an evidentmixture of what we knew to be true, with the visionary semblance of allthat we feared.

  Once, at the dusk of the evening, we saw a figure all in white, apparentlyof more than human stature, flourishing about the road, now throwing up itsarms, now leaping to an astonishing height in the air, then turning roundseveral times successively, then raising itself to its full height andgesticulating violently. Our troop, on the alert to discover and believe inthe supernatural, made a halt at some distance from this shape; and, as itbecame darker, there was something appalling even to the incredulous, inthe lonely spectre, whose gambols, if they hardly accorded with spiritualdignity, were beyond human powers. Now it leapt right up in the air, nowsheer over a high hedge, and was again the moment after in the road beforeus. By the time I came up, the fright experienced by the spectators of thisghostly exhibition, began to manifest itself in the flight of some, and theclose huddling together of the rest. Our goblin now perceived us; heapproached, and, as we drew reverentially back, made a low bow. The sightwas irresistibly ludicrous even to our hapless band, and his politeness washailed by a shout of laughter;--then, again springing up, as a lasteffort, it sunk to the ground, and became almost invisible through thedusky night. This circumstance again spread silence and fear through thetroop; the more courageous at length advanced, and, raising the dyingwretch, discovered the tragic explanation of this wild scene. It was anopera-dancer, and had been one of the troop which deserted fromVilleneuve-la-Guiard: falling sick, he had been deserted by his companions;in an access of delirium he had fancied himself on the stage, and, poorfellow, his dying sense eagerly accepted the last human applause that couldever be bestowed on his grace and agility.

  At another time we were haunted for several days by an apparition, to whichour people gave the appellation of the Black Spectre. We never saw itexcept at evening, when his coal black steed, his mourning dress, and plumeof 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 farbehind the rest of his troop, and suddenly at a turn in the road, saw theBlack Spectre coming towards him; he hid himself in fear, and the horse andhis 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 thesick, we heard one galloping through the town; it was the Black Spectrecome in token of inevitable death. He grew giant tall to vulgar eyes; anicy atmosphere, they said, surrounded him; when he was heard, all animalsshuddered, and the dying knew that their last hour was come. It was Deathhimself, they declared, come visibly to seize on subject earth, and quellat once our decreasing numbers, sole rebels to his law. One day at noon, wesaw a dark mass on the road before us, and, coming up, beheld the BlackSpectre fallen from his horse, lying in the agonies of disease upon theground. He did not survive many hours; and his last words disclosed thesecret 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 toprovince, seeking some survivor for a companion, and abhorring theloneliness to which he was condemned. When he discovered our troop, fear ofcontagion conquered his love of society. He dared not join us, yet he couldnot resolve to lose sight of us, sole human beings who besides himselfexisted in wide and fertile France; so he accompanied us in the spectralguise I have described, till pestilence gathered him to a largercongregation, even that of Dead Mankind.

  It had been well, if such vain terrors could have distracted our thoughtsfrom more tangible evils. But these were too dreadful and too many not toforce themselves into every thought, every moment, of our lives. We wereobliged to halt at different periods for days together, till another andyet another was consigned as a clod to the vast clod which had been onceour 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 theworst part of our drear journey, and S
witzerland was near at hand. Yet howcould we congratulate ourselves on any event thus imperfectly fulfilled?Were these miserable beings, who, worn and wretched, passed in sorrowfulprocession, the sole remnants of the race of man, which, like a flood, hadonce spread over and possessed the whole earth? It had come down clear andunimpeded from its primal mountain source in Ararat, and grew from a punystreamlet to a vast perennial river, generation after generation flowing onceaselessly. The same, but diversified, it grew, and swept onwards towardsthe absorbing ocean, whose dim shores we now reached. It had been the mereplaything of nature, when first it crept out of uncreative void into light;but thought brought forth power and knowledge; and, clad with these, therace of man assumed dignity and authority. It was then no longer the meregardener of earth, or the shepherd of her flocks; "it carried with it animposing and majestic aspect; it had a pedigree and illustrious ancestors;it had its gallery of portraits, its monumental inscriptions, its recordsand titles."[1]

  This was all over, now that the ocean of death had sucked in the slackeningtide, and its source was dried up. We first had bidden adieu to the stateof things which having existed many thousand years, seemed eternal; such astate of government, obedience, traffic, and domestic intercourse, as hadmoulded our hearts and capacities, as far back as memory could reach. Thento patriotic zeal, to the arts, to reputation, to enduring fame, to thename of country, we had bidden farewell. We saw depart all hope ofretrieving our ancient state--all expectation, except the feeble one ofsaving our individual lives from the wreck of the past. To preserve thesewe had quitted England--England, no more; for without her children, whatname could that barren island claim? With tenacious grasp we clung to suchrule and order as could best save us; trusting that, if a little colonycould be preserved, that would suffice at some remoter period to restorethe lost community of mankind.

  But the game is up! We must all die; nor leave survivor nor heir to thewide 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 ofthese; must perish. Will the earth still keep her place among the planets;will she still journey with unmarked regularity round the sun; will theseasons change, the trees adorn themselves with leaves, and flowers shedtheir fragrance, in solitude? Will the mountains remain unmoved, andstreams still keep a downward course towards the vast abyss; will the tidesrise and fall, and the winds fan universal nature; will beasts pasture,birds fly, and fishes swim, when man, the lord, possessor, perceiver, andrecorder 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 notextinct; but merely passed into other shapes, unsubjected to ourperceptions. Death is a vast portal, an high road to life: let us hasten topass; 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 hadfixed on it, as a kind of station in our progress. But now we entered itwith a torpor more painful than acute suffering. We had come slowly butirrevocably to the opinion, that our utmost efforts would not preserve onehuman being alive. We took our hands therefore away from the long graspedrudder; and the frail vessel on which we floated, seemed, the governmentover her suspended, to rush, prow foremost, into the dark abyss of thebillows. A gush of grief, a wanton profusion of tears, and vain laments,and overflowing tenderness, and passionate but fruitless clinging to thepriceless few that remained, was followed by languor and recklessness.

  During this disastrous journey we lost all those, not of our own family, towhom we had particularly attached ourselves among the survivors. It werenot well to fill these pages with a mere catalogue of losses; yet I cannotrefrain from this last mention of those principally dear to us. The littlegirl whom Adrian had rescued from utter desertion, during our ride throughLondon on the twentieth of November, died at Auxerre. The poor child hadattached herself greatly to us; and the suddenness of her death added toour sorrow. In the morning we had seen her apparently in health--in theevening, Lucy, before we retired to rest, visited our quarters to say thatshe was dead. Poor Lucy herself only survived, till we arrived at Dijon.She had devoted herself throughout to the nursing the sick, and attendingthe friendless. Her excessive exertions brought on a slow fever, whichended in the dread disease whose approach soon released her from hersufferings. She had throughout been endeared to us by her good qualities,by her ready and cheerful execution of every duty, and mild acquiescence inevery turn of adversity. When we consigned her to the tomb, we seemed atthe same time to bid a final adieu to those peculiarly feminine virtuesconspicuous in her; uneducated and unpretending as she was, she wasdistinguished for patience, forbearance, and sweetness. These, with alltheir train of qualities peculiarly English, would never again be revivedfor us. This type of all that was most worthy of admiration in her classamong my countrywomen, was placed under the sod of desert France; and itwas as a second separation from our country to have lost sight of her forever.

  The Countess of Windsor died during our abode at Dijon. One morning I wasinformed that she wished to see me. Her message made me remember, thatseveral days had elapsed since I had last seen her. Such a circumstance hadoften occurred during our journey, when I remained behind to watch to theirclose the last moments of some one of our hapless comrades, and the rest ofthe troop past on before me. But there was something in the manner of hermessenger, that made me suspect that all was not right. A caprice of theimagination caused me to conjecture that some ill had occurred to Clara orEvelyn, 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 thevenerable mother of my Idris lying on a couch, her tall emaciated figurestretched out; her face fallen away, from which the nose stood out in sharpprofile, and her large dark eyes, hollow and deep, gleamed with such lightas 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 tome at intervals. "I am afraid," said she, "that it is selfish in me to haveasked you to visit the old woman again, before she dies: yet perhaps itwould have been a greater shock to hear suddenly that I was dead, than tosee 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; Iought to have expected this, and yet I confess it has taken me unaware. Inever clung to life, or enjoyed it, till these last months, while amongthose I senselessly deserted: and it is hard to be snatched immediatelyaway. I am glad, however, that I am not a victim of the plague; probably Ishould have died at this hour, though the world had continued as it was inmy youth."

  She spoke with difficulty, and I perceived that she regretted the necessityof death, even more than she cared to confess. Yet she had not to complainof an undue shortening of existence; her faded person shewed that life hadnaturally spent itself. We had been alone at first; now Clara entered; theCountess turned to her with a smile, and took the hand of this lovelychild; her roseate palm and snowy fingers, contrasted with relaxed fibresand yellow hue of those of her aged friend; she bent to kiss her, touchingher withered mouth with the warm, full lips of youth. "Verney," said theCountess, "I need not recommend this dear girl to you, for your own sakeyou will preserve her. Were the world as it was, I should have a thousandsage precautions to impress, that one so sensitive, good, and beauteous,might escape the dangers that used to lurk for the destruction of the fairand excellent. This is all nothing now.

  "I commit you, my kind nurse, to your uncle's care; to yours I entrust thedearest relic of my better self. Be to Adrian, sweet one, what you havebeen to me--enliven his sadness with your sprightly sallies; sooth hisanguish by your sober and inspired converse, when he is dying; nurse him asyou have done me."

  Clara burst into tears; "Kind girl," said the Countess, "do not weep forme. M
any 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 belovedprotector 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 thelast tie binding us to the ancient state of things. It was impossible tolook on her, and not call to mind in their wonted guise, events andpersons, as alien to our present situation as the disputes of Themistoclesand Aristides, or the wars of the two roses in our native land. The crownof England had pressed her brow; the memory of my father and hismisfortunes, the vain struggles of the late king, the images of Raymond,Evadne, and Perdita, who had lived in the world's prime, were broughtvividly before us. We consigned her to the oblivious tomb with reluctance;and when I turned from her grave, Janus veiled his retrospective face; thatwhich gazed on future generations had long lost its faculty.

  After remaining a week at Dijon, until thirty of our number deserted thevacant ranks of life, we continued our way towards Geneva. At noon on thesecond day we arrived at the foot of Jura. We halted here during the heatof the day. Here fifty human beings--fifty, the only human beings thatsurvived of the food-teeming earth, assembled to read in the looks of eachother ghastly plague, or wasting sorrow, desperation, or worse,carelessness of future or present evil. Here we assembled at the foot ofthis mighty wall of mountain, under a spreading walnut tree; a brawlingstream refreshed the green sward by its sprinkling; and the busygrasshopper chirped among the thyme. We clustered together a group ofwretched sufferers. A mother cradled in her enfeebled arms the child, lastof many, whose glazed eye was about to close for ever. Here beauty, lateglowing in youthful lustre and consciousness, now wan and neglected, kneltfanning with uncertain motion the beloved, who lay striving to paint hisfeatures, distorted by illness, with a thankful smile. There anhard-featured, weather-worn veteran, having prepared his meal, sat, hishead dropped on his breast, the useless knife falling from his grasp, hislimbs utterly relaxed, as thought of wife and child, and dearest relative,all lost, passed across his recollection. There sat a man who for fortyyears had basked in fortune's tranquil sunshine; he held the hand of hislast hope, his beloved daughter, who had just attained womanhood; and hegazed on her with anxious eyes, while she tried to rally her faintingspirit to comfort him. Here a servant, faithful to the last, though dying,waited on one, who, though still erect with health, gazed with gasping fearon the variety of woe around.

  Adrian stood leaning against a tree; he held a book in his hand, but hiseye wandered from the pages, and sought mine; they mingled a sympatheticglance; his looks confessed that his thoughts had quitted the inanimateprint, for pages more pregnant with meaning, more absorbing, spread outbefore him. By the margin of the stream, apart from all, in a tranquilnook, where the purling brook kissed the green sward gently, Clara andEvelyn were at play, sometimes beating the water with large boughs,sometimes watching the summer-flies that sported upon it. Evelyn now chaseda butterfly--now gathered a flower for his cousin; and his laughingcherub-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, oftenforgot him, as she turned to observe Adrian and me. She was now fourteen,and retained her childish appearance, though in height a woman; she actedthe part of the tenderest mother to my little orphan boy; to see herplaying with him, or attending silently and submissively on our wants, youthought only of her admirable docility and patience; but, in her soft eyes,and the veined curtains that veiled them, in the clearness of her marmorealbrow, and the tender expression of her lips, there was an intelligence andbeauty that at once excited admiration and love.

  When the sun had sunk towards the precipitate west, and the evening shadowsgrew long, we prepared to ascend the mountain. The attention that we wereobliged to pay to the sick, made our progress slow. The winding road,though steep, presented a confined view of rocky fields and hills, eachhiding the other, till our farther ascent disclosed them in succession. Wewere seldom shaded from the declining sun, whose slant beams were instinctwith exhausting heat. There are times when minor difficulties grow gigantic--times, when as the Hebrew poet expressively terms it, "the grasshopperis 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 andhardship, with relaxed limbs and declined head, the reins hanging looselyin his grasp, left the choice of the path to the instinct of his horse, nowand then painfully rousing himself, when the steepness of the ascentrequired that he should keep his seat with better care. Fear and horrorencompassed me. Did his languid air attest that he also was struck withcontagion? How long, when I look on this matchless specimen of mortality,may I perceive that his thought answers mine? how long will those limbsobey the kindly spirit within? how long will light and life dwell in theeyes of this my sole remaining friend? Thus pacing slowly, each hillsurmounted, only presented another to be ascended; each jutting corner onlydiscovered another, sister to the last, endlessly. Sometimes the pressureof sickness in one among us, caused the whole cavalcade to halt; the callfor water, the eagerly expressed wish to repose; the cry of pain, andsuppressed sob of the mourner--such were the sorrowful attendants of ourpassage of the Jura.

  Adrian had gone first. I saw him, while I was detained by the loosening ofa girth, struggling with the upward path, seemingly more difficult than anywe had yet passed. He reached the top, and the dark outline of his figurestood in relief against the sky. He seemed to behold something unexpectedand wonderful; for, pausing, his head stretched out, his arms for a momentextended, he seemed to give an All Hail! to some new vision. Urged bycuriosity, I hurried to join him. After battling for many tedious minuteswith the precipice, the same scene presented itself to me, which had wrapthim in extatic wonder.

  Nature, or nature's favourite, this lovely earth, presented her mostunrivalled beauties in resplendent and sudden exhibition. Below, far, farbelow, even as it were in the yawning abyss of the ponderous globe, lay theplacid 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 thespirits of the air had suddenly unveiled their bright abodes, placed inscaleless altitude in the stainless sky, heaven-kissing, companions of theunattainable ether, were the glorious Alps, clothed in dazzling robes oflight by the setting sun. And, as if the world's wonders were never to beexhausted, their vast immensities, their jagged crags, and roseatepainting, appeared again in the lake below, dipping their proud heightsbeneath the unruffled waves--palaces for the Naiads of the placid waters.Towns and villages lay scattered at the foot of Jura, which, with darkravine, and black promontories, stretched its roots into the watery expansebeneath. Carried away by wonder, I forgot the death of man, and the livingand beloved friend near me. When I turned, I saw tears streaming from hiseyes; his thin hands pressed one against the other, his animatedcountenance beaming with admiration; "Why," cried he, at last, "Why, ohheart, 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 amongthem, but gave visible tokens of admiration, surpassing any beforeexperienced. 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. Sowe remained awhile, lightened of the pressing burthen of fate, forgetful ofdeath, into whose night we were about to plunge; no longer reflecting thatour eyes now and for ever were and would be the only ones which mightperceive the divine magnificence of this terrestrial exhibition. Anenthusiastic transport, akin to happiness, burst, like a sudden ray fromthe 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 wayto Geneva, unaccustomed sounds of music arose from the rural church whichstood embosomed in trees, surrounded by smokeless, vacant cottages. Thepeal of an organ with rich swell awoke the mute air, lingering along, andmingling with the intense beauty that clothed the rocks and woods, andwaves around. Music--the language of the immortals, disclosed to us astestimony of their existence--music, "silver key of the fountain oftears," child of love, soother of grief, inspirer of heroism and radiantthoughts, O music, in this our desolation, we had forgotten thee! Nor pipeat eve cheered us, nor harmony of voice, nor linked thrill of string; thoucamest upon us now, like the revealing of other forms of being; andtransported as we had been by the loveliness of nature, fancying that webeheld the abode of spirits, now we might well imagine that we heard theirmelodious communings. We paused in such awe as would seize on a palevotarist, visiting some holy shrine at midnight; if she beheld animated andsmiling, the image which she worshipped. We all stood mute; many knelt. Ina few minutes however, we were recalled to human wonder and sympathy by afamiliar strain. The air was Haydn's "New-Created World," and, old anddrooping 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 Ientered the church; the nave was empty, though the smoke of incense rosefrom the altar, bringing with it the recollection of vast congregations, inonce thronged cathedrals; we went into the loft. A blind old man sat at thebellows; his whole soul was ear; and as he sat in the attitude of attentivelistening, a bright glow of pleasure was diffused over his countenance;for, though his lack-lustre eye could not reflect the beam, yet his partedlips, and every line of his face and venerable brow spoke delight. A youngwoman sat at the keys, perhaps twenty years of age. Her auburn hair hung onher neck, and her fair brow shone in its own beauty; but her drooping eyeslet fall fast-flowing tears, while the constraint she exercised to suppressher sobs, and still her trembling, flushed her else pale cheek; she wasthin; languor, and alas! sickness, bent her form. We stood looking at thepair, forgetting what we heard in the absorbing sight; till, the last chordstruck, the peal died away in lessening reverberations. The mighty voice,inorganic we might call it, for we could in no way associate it withmechanism of pipe or key, stilled its sonorous tone, and the girl, turningto lend her assistance to her aged companion, at length perceived us.

  It was her father; and she, since childhood, had been the guide of hisdarkened steps. They were Germans from Saxony, and, emigrating thither buta few years before, had formed new ties with the surrounding villagers.About the time that the pestilence had broken out, a young German studenthad joined them. Their simple history was easily divined. He, a noble,loved the fair daughter of the poor musician, and followed them in theirflight from the persecutions of his friends; but soon the mighty levellercame with unblunted scythe to mow, together with the grass, the tallflowers of the field. The youth was an early victim. She preserved herselffor her father's sake. His blindness permitted her to continue a delusion,at first the child of accident--and now solitary beings, sole survivorsin the land, he remained unacquainted with the change, nor was aware thatwhen 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, sightlessfather alone on the empty earth; but she had not courage to disclose thetruth, and the very excess of her desperation animated her to surpassingexertions. At the accustomed vesper hour, she led him to the chapel; and,though trembling and weeping on his account, she played, without fault intime, or error in note, the hymn written to celebrate the creation of theadorned 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 ashriek she rushed towards us, embraced the knees of Adrian, and utteringbut the words, "O save my father!" with sobs and hysterical cries, openedthe long-shut floodgates of her woe.

  Poor girl!--she and her father now lie side by side, beneath the highwalnut-tree where her lover reposes, and which in her dying moments she hadpointed out to us. Her father, at length aware of his daughter's danger,unable to see the changes of her dear countenance, obstinately held herhand, till it was chilled and stiffened by death. Nor did he then move orspeak, till, twelve hours after, kindly death took him to his breaklessrepose. They rest beneath the sod, the tree their monument;--the hallowedspot is distinct in my memory, paled in by craggy Jura, and the far,immeasurable Alps; the spire of the church they frequented still pointsfrom out the embosoming trees; and though her hand be cold, still methinksthe sounds of divine music which they loved wander about, solacing theirgentle ghosts.

  [1] Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution.