voice she murmured:--"This is the end of love!--Yet not the end!"--

and frenzy lent her strength as she cast her arm up to heaven: "there is

the end! there we meet again. Many living deaths have I borne for thee, O

Raymond, and now I expire, thy victim!--By my death I purchase thee--

lo! the instruments of war, fire, the plague are my servitors. I dared, I

conquered them all, till now! I have sold myself to death, with the sole

condition that thou shouldst follow me--Fire, and war, and plague, unite

for thy destruction--O my Raymond, there is no safety for thee!"

With an heavy heart I listened to the changes of her delirium; I made her a

bed of cloaks; her violence decreased and a clammy dew stood on her brow as

the paleness of death succeeded to the crimson of fever, I placed her on

the cloaks. She continued to rave of her speedy meeting with her beloved in

the grave, of his death nigh at hand; sometimes she solemnly declared that

he was summoned; sometimes she bewailed his hard destiny. Her voice grew

feebler, her speech interrupted; a few convulsive movements, and her

muscles relaxed, the limbs fell, no more to be sustained, one deep sigh,

and life was gone.

I bore her from the near neighbourhood of the dead; wrapt in cloaks, I

placed her beneath a tree. Once more I looked on her altered face; the last

time I saw her she was eighteen; beautiful as poet's vision, splendid as a

Sultana of the East--Twelve years had past; twelve years of change,

sorrow and hardship; her brilliant complexion had become worn and dark, her

limbs had lost the roundness of youth and womanhood; her eyes had sunk

deep,

237

The Last Man