accompanied me.

It is impossible to conjecture the strange enchainment of events which

restored the lifeless form of my friend to our hands. In that part of the

town where the fire had most raged the night before, and which now lay

quenched, black and cold, the dying dog of Raymond crouched beside the

mutilated form of its lord. At such a time sorrow has no voice; affliction,

tamed by it is very vehemence, is mute. The poor animal recognised me,

licked my hand, crept close to its lord, and died. He had been evidently

thrown from his horse by some falling ruin, which had crushed his head, and

defaced his whole person. I bent over the body, and took in my hand the

edge of his cloak, less altered in appearance than the human frame it

clothed. I pressed it to my lips, while the rough soldiers gathered around,

mourning over this worthiest prey of death, as if regret and endless

lamentation could re-illumine the extinguished spark, or call to its

shattered prison-house of flesh the liberated spirit. Yesterday those limbs

were worth an universe; they then enshrined a transcendant power, whose

intents, words, and actions were worthy to be recorded in letters of gold;

now the superstition of affection alone could give value to the shattered

mechanism, which, incapable and clod-like, no more resembled Raymond, than

the fallen rain is like the former mansion of cloud in which it climbed the

highest skies, and gilded by the sun, attracted all eyes, and satiated the

sense by its excess of beauty.

Such as he had now become, such as was his terrene vesture, defaced and

spoiled, we wrapt it in our cloaks, and lifting the burthen in our arms,

270

The Last Man