I marked the placid expression that had settled on her countenance in

death, I felt, in spite of the pangs of remorse, in spite of heart-rending

regret, that it was better to die so, than to drag on long, miserable years

of repining and inconsolable grief. Stress of weather drove us up the

Adriatic Gulph; and, our vessel being hardly fitted to weather a storm, we

took refuge in the port of Ancona. Here I met Georgio Palli, the

vice-admiral of the Greek fleet, a former friend and warm partizan of

Raymond. I committed the remains of my lost Perdita to his care, for the

purpose of having them transported to Hymettus, and placed in the cell her

Raymond already occupied beneath the pyramid. This was all accomplished

even as I wished. She reposed beside her beloved, and the tomb above was

inscribed with the united names of Raymond and Perdita.

I then came to a resolution of pursuing our journey to England overland. My

own heart was racked by regrets and remorse. The apprehension, that Raymond

had departed for ever, that his name, blended eternally with the past, must

be erased from every anticipation of the future, had come slowly upon me. I

had always admired his talents; his noble aspirations; his grand

conceptions of the glory and majesty of his ambition: his utter want of

mean passions; his fortitude and daring. In Greece I had learnt to love

him; his very waywardness, and self-abandonment to the impulses of

superstition, attached me to him doubly; it might be weakness, but it was

the antipodes of all that was grovelling and selfish. To these pangs were

added the loss of Perdita, lost through my own accursed self-will and

conceit. This dear one, my sole relation; whose progress I had marked from

tender childhood through the varied path of life, and seen her throughout

282

The Last Man