within the verge of contagion. By a strange fatality Juliet alone escaped,

and she to the last waited on her relatives, and smoothed the pillow of

death. The moment at length came, when the last blow was given to the last

of the house: the youthful survivor of her race sat alone among the dead.

There was no living being near to soothe her, or withdraw her from this

hideous company. With the declining heat of a September night, a whirlwind

of storm, thunder, and hail, rattled round the house, and with ghastly

harmony sung the dirge of her family. She sat upon the ground absorbed in

wordless despair, when through the gusty wind and bickering rain she

thought she heard her name called. Whose could that familiar voice be? Not

one of her relations, for they lay glaring on her with stony eyes. Again

her name was syllabled, and she shuddered as she asked herself, am I

becoming mad, or am I dying, that I hear the voices of the departed? A

second thought passed, swift as an arrow, into her brain; she rushed to the

window; and a flash of lightning shewed to her the expected vision, her

lover in the shrubbery beneath; joy lent her strength to descend the

stairs, to open the door, and then she fainted in his supporting arms.

A thousand times she reproached herself, as with a crime, that she should

revive to happiness with him. The natural clinging of the human mind to

life and joy was in its full energy in her young heart; she gave herself

impetuously up to the enchantment: they were married; and in their radiant

features I saw incarnate, for the last time, the spirit of love, of

rapturous sympathy, which once had been the life of the world.

I envied them, but felt how impossible it was to imbibe the same feeling,

376

The Last Man