now that years had multiplied my ties in the world. Above all, the anxious

mother, my own beloved and drooping Idris, claimed my earnest care; I could

not reproach the anxiety that never for a moment slept in her heart, but I

exerted myself to distract her attention from too keen an observation of

the truth of things, of the near and nearer approaches of disease, misery,

and death, of the wild look of our attendants as intelligence of another

and yet another death reached us; for to the last something new occurred

that seemed to transcend in horror all that had gone before. Wretched

beings crawled to die under our succouring roof; the inhabitants of the

Castle decreased daily, while the survivors huddled together in fear, and,

as in a famine-struck boat, the sport of the wild, interminable waves, each

looked in the other's face, to guess on whom the death-lot would next fall.

All this I endeavoured to veil, so that it might least impress my Idris;

yet, as I have said, my courage survived even despair: I might be

vanquished, but I would not yield.

One day, it was the ninth of September, seemed devoted to every disaster,

to every harrowing incident. Early in the day, I heard of the arrival of

the aged grandmother of one of our servants at the Castle. This old woman

had reached her hundredth year; her skin was shrivelled, her form was bent

and lost in extreme decrepitude; but as still from year to year she

continued in existence, out-living many younger and stronger, she began to

feel as if she were to live for ever. The plague came, and the inhabitants

of her village died. Clinging, with the dastard feeling of the aged, to the

remnant of her spent life, she had, on hearing that the pestilence had come

into her neighbourhood, barred her door, and closed her casement, refusing

377

The Last Man