burning cheeks and restless twining of his small fingers--the fever was

violent, the torpor complete--enough, without the greater fear of

pestilence, to awaken alarm. Idris must not see him in this state. Clara,

though only twelve years old, was rendered, through extreme sensibility, so

prudent and careful, that I felt secure in entrusting the charge of him to

her, and it was my task to prevent Idris from observing their absence. I

administered the fitting remedies, and left my sweet niece to watch beside

him, and bring me notice of any change she should observe.

I then went to Idris, contriving in my way, plausible excuses for remaining

all day in the Castle, and endeavouring to disperse the traces of care from

my brow. Fortunately she was not alone. I found Merrival, the astronomer,

with her. He was far too long sighted in his view of humanity to heed the

casualties of the day, and lived in the midst of contagion unconscious of

its existence. This poor man, learned as La Place, guileless and

unforeseeing as a child, had often been on the point of starvation, he, his

pale wife and numerous offspring, while he neither felt hunger, nor

observed distress. His astronomical theories absorbed him; calculations

were scrawled with coal on the bare walls of his garret: a hard-earned

guinea, or an article of dress, was exchanged for a book without remorse;

he neither heard his children cry, nor observed his companion's emaciated

form, and the excess of calamity was merely to him as the occurrence of a

cloudy night, when he would have given his right hand to observe a

celestial phenomenon. His wife was one of those wondrous beings, to be

found only among women, with affections not to be diminished by misfortune.

Her mind was divided between boundless admiration for her husband, and

380

The Last Man