a grave."

I must not forget one incident that occurred during this visit to London.

The visits of Merrival to Windsor, before frequent, had suddenly ceased. At

this time where but a hair's line separated the living from the dead, I

feared that our friend had become a victim to the all-embracing evil. On

this occasion I went, dreading the worst, to his dwelling, to see if I

could be of any service to those of his family who might have survived. The

house was deserted, and had been one of those assigned to the invading

strangers quartered in London. I saw his astronomical instruments put to

strange uses, his globes defaced, his papers covered with abstruse

calculations destroyed. The neighbours could tell me little, till I lighted

on a poor woman who acted as nurse in these perilous times. She told me

that all the family were dead, except Merrival himself, who had gone mad--

mad, she called it, yet on questioning her further, it appeared that he was

possessed only by the delirium of excessive grief. This old man, tottering

on the edge of the grave, and prolonging his prospect through millions of

calculated years,--this visionary who had not seen starvation in the

wasted forms of his wife and children, or plague in the horrible sights and

sounds that surrounded him--this astronomer, apparently dead on earth,

and living only in the motion of the spheres--loved his family with

unapparent but intense affection. Through long habit they had become a part

of himself; his want of worldly knowledge, his absence of mind and infant

guilelessness, made him utterly dependent on them. It was not till one of

them died that he perceived their danger; one by one they were carried off

by pestilence; and his wife, his helpmate and supporter, more necessary to

400

The Last Man