me casually--a frown, a convulsive gesture of anger, shook her mother,

and, with voice trembling with hate, she said--"I am of little worth in

this world; the young are impatient to push the old off the scene; but,

Idris, if you do not wish to see your mother expire at your feet, never

again name that person to me; all else I can bear; and now I am resigned to

the destruction of my cherished hopes: but it is too much to require that I

should love the instrument that providence gifted with murderous properties

for my destruction."

This was a strange speech, now that, on the empty stage, each might play

his part without impediment from the other. But the haughty Ex-Queen

thought as Octavius Caesar and Mark Antony,

We could not stall together

In the whole world.

The period of our departure was fixed for the twenty-fifth of November. The

weather was temperate; soft rains fell at night, and by day the wintry sun

shone out. Our numbers were to move forward in separate parties, and to go

by different routes, all to unite at last at Paris. Adrian and his

division, consisting in all of five hundred persons, were to take the

direction of Dover and Calais. On the twentieth of November, Adrian and I

rode for the last time through the streets of London. They were grass-grown

and desert. The open doors of the empty mansions creaked upon their hinges;

rank herbage, and deforming dirt, had swiftly accumulated on the steps of

the houses; the voiceless steeples of the churches pierced the smokeless

435

The Last Man