extinct; but merely passed into other shapes, unsubjected to our

perceptions. Death is a vast portal, an high road to life: let us hasten to

pass; let us exist no more in this living death, but die that we may live!

We had longed with inexpressible earnestness to reach Dijon, since we had

fixed on it, as a kind of station in our progress. But now we entered it

with a torpor more painful than acute suffering. We had come slowly but

irrevocably to the opinion, that our utmost efforts would not preserve one

human being alive. We took our hands therefore away from the long grasped

rudder; and the frail vessel on which we floated, seemed, the government

over her suspended, to rush, prow foremost, into the dark abyss of the

billows. A gush of grief, a wanton profusion of tears, and vain laments,

and overflowing tenderness, and passionate but fruitless clinging to the

priceless few that remained, was followed by languor and recklessness.

During this disastrous journey we lost all those, not of our own family, to

whom we had particularly attached ourselves among the survivors. It were

not well to fill these pages with a mere catalogue of losses; yet I cannot

refrain from this last mention of those principally dear to us. The little

girl whom Adrian had rescued from utter desertion, during our ride through

London on the twentieth of November, died at Auxerre. The poor child had

attached herself greatly to us; and the suddenness of her death added to

our sorrow. In the morning we had seen her apparently in health--in the

evening, Lucy, before we retired to rest, visited our quarters to say that

she was dead. Poor Lucy herself only survived, till we arrived at Dijon.

She had devoted herself throughout to the nursing the sick, and attending

542

The Last Man