occurrences, nor at worse exhibition of change--when the palace had

become a mere tomb, pregnant with fetid stench, strewn with the dead; and

we could perceive how pestilence and fear had played strange antics,

chasing the luxurious dame to the dank fields and bare cottage; gathering,

among carpets of Indian woof, and beds of silk, the rough peasant, or the

deformed half-human shape of the wretched beggar.

We arrived at Milan, and stationed ourselves in the Vice-Roy's palace. Here

we made laws for ourselves, dividing our day, and fixing distinct

occupations for each hour. In the morning we rode in the adjoining country,

or wandered through the palaces, in search of pictures or antiquities. In

the evening we assembled to read or to converse. There were few books that

we dared read; few, that did not cruelly deface the painting we bestowed on

our solitude, by recalling combinations and emotions never more to be

experienced by us. Metaphysical disquisition; fiction, which wandering from

all reality, lost itself in self-created errors; poets of times so far gone

by, that to read of them was as to read of Atlantis and Utopia; or such as

referred to nature only, and the workings of one particular mind; but most

of all, talk, varied and ever new, beguiled our hours.

While we paused thus in our onward career towards death, time held on its

accustomed course. Still and for ever did the earth roll on, enthroned in

her atmospheric car, speeded by the force of the invisible coursers of

never-erring necessity. And now, this dew-drop in the sky, this ball,

ponderous with mountains, lucent with waves, passing from the short tyranny

of watery Pisces and the frigid Ram, entered the radiant demesne of Taurus

564

The Last Man