CHAPTER X.

I AWOKE in the morning, just as the higher windows of the lofty houses

received the first beams of the rising sun. The birds were chirping,

perched on the windows sills and deserted thresholds of the doors. I awoke,

and my first thought was, Adrian and Clara are dead. I no longer shall be

hailed by their good-morrow--or pass the long day in their society. I

shall never see them more. The ocean has robbed me of them--stolen their

hearts of love from their breasts, and given over to corruption what was

dearer to me than light, or life, or hope.

I was an untaught shepherd-boy, when Adrian deigned to confer on me his

friendship. The best years of my life had been passed with him. All I had

possessed of this world's goods, of happiness, knowledge, or virtue--I

owed to him. He had, in his person, his intellect, and rare qualities,

given a glory to my life, which without him it had never known. Beyond all

other beings he had taught me, that goodness, pure and single, can be an

attribute of man. It was a sight for angels to congregate to behold, to

view him lead, govern, and solace, the last days of the human race.

My lovely Clara also was lost to me--she who last of the daughters of

man, exhibited all those feminine and maiden virtues, which poets,

painters, and sculptors, have in their various languages strove to express.

Yet, as far as she was concerned, could I lament that she was removed in

early youth from the certain advent of misery? Pure she was of soul, and

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The Last Man