survivor, a companion for my loneliness, a solace to my despair. I steeled

myself against the delusion; the room itself was vacant: it was only

prudent, I repeated to myself, to examine the rest of the house. I fancied

that I was proof against the expectation; yet my heart beat audibly, as I

laid my hand on the lock of each door, and it sunk again, when I perceived

in each the same vacancy. Dark and silent they were as vaults; so I

returned to the first chamber, wondering what sightless host had spread the

materials for my repast, and my repose. I drew a chair to the table, and

examined what the viands were of which I was to partake. In truth it was a

death feast! The bread was blue and mouldy; the cheese lay a heap of dust.

I did not dare examine the other dishes; a troop of ants passed in a double

line across the table cloth; every utensil was covered with dust, with

cobwebs, and myriads of dead flies: these were objects each and all

betokening the fallaciousness of my expectations. Tears rushed into my

eyes; surely this was a wanton display of the power of the destroyer. What

had I done, that each sensitive nerve was thus to be anatomized? Yet why

complain more now than ever? This vacant cottage revealed no new sorrow--

the world was empty; mankind was dead--I knew it well--why quarrel

therefore with an acknowledged and stale truth? Yet, as I said, I had hoped

in the very heart of despair, so that every new impression of the hard-cut

reality on my soul brought with it a fresh pang, telling me the yet

unstudied lesson, that neither change of place nor time could bring

alleviation to my misery, but that, as I now was, I must continue, day

after day, month after month, year after year, while I lived. I hardly

dared conjecture what space of time that expression implied. It is true, I

was no longer in the first blush of manhood; neither had I declined far in

594

The Last Man